It shouldn’t be too much to ask that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention handle a pandemic with some level of competence. But the CDC failed to do that over the last two years, and people have noticed.
A CBS poll on COVID-19 found that 43% of independents think the CDC made the last two years worse, while 39% think it made things better. Republicans gave the CDC the thumbs down 61% compared to 24% who thought they did OK, while Democrats approved of the CDC’s handling of the pandemic 70% compared to 16% who did not.
It isn’t hard to see why this happened. The CDC’s guidance was erratic, overly strict, and often times unscientific. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky undermined confidence in the agency repeatedly, including in July 2021 when she suggested the Biden administration was looking at a federal vaccine mandate. She later backtracked, claiming there “will be no federal mandate.” Not even two months later, President Joe Biden announced a federal vaccine mandate.
Contradicting herself and the administration was a staple of Walensky’s 14 months at the helm. She asserted in February 2021, just one month into the job, that schools could safely reopen regardless of vaccinations and that the data “does not suggest teachers need to be vaccinated.” That should have been fantastic news, and it was clearly data-driven given how low-risk children are from COVID-19.
But White House press secretary Jen Psaki spiked that idea at the podium, and the CDC’s new guidance released shortly after led Walensky to say 95% of the country should not return to full-time in-person schooling.
Schools exposed the worst of the CDC over the last few years. The CDC allowed teachers unions to write the rules for reopening and masking in schools, completely ignoring the data that showed children were not at serious risk from COVID-19. In February, Walensky still wanted people masked “essentially everywhere in the country in public indoor settings,” and the CDC still wants all children to be masked in schools.
And, of course, this is never going to go away. Earlier this month, Walensky suggested masking would be seasonal. The scope of it, according to her, has gone far beyond COVID-19: “We would want to put on our masks again to protect both from flu and from COVID and from all other respiratory diseases.”
The CDC may have the partisan approval of Democrats, but even they recognize its handling of schools has been a disaster, given the election results we’ve seen in San Francisco and Virginia. The CDC failed to meet the moment when it was needed most, and it failed spectacularly. The agency needs an overhaul, starting with the director who provided little direction for the last year.
