October 1, 2025

Dear Members and Guests of the As-Yet-Unnamed Dinner Club (UDC),

Here is a timeline of major entries and exits at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2025 (so far):

January RESIGNED: • Mandy Cohen (Director)

February RESIGNED: • Nirav Shah (Deputy Director) • Robin Bailey (Chief Operating Officer)

March RESIGNED: • Leslie Ann Dauphin (Director, Public Health Infrastructure Center) • Karen Remley (Director, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities) • Sam Posner (Director, Office of Science) • Debra Lubar (Director, Office of Policy, Performance, and Evaluation) • Leandris Liburd (Director, Office of Health Equity)

April REMOVED: • Jonathan Mermin (Director, National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention)

April FIRED: • 2,400 CDC Staff (18% of the workforce) "Many of whom were in leadership roles. But even if not - they matter too." (UDC member)

June RESIGNED: • Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos (Oversaw Covid-19 vaccine recommendations) • Fiona Havers (Tracked Covid-19 and RSV hospitalizations)

June REMOVED: • All 17 members of theAdvisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP)

July APPOINTED: • Susan Monarez (Director)

August FIRED: • Susan Monarez (Director)

August RESIGNED: • Demetre Daskalakis (Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases) • Debra Houry (Chief Medical Officer; Deputy Director for Program and Science) • Dan Jernigan (Director, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases) • Jennifer Layden (Director, Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology)

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Two thousand four hundred thirty three! That is one HELLA LOT of brain power, leadership ability, and institutional memory to lose across all fronts of the CDC in about the same amount of time it takes to grow a baby hippopotamus (8 months).

What are the immediate and downstream ramifications of this? (And why won’t the opening sequence from Apocalypse Now stop playing on a loop in my head)?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Are YOU an inquiring mind?

If yes, please register for the inaugural meeting of the as-yet-unnamed Dinner Club when our three speakers (see them being celebrated in this brief video clip) give their take on the past, present, and (feared) future of public health in the United States and—through CDC collaborations and ripple effects—the rest of the world.