CDC director Rochelle Walensky went all out in discussing her agency’s terrible handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting need to overhaul that bureaucracy. At least that’s what she thinks and what the media happily report. The problem is that, while there is a lot of truth in what Walensky said, she omitted the CDC’s most blatant failures and the role that she played in these disasters. These failures, to be specific, are the CDC’s excessive caution, its misguided use of studies to impose its excessive risk aversion on all Americans, and the influence it exercised to keep schools closed (and, when they opened, to keep the kids masked and scared).
The CDC’s oversized risk aversion manifested itself in many ways, but the most obvious one was its eagerness to continue to recommend mask wearing late into the pandemic, which was especially harmful for children. The CDC loves mask wearing so much that it even issued a guidance suggesting that mask-wearing by travelers can help protect against “many diseases, including monkeypox.” This particular recommendation was laughed out of the room so fast that after a mere 18 hours the CDC removed the guidance. This little fact matters, since politicians with a taste for mandates remain eager to use CDC guidelines to justify their intrusive actions.
The criticism that the CDC is overly cautious is levelled against it by many people. Overcaution is a real problem, and it would be hard to address in part because the agency was created to focus on disease prevention, thus causing it to discount, or even to ignore altogether, other consequences that likely arise from its single-minded efforts to mitigate disease.
The second problem with the CDC, yet to be mentioned by Walensky, is, in my opinion, even worse. The agency has proven itself to be incurably political, no matter who is in the White House. As all Americans now know, it’s heavily influenced by union representatives. At the extreme, the CDC is even corruptible. It has also been shown to misuse or misrepresent data, and it has turned to junk-science studies to bolster its case for an eviction moratorium, for mask mandates, and for fear in general.
But the greatest CDC blunder of them all was its awful guidance on school closures and masking schoolchildren. While many industrialized nations’ kids were back in school at the end of 2020 and for the start of the 2021–22 school year, here, many states kept kids learning — “learning” — next to nothing from home long after the economy was reopened and people, even teachers, were dining out and going on vacations. This was thanks to CDC guidance on school closures. Again, it is now well known that one part of the guidance was written by leaders of the largest teachers’ union. Adding insult to injury, the CDC ignored the many studies, dating back to the summer of 2020, showing that it is safe for kids, teachers, and community members for children to attend school in person. It also ignored the evidence that remote learning was a disaster.
When the CDC said that it was finally okay to go back to school, the kids were still advised to wear masks to protect teachers, even though most teachers were vaccinated. This guidance was followed scrupulously by many eager administrators (including by the ones at my vaccinated kids’ high school well into 2022).
As late as February 2022, I wrote the following:
More recently, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was questioned by members of the House’s Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the agency’s guidance on continued mask wearing in school.
Members on both sides of the aisle seemed uneasy with school mask mandates, and some noted that the studies used by the agency to justify its continued requirements had been debunked. The guidance was at odds with available evidence and with what most other countries were doing without an apparent increase in health risks.
Did this line of questioning make a difference? No. Walensky acknowledged the “limitations” of the mask studies but refused to change a thing. And so, many kids as young as 2 will continue to be masked at school.
It’s infuriating, especially since the guidance will likely change when enough Democrat-led states have lifted their own mandates. So much for following science.
Which is exactly what happened.
So count me as one of those who are skeptical that Walensky, who is part of the problem, will change the agency in any way that improves its operation. What I believe is that she will be able to achieve what she is truly after: a bigger budget for the CDC and more power to force states to follow its often-unscientific dictates.