The CDC Had Proof COVID Vaccines Work. Someone Buried It.
The CDC's own study showed COVID vaccines cut hospitalizations by 55%. It was cleared for publication, scheduled for release, and then personally blocked by the acting CDC director. The Washington Post investigation reveals why.
A CDC study showing COVID vaccines cut hospitalizations by more than half sat on a shelf for months. Not because the science was bad. Because someone at the top didn't want you to see it.
That's the bombshell from a Washington Post investigation, which revealed that acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya personally blocked the study from appearing in the agency's own flagship scientific journal. The study had already passed internal review. It was scheduled for publication on March 19, 2026. And then it just… vanished.
Until it didn't.
The Study That Wouldn't Stay Buried
The blocked paper looked at how well the updated 2025–26 COVID vaccine protected adults during last winter's respiratory season. Using real-world data from a CDC-funded surveillance network, researchers found that vaccinated adults were about 50% less likely to end up in emergency rooms or urgent care for COVID. They were 55% less likely to be hospitalized.
Those aren't earth-shattering numbers by vaccine standards, but they're clinically meaningful. Think of it this way: if 100 unvaccinated people would have landed in the hospital, roughly 45 vaccinated people would have. That's a lot of avoided ventilators, a lot of freed-up ICU beds, and a lot of families who didn't get the worst phone call of their lives.
The researchers used something called a test-negative design, which compares vaccination rates between people who test positive for COVID and people who come in with similar symptoms but test negative. It's the same method CDC has used for years to evaluate flu vaccines. In fact, a flu vaccine study using the exact same approach was published in MMWR (the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) around the same time the COVID study was killed.
Same journal. Same method. Different result at the top.
The Man Who Said No
Bhattacharya justified the block by citing concerns about the test-negative methodology. He later wrote a Washington Post op-ed arguing that biases like prior infection history and differences in care-seeking behavior could distort the findings.
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Those are legitimate scientific discussions. Statisticians have debated the edges of test-negative designs for years. But there's a difference between debating a method and burying results that used it.
Former CDC official Fiona Havers, who previously led the agency's COVID hospitalization tracking, didn't mince words. She described "a clear pattern of blocking high-quality studies that include results that don't support their overall anti-vaccine narrative." She called it "extremely concerning" censorship of taxpayer-funded science.
Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned from his role as director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was even more blunt. He described the decision as "cherry picking based on the bias of the director and others at HHS."
A former CDC official told reporters he was not aware of any prior instance where a report that had already cleared scientific review and been scheduled for MMWR was blocked by leadership. That's decades of publication history with no precedent for this kind of intervention.
Follow the Power, Not the Science
The blocking didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened inside an HHS run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once called COVID vaccines the "deadliest vaccine ever made" and petitioned the FDA to revoke authorization for all COVID shots. (The FDA rejected that petition.)
In May 2025, Kennedy announced that COVID vaccines would no longer be recommended for pregnant women and healthy children. Former CDC Director Susan Monarez was pushed out in August 2025 after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy. Several top CDC officials resigned in protest.
Senator Dick Durbin warned against what he called "a political gag order" on CDC scientific reporting, cautioning that suppressing vaccine science "could lead to fatal outcomes."
This wasn't the first time MMWR had been caught in political crosshairs, either. Back in 2020, during the first Trump administration, HHS political appointees obtained advance copies of MMWR reports and tried to change, delay, or block COVID articles that didn't match White House messaging. Congressional investigators found they successfully altered at least five reports and attempted to interfere with at least 19 others. One hydroxychloroquine report was delayed for nearly a month.
In early 2025, MMWR went on a two-week publication hiatus amid reports that political appointees were dictating what could be covered and withholding studies on the growing bird flu outbreak.
The pattern isn't subtle.
JAMA to the Rescue (Sort Of)
The study didn't die. In June 2026, it appeared in JAMA Network Open, one of medicine's most respected peer-reviewed journals. The numbers held up: 50% reduction in ER visits, 55% reduction in hospitalizations. For adults 65 and older, effectiveness was 48% against ER visits and 53% against hospitalization.
The fact that JAMA published it actually strengthens the science. JAMA's peer review is rigorous and independent. If the methodology were as flawed as Bhattacharya claimed, the paper wouldn't have survived external review.
But publication in JAMA misses the point of MMWR. The CDC's weekly report isn't just another journal; it's supposed to be the fastest pipeline between CDC findings and the doctors, public health officials, and policymakers who need them. MMWR is how the government tells the country what it knows right now. Routing a study through a months-long journal process is like making a fire department submit a written report before they're allowed to sound the alarm.
Why This Matters Beyond Vaccines
This story isn't really about whether COVID vaccines work. (They do, and the data keeps saying so.) It's about whether the public can trust that government scientists are allowed to share what they find.
Emergency physician Robert Glatter put it plainly: quietly halting accepted research "without a transparent scientific reason falls outside how regulators are supposed to operate." Biostatistician Natalie Dean of Emory University defended the study's methodology and stressed that continuing to publish vaccine effectiveness data is essential as immunity and variants evolve.
Vaccine expert Peter Hotez asked the obvious question: why would CDC block a study showing vaccines work? The agency should be "putting up all of the papers showing effectiveness" to encourage vaccination, he argued. Obscuring results "goes against public health."
The scientific community's consensus is clear on two fronts. First, COVID vaccines remain well-supported by evidence. Second, suppressing that evidence (whether for political, ideological, or bureaucratic reasons) corrodes the very trust that public health depends on.
Vaccine confidence, as one analysis noted, "erodes fastest when people sense that information is being managed rather than shared." Blocking a study that says vaccines work doesn't make the science weaker. It makes the institution weaker.
And right now, we can't afford weak institutions.
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