Last month, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention completed a study showing that Covid vaccines cut the likelihood of emergency room visits by 50 percent and hospitalizations by 55 percent. The study was reviewed, cleared by career CDC staff, and scheduled for publication in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — the CDC's flagship public health journal — on March 19. It was never published.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is currently overseeing CDC operations, canceled the study before it could go out. He objected to the study's methodology — the same methodology that CDC scientists and researchers around the world have used for years to measure the real-world effectiveness of flu and Covid vaccines. Former CDC officials say they have never seen a cleared MMWR study pulled at this stage. The scientists who conducted the research were asked to change the study's design. They declined, because the data had already been collected using that platform, and changing the approach after the fact was not possible.

This is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. It is a question of whether the American public gets access to health data that government scientists already gathered, reviewed, and approved for release. The MMWR has been a trusted source of public health information for decades. Allowing a political appointee to kill a cleared scientific study — without precedent, and over the objections of the researchers who conducted it — sets a dangerous standard for every study that comes after it.

We are calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to release this study. The science was done. The review was done. The public deserves to see it.