While the coronavirus jumped back and forth around the world last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fell into the shadows, undermined by some of its own flaws and suffocated by a government aimed at enduring the suffering of the to reduce land.
Now a new CDC director is coming up with a huge task: to reaffirm the agency while the pandemic is still in its deadliest phase and the biggest vaccination campaign ever in the country is plagued by confusion and delays.
“I do not know if the CDC is broken or only temporarily injured,” but something needs to be done to heal it again, “Timothy Westmoreland, a professor of law at Georgetown University, focused on public health.
The task falls on dr. Rochelle Walensky, 51, a specialist in infectious diseases at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, was sworn in Wednesday. She takes the helm at a time when the U.S. death toll from the virus has darkened 400,000 and is still accelerating.
Although the agency has retained some of its leading scientific talent, say health experts, it has a long list of needs, including new protection against political influence, a comprehensive overview of its mistakes during the pandemic and more money to basic functions such as disease detection and genetic analysis.
Walensky said one of her top priorities is to improve the CDC’s communication with the public to rebuild trust. Within the agency, she wants to increase morale, mainly by restoring the primacy of science and putting politics aside.
The speed with which she accepts the job is unusual. In the past, the position was usually filled until a new secretary of health and human services was confirmed and the official appointed a CDC director. But this time, the Biden transition team called Walensky in advance so she could take the reins of the agency even before her boss is in place.
Walensky, an HIV researcher, did not work at the CDC or at a state or local health department. But she has emerged as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing certain aspects of the state and national response. Her targets include the unequal transmission prevention measures that were in place last summer, and a leading Trump adviser’s endorsement of a “herd immunity” approach that releases the virus.
She acknowledged the weaknesses in her resume. “If people write about me as the candidate for this position, they will say, ‘But she has no public health experience,'” she said in a podcast with the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The host of the podcast, dr. Howard Bauchner, who is also the magazine’s editor, praised her abundantly. “I can not imagine that the CDC and the country are happier … mostly just because you can communicate, which is such an important task for the head of the CDC,” he said.
Walensky did not respond to requests from The Associated Press.
She follows dr. Robert Redfield, 69, who came to the CDC with a similar resume as an outsider from the academy. Redfield maintained a low profile during his first two years in office after being appointed by the Trump administration in 2018. Veteran CDC scientists have dealt with crises such as a deadly national increase in cases of hepatitis A among homeless and illegal drug users, and a mysterious increase in serious illness in people who have vaporized electronic cigarettes.
The agency’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak began in the same way. Staff scientists took the lead and held regular news conferences to keep the public informed of the emerging issue.
But the agency stumbled in February when a test for the virus sent to states was flawed. Later in the month, a leading CDC expert in infectious diseases, dr. Nancy Messonnier, upset the Trump administration by speaking openly at a news conference about the dangers of the virus when President Donald Trump still despises it.
Within weeks, the agency was pushed off the stage. Redfield made appearances, but he was often a third-level speaker after remarks dominated by Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and others.
The CDC ‘was assassinated, vilified and was a punching bag for many politicians in the outgoing government. And it has had a detrimental effect on the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission, ‘says Dr. Richard Besser, a former CDC official who now heads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
White House officials also took steps to try to control the CDC’s scientific reports and guidance on its website. The agency, for example, removed guidance that advised restricting the church’s choral activities, although studies have shown the danger of transmitting extended singing indoors. The agency also dropped the clue, saying that anyone in close contact with an infected person should be tested – and then accepted again after criticism from health experts.
“People across the political spectrum have had reason to sometimes doubt the truth and accuracy of CDC’s messages,” said Adriane Casalotti of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
While public health veterans say they do not know everything that happened behind the scenes, they say Redfield has apparently failed to stand up for agency scientists, refusing to contradict Trump and those around him. and has passively allowed the Trump administration to post its messages on CDC websites.
“He was not prepared to resign if necessary or to be fired because he stood for a principle,” David Holtgrave, a former CDC associate who is now dean of the public health school, told the State University of New York in Albany, said.
Redfield did not want to be interviewed.
The pandemic also exposed CDC failures and weaknesses unrelated to politics. The test kit problem was linked to laboratory contamination at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta – a sign of sloppiness. The CDC is also losing its position as the country’s main source for case counts and other measures for the epidemic after researchers from universities and other better systems developed to detect infections.
Many of these have to do with cycles of funding for the national public health system that rise in response to a crisis and then fall, hampering efforts to prevent the next crisis.
Last week, Biden said it would raise $ 160 billion for vaccinations and other public health programs, including an effort to expand the public health workforce by 100,000 jobs.
Westmoreland of Georgetown has called for a law or other measure to ban political appointments to have the CDC scientific editorial review done and to ban them from controlling when the agency discloses information. He also recommended a review by the CDC to determine whether the agency’s problems could be traced to mismanagement by Trump’s political appointments or whether there were deeper flaws in the organization.
Some experts suggest that an administration that values science and increases funding could restore the CDC to priority. Besser promised to put scientists first on COVID-19 issues.
“This is something I think will work out on Day One,” he said. ‘One of the things that gives me hope is that I have not seen a major exodus from CDC in the past year. I have seen professionals do their job. I saw the spiritual toll they demanded, but I did not see them give up. ”
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