Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told staff members at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the U.S. would have done better in the COVID-19 outbreak by listening to “dissenting voices,” according to a recording of the event reviewed by Bloomberg News.

At the one-year memorial for a deadly shooting at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta — an attack motivated by COVID-19 vaccine misinformation — Kennedy told the assembled staffers that he and other critics of the U.S COVID-19 response had been “censored.”

“We would’ve done better in the COVID pandemic if people had been held out to talk,” Kennedy said, and “if people had been listened to or dissenting voices.”

His remarks came during a nearly one-hour closed-door fireside chat with National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya, who has been leading the CDC in an acting capacity.

Spokespeople for HHS and CDC did not immediately respond to requests for comment after normal business hours.

Kennedy also said that medical journals haven’t “been good gatekeepers for our science” and have been “controlled by the industry.” He said that the NIH should ensure scientists are working on replication in experiments and that the CDC and NIH need to open up databases. “Scientists need to know if they do something wrong, they will get caught.”

Kennedy’s visit marked one year since a gunman opened fire on the public health agency in August 2025. The gunman fired hundreds of rounds and killed one police officer. On Friday, the CDC dedicated the road outside of its main campus to David Rose, the officer who lost his life.

Kennedy attended the commemoration of the roadway and a plaque in his memory, according to a post on the social media platform X.

“A lot of you probably disagree with me on politics or on a lot of other issues, but whatever your beliefs are are irrelevant to me,” Kennedy said during the fireside talk. “What you’re doing makes me proud, and it makes me proud of my country, and I’m grateful to all of you.”

After last year’s shooting, a group of current and former HHS staff publicly blamed Kennedy’s words and actions for contributing to the “harassment and violence” that led to the attack.

Kennedy, an environmental attorney who had been critical over immunizations before joining the Trump administration, was one of the loudest anti-vaccine voices during the pandemic. He once called the COVID-19 shot the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Since taking over the country’s most important health agency, Kennedy has upended existing immunization guidelines. He fired a CDC director after a clash over vaccine policy. And the agency’s staff has shrunk by nearly 25% through layoffs and resignations.

On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Erica Schwartz to be the first permanent CDC director in nearly a year. Schwartz has publicly supported childhood vaccines.

Anti-vaccine policies are not supported by most Americans. Earlier this year, an internal White House memo steered Kennedy and his aides away from issues like vaccines that were more likely to alienate voters, Bloomberg reported.

The Trump administration is now weighing a new executive order on vaccines and autism, Bloomberg reported this week. The details of the order are not yet final, but officials are exploring research initiatives.

A Senate panel also voted this week to advance a resolution to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking his Fifth Amendment right to not testify in a hearing on about his role in the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Michelle Fay Cortez contributed to this report.)

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