The legitimacy crisis is affecting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC is now trying to reclaim its image and correct some of the perceived problems that plagued it during this pandemic.
In a Wednesday statement, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said, “My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness.”
What are some of the proposed changes to create a new culture at CDC?
CNN reportsThe CDC is creating a new equity office to increase diversity. Congress should also give the CDC the power and authority to force local jurisdictions sharing their health data.
There is no solution to the trust problem.
The CDC has repeatedly failed to follow dangerous or contradictory policies throughout the waning COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the waxing monkeypox crisis.
Politics, rather than science, drove most of the health authority’s decisions during the pandemic.
Americans may recall that the CDC advised against wearing face masks at the start of the pandemic. They believed they would not do much to stop the spread.
Later, the CDC made an abrupt 180. mandatedEveryone must wear masks when traveling on public transport. When pushed on why the health authority had seemingly made a 180 on policy, Dr. Fauci admitted he initially lied to the American public in order to avoid a theoretical rush on protective equipment needed for medical staff.
When it came to school closures, the CDC seemed far more concerned with appeasing the desires of politically motivated teachers unions than the throngs of students who realistically didn’t get an education for two years.
But the best example of the blatant hypocrisy in politics displayed by our supposed medical superiors at the CDC was their response to the 2020 Summer Riots.
In the initial stages of the pandemic, the CDC recommended that people be isolated from other humans and avoided contact with them.
Health authorities routinely called mandate and anti-lockdown protesters selfish grandma killers and told them to stay in the house to avoid spreading disease.
But when Black Lives Matters protested riots all summer, these recommendations were suddenly thrown out the window.
While the CDC itself never officially condoned the riots, its silence compared with how strongly other public officials condemned the lockdown protests spoke volumes.
Given the multitude of failures from the CDC during the pandemic, you’d think they’d be ready to do better with the next public health issue.
The CDC’s response to monkeypox shoots down that idea quickly.
Already, the CDC has allowed politics infect its response against monkeypox. They have refused to acknowledge who is most at-risk for contracting this disease.
While health officials are well aware that 95-98% of people infected with monkeypox around the globe are gay men, they refuse to make that knowledge widely known in order to avoid “stigmatizing” the gay community.
The CDC’s websiteAlthough there is a mention that gay men are at greater risk of getting monkeypox than the general population, the information is hidden behind a series of menus. The CDC’s website does not clearly state that monkeypox is only affecting gay men.
The CDC seems incapable in recognizing what turned people off of it in the first. Instead of admitting that politics blinded its response to COVID-19 and that it is currently allowing monkeypox to color it, the CDC seems to have doubled-down.
Foisting diversity and equity onto the health authority doesn’t change the fact that people don’t believe a word of what they say.
I don’t care if a white guy or a black guy is lying to me about my health. Lies are lies, regardless of skin color.
The CDC, having stepped outside of its purview several times, including enacting constitutionally dubious eviction Moratoria, is also requesting more power in order to compel state governments along in its madness.
The CDC is right on one thing and one thing only, the American people don’t trust it anymore. CDC Director Walensky and her ilk are right that they desperately need to regain the public’s confidence.
However, the solutions so far seem to only exacerbate the gap between the CDC’s average Americans and the CDC.
Instead of adding more politics to the equation the CDC must get rid the politics that ruined COVID-19. Americans don’t trust their health authorities because they’ve been given ample reasons not to trust it.
Politics in medicine is the disease, more politics isn’t the cure.
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