By Natalie O’Neill

Published Feb. 21, 2025, 5:17 p.m. ET

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention killed a campaign promoting seasonal flu shots and canceled a major conference with virus experts just days after outspoken vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the nation’s top health official.

 

Under Kennedy’s leadership, the CDC pulled the plug on its “Wild to Mild initiative” — which was aimed at encouraging high-risk folks to get vaxxed — Wednesday as one of worst flu seasons in decades rages, NPR reported.

 

The ads used animals as an analogy for the lowered threat of a the flu virus once a person is vaccinated — using the image of a kitten versus a lion.

 

But CDC staffers were told in a meeting with National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases reps that the campaign would not continue, the outlet reported. Information about the campaign was then removed from CDC’s web page.

 

On Thursday, the HHS then ordered the CDC to indefinitely postpone a meeting of its vaccine advisory committee — which Kennedy has criticized in the past — slated for Feb. 26 and Feb. 28, The Washington Post reported.

 

The moves come less than a week after Kennedy was sworn in as President Trump’s Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

 

The HHS denied that the flu shot campaign had been yanked from the website.

 

“No, the CDC was not told to take down the flu vaccination campaign webpage,” Health and Human Services said in a statement, according to the tech news site arstechnica.com

 

“Unfortunately, officials inside the CDC who are averse to Secretary Kennedy and President Trump’s agenda seem to be intentionally falsifying and misrepresenting guidance they receive,” the statement said.

 

An HHS spokesperson also told The Washington Post that the vaccine conference was “postponed to accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting.”

 

As of Friday, however, the conference hadn’t been rescheduled.