As COVID-19 Divisions, Attacks, and Misinformation Take Their Toll, Less Than Half of the Public Is Confident That the CDC and FDA Can Carry Out Core Functions 

Five years after the introduction of the Covid-19 Epidemic and after communication challenges, divisions, and false claims, less than half of the public says that they have at least some belief in the health agencies of the federal government such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a new KFFDA Administration (FDA) For.

The low level of confidence applies to the ability to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the prescription drugs of the federal agencies (46%express at least some confidence) and to respond to the outbreak of vaccines (45%), and infectious diseases (42%). Even low (32%) agencies express at least “some” confidence to work freely without intervention from external interests.

When it comes to vaccines especially, FDA (57%) or CDC (59%) to provide close to six of the 10 adults contains at least “fair amount” of the trust. It leaves four out of 10 who say they rely on two institutions “not too much” or “not” when it comes to vaccine (43%for FDA, 41%for CDC).

The overall level of confidence in each case stood in September 2023, although significant biased changes in the pole are revealed as the second Trump Administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior has begun to change the commentary policies and messages.

Democrats shares that say they rely on the FDA and CDC have fallen by about 20 per cent points since 2023, while Republican shares have increased by about 10 points in each agencies that rely on each agencies. While those innings have narrowed a biased partition on the trust, the Democrats is more likely than the Republican that they rely on each agency’s vaccine information.

KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said, “The scientific agencies of the country have low levels of faith, which are of biased approaches, and it presents a real danger to the country if there is another epidemic hit,” said KFF president and CEO Drew Altman.

Amidst the ongoing changes in the vaccine policy of the Trump administration, which can affect Kovid -19 vaccines relying on MRNA technology, the pole found about half (45%of the public) to say that he has heard about the false claims or read that people used for Kovid -19 can change their DNA.

Very low (3%) says the false claim “is definitely true”, while a quarter (24%) says it is “definitely wrong.” Most are uncertain, saying that the claim is “probably true” (26%) or “probably wrong” (perhaps 45%).

One third of the adults (32%) states that the vaccines that use MRNA technology are “generally safe”, compared to one of six (16%) that say they are “generally unsafe”. At the same time, about half (52%) of the public says that they do not know enough about this technique. At least one of the five Republican (23%) and Independents (18%) says that they feel that MRNA vaccines are unsafe compared to low democrats (3%).

Other findings include:

• Six out of 10 adults (60%) say that under Trump Administration, federal health agencies are not paying enough attention to science. It contains most of the Democrats (73%) and independent (63%), but less than half of the Republican (45%).
• The majority of the public are confident in the protection of most of the vaccines at least to some extent, including measles, kanthamala and rubella (83%), flu (74%), and 50 years and older, pneumonia (82%) and shingles (79%) of them. A narrow majority (56%) confidence in the protection of covid-19 vaccines, reflecting low confidence between Republicans (30%).

The pole is part of the KFF’s health information and trust initiative, which aims to monitor health misinformation in the US, analyze its impact on American people and raise the media to address the problem.

The KFF was designed and analyzed by referendum researchers, the survey was conducted by telephone between 8-15 April, 2025, online and telephone by telephone in Spanish and 1,380 in Spanish between national representative samples of American adults. The margin of sample error is plus or minus 3 percent marks for full sample. For results, depending on other subgroups, the margin of sample error may be higher.