For 715 consecutive days — every single day — I put on full protective gear in the ICU at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, fighting COVID-19 on the frontlines. I never took a day off, because when lives hang in the balance, doctors don’t get the luxury of excuses. We act. We fight. We serve.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was created to serve with that same urgency — to protect Americans from infectious disease through science, transparency and rapid response. But what the public got instead during the pandemic was an agency more obsessed with narratives and control than with saving lives.

During the pandemic, the CDC didn’t just make mistakes — it fundamentally betrayed its mission. It manipulated data, censored debate and colluded with Big Tech to silence dissenting physicians. That isn’t science — that’s politics and narrative-control masquerading as public health, and it comes at a dear cost to this nation.

That’s why HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy must enact a forceful and immediate, top-to-bottom house cleaning.

Consider just a few of the documented failures.

The CDC released COVID-19 test kits with internally known fundamental defects, contributing to catastrophic delays in detecting the virus.

It shifted guidance back and forth on whether to require masks — not based on any evidence but under political pressure. This helped destroy public trust.

Then there’s the data manipulation — at least 25 documented statistical errors, 80 percent of them exaggerating the severity of the pandemic.

The agency suppressed transparency, refusing to release full vaccine injury data because the public “might misinterpret it.”

It colluded in censorship, training Facebook, X, and Google employees to erase posts from experienced physicians who challenged CDC orthodoxy.

It surveilled U.S. citizens, buying massive location-tracking databases to monitor lockdown compliance.

It also buried risk data, scrubbing evidence of myocarditis risk from the vaccine and overcounting child deaths from the virus. This fueled destructive school closures and unnecessary child masking.

These are not minor missteps. They represent institutional malpractice — an agency actively choosing political control over scientific honesty. It has cost countless lives.

Even as frontline doctors treated wave after wave of patients, the CDC insulated itself behind bureaucratic walls, doubling down on arrogance and ideology. Instead of humbly correcting course, the agency turned inward, obsessed with power and control.

The result? Americans no longer know if they can trust the very institution designed to protect them. Public health depends on trust. Once lost, it is nearly impossible to rebuild.

Again, that’s why Kennedy must take bold action now, at this juncture, to restore integrity. That means purging the political operatives and career bureaucrats who turned the CDC into a fortress of ideology. It means bringing in real doctors —leaders with actual hands-on clinical experience, not detached administrators or partisan activists. It means requiring full, unredacted release of all data — good, bad or inconvenient.

In short, to rebuild trust, Kennedy must make sure the CDC is putting patients and science first, not politics and profit.

The CDC desperately needs leaders who understand their first duty is not to narratives, not to politicians, and not to authority or control, but to the health and well-being of the American people.

The CDC’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic were not just bureaucratic errors. They were betrayals that cost lives, undermined freedom and shattered trust. Unless we act now, the next public health crisis will expose an even weaker, more distrusted CDC — one that Americans may simply ignore from the outset.

As a doctor who has dedicated my life to saving patients, I will not stand silent. The American people deserve a CDC worthy of its name, that works harder to control diseases than it does to control narratives.

Dr. Joseph Varon is president and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. He spent 715 consecutive days in full protective gear, fighting COVID-19 cases as the Chief Medical Officer in charge of the ICU at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center.

Thousands of people descended on the White House during a Saturday march from Malcolm X Park to Lafayette Park in protest of the Trump administration’s crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital. 

Demonstrators entitled the effort “We Are All DC,” representing the potential ripple effects of military force on local citizens, spurred by the president. 

“Today, in defense of the people and communities living under a military take over of DC, we join in sending a clear and peaceful message: the American people will not bow to dictators. We are in solidarity with our neighbors and Black, Brown, immigrant, and other communities targeted. We will march, we will resist, and we will peacefully protest,” Democracy Forward wrote in a statement on X.

Throughout the past several weeks, soldiers have patrolled the streets as federal agents have worked to set up traffic stops with police and detain individuals deemed to be homeless or illegal immigrants. 

“DC communities are joyful, powerful — and we’re under attack,” a statement from “Free DC” read in promotion of the Saturday march.

“Armed National Guard soldiers are carrying guns through our neighborhoods. ICE and FBI agents are profiling, harassing, and violently arresting our neighbors. MPD is going after children just for being outside, and every hour that goes by is an hour when people here are in danger,” it added. 

Large groups of protestors flooded the streets with signs as they chanted quotes of outrage against the current administration. 

“Our nation’s capital is a place people call home—not a militarized zone. We’re demanding an end to Trump’s takeover of DC and calling on Congress to finally give DC the statehood it’s owed,” the League of Conservation Voters wrote on X.

On Friday, Republicans unveiled a series of legislation set to overturn Washington, D.C.’s self-governance by requiring the DC Council to submit all proposed bills to Congress for review. 

GOP lawmakers are also attempting to lower the age of juveniles who are eligible to be tried as adults while ensuring harsher punishments for those defacing federal public property. 

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) also signed a Tuesday order extending partnerships with federal law enforcement agencies to establish a chain of communication between local leaders and national heads. 

City council members opposed the move, as have most local residents who say the increased police presence is unnecessary.

Still, President Trump’s deployment of Washington National Guard troops to patrol the nation’s capital has been extended through December to ensure that service members receive the full scope of benefits for the mission, according to multiple news outlets. 

The numbers are stark and undeniable. New research from The Lancet projects that as PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, hangs in political limbo, the world will see 4.43 to 10.75 million additional HIV infections and up to 2.93 million HIV-related deaths by 2030. Broader USAID cuts could contribute to 14 million deaths globally, with 500,000 children dying from AIDS and 2.8 million experiencing orphanhood. 

These projections represent more than human tragedy. They signal the systematic destruction of America’s most successful foreign policy program and reveal a massive strategic opening that corporate America can no longer afford to ignore. To that end, American companies face a choice that will define the next generation of business strategy: treat global health as someone else’s responsibility, or recognize it as the ultimate market creation opportunity disguised as humanitarian work. 

Here is what policymakers miss when they view global health spending as charity: every life saved represents a future consumer. Every community protected from disease becomes an emerging market. Every child who survives to adulthood thanks to health interventions contributes decades of potential economic participation. The healthy 25-year-old in Lagos will participate in the economy, buying consumer goods and utilizing banking services. Now multiply that individual impact across millions of lives that strategic corporate health investments could save. The market creation potential becomes staggering. 

But the Lancet’s projection of 10.75 million new HIV infections threatens the collapse of consumer bases that American companies have spent decades cultivating. This matters especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where 70 percent of the population is under 30 — the largest emerging consumer base in human history. Whereas Washington’s retreat signals American government unreliability, corporate health leadership offers something governments can’t: consistency across political cycles and genuine long-term thinking. 

More critically, it positions American companies to capture emerging market loyalty before competitors like Chinese state enterprises fill the vacuum left by America’s political dysfunction. 

The blueprint for corporate health diplomacy already exists. We just need to scale it. 

Coca-Cola’s Project Last Mile demonstrates how corporate supply chains can revolutionize health delivery systems. The company leveraged its distribution network to deliver life-saving medicines across Africa, creating infrastructure that benefits both public health and long-term market development. 

Pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, Merck and Abbott should consider similar partnerships to create what we might call “Corporate PEPFAR,” picking up where government programs leave off. Not only would this maintain health care gains, it would earn the kind of consumer trust that translates into generational market advantage. 

Johnson & Johnson’s Global Public Health Strategy aimed to “triple the number of salaried community health workers in 12 African countries.” This created a shared story of human potential while growing a local professional class capable of safely delivering J&J’s solutions.

The collective dream of shared progress builds brand loyalty, but the reality of lowered long-term business risks makes money. Companies that deliver hope and vision (think Steve Jobs and Apple) create bonds that extend far beyond individual transactions. 

Global presence that sets agendas: Microsoft exemplifies how health investments create platforms for broader influence. Their digital health partnerships across Africa and Asia give them credible authority to champion AI health care transformation at forums like the World Economic Forum, effectively setting global technology priorities. 

When CEOs arrive at international summits highlighting their health partnerships, yes, they are just showcasing corporate social responsibility, but they’re also establishing themselves as authorities on challenges facing their key markets while building stakeholder relationships that protect and advance long-term business interests. 

America’s retreat from global health leadership creates an unprecedented opportunity for corporate America to demonstrate what consistent, strategic thinking looks like. Whereas government programs come and go with election cycles, corporate presence offers something invaluable: reliability. 

The companies that step up now won’t just avoid the costs of global health collapse — they’ll also capture the benefits of unprecedented market creation while competitors wait for Washington to lead. 

This shift represents a business strategy that incorporates a long-term vision of how America shows up on the global stage. Will it be the America of political dysfunction and abandoned commitments, or the America of innovation, consistency and long-term vision embodied by its most successful companies?

The choice facing corporate leaders isn’t whether they can afford to treat global health as someone else’s responsibility. The choice is whether they want to own tomorrow’s markets or watch competitors claim them.

In a world where traditional American soft power is in retreat, corporate health diplomacy offers a path forward that serves both humanitarian goals and business interests. The companies smart enough to see this opportunity won’t just save lives — they’ll secure market position for generations to come. 

Lindsay Singleton is the founder of Singularity Public Affairs, former diplomat and expert in corporate social impact.