Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky launched a damage control campaign this month to save her agency’s reputation after its disastrous handling of the COVID pandemic. She admitted the CDC made “dramatic mistakes” with regard to the pandemic and said “accountability” will be a priority in the agency’s “resetting.”
Notably, Walensky seemed to place the blame for the agency’s failures on the bureaucrats it employs, asserting that “they’re (emphasis added) up to the task” of doing better rather than “we’re up to the task.” She’s clearly trying to protect her job and position, so she’s putting distance between herself and her agency, presumably hoping to avoid a personal reckoning for all the damage the CDC has done.
But Walensky is as responsible for the significant drop in public trust in the government’s public health regime as Dr. Anthony Fauci. The anti-science policies she recommended and the public health messaging she spread were purposeful, dishonest, and malign. Under her leadership, the CDC distorted and fabricated data, censored and demeaned real science by others, and used the power of the federal government to threaten everyone into submission. Walensky cared more about the power she could grab than the health of the public.
Unfortunately, Walensky and the other coronavirus czars were very successful — for a while. They convinced many states to require masks, a requirement that still exists for children in public schools in places like California. The CDC provided cover for President Joe Biden as he mandated the COVID vaccine for military service members and government employees.
Much of the data the CDC used to justify these heavy-handed restrictions were distorted. For example, the CDC reports that there have been more than 93,647,250 “cases.” In a medical context, a case refers to someone who is sick. But the vast majority of COVID cases were healthy, asymptomatic people with symptoms similar to the common cold or flu.
The number of reported COVID deaths is another intentional distortion. The CDC’s COVID tracker claims 1,036,604 Americans died from the virus in 18 months. But this number fails to take into account that most of these people had preexisting conditions and comorbidities. In fact, studies show that 73% to 88% of the deaths were due to their preexisting medical conditions rather than the virus itself.
When cases and deaths are reported in the multimillions, the public is led to believe that COVID is truly an existential threat to the nation, one that justifies Washington invoking emergency powers and taking away constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. But much of the public has since realized that the government’s reaction to the pandemic was a severe overreaction, one that cost everyone greatly.
As a result of the fabricated or distorted data, along with the censorship of reports contrary to the official ones, trust in the CDC and public health leaders has plummeted.
What’s needed here is not just a “reset.” A reset suggests that a problem with a computer, for example, can be fixed by turning it off and then back on. The computer itself is fine; there was just a temporary glitch.
But the CDC’s COVID failures weren’t minor, nor were they a one-time thing. They were a part of a larger pattern, one that indicates a deeper rot within the agency and the scientific community at large. Our public health bureaucrats have abandoned valid scientific data for politics. They have decided that science is whatever they say it is rather than a process that informs the way we view our world.
True accountability requires those in charge to take responsibility for their own failures. That includes Walensky. She should resign immediately.
Next on the chopping block should be anyone who authorized or signed off on selling ideologically driven, false, or fabricated data as truth. High-level firings will send a clear message to those still in the agency that the mistakes of the pandemic will not be repeated. Hopefully, this will help the agency regain the trust of the public.
But this will take time. And it will only be possible if the CDC commits to a complete and total overhaul — starting with removing Walensky.
Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA, is a professor emeritus of pediatrics, pathology, and decision science at the University of New Mexico and the former director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He is also the author of the multiaward-winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare & Market-Based Medicine.
