Is it the Message: Or is the CDC’s Poor Performance Due to Washington’s Group Think?
The Center for Disease Control and prevention (CDC), the nation’s premier public health agency, has recently come under criticism for many missteps. They include accepting influence from both the Trump and Biden White House, an initial disastrous rollout of the PCR test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, late recognition that this virus spreads by small air particles and not by bigger air droplets leading to confusing mask guidelines. Others include confusion about time of isolation and testing, difficulty explaining complicated science to the general population, confusing guidelines on when to open schools, and poor data acquisition. Director Walensky has responded by intending to give more frequent briefings along with senior experts. Meanwhile, Senators are drafting new legislation to spend more money on a task force to probe the CDC response, improve data collection, and have the CDC director confirmed by the Senate (Ref.1).
But instead of the Senators’ suggestions, does the CDC with an almost $8 billion budget and more than 10,000 employees need careful analysis of its mission and serious reform? The organization structure is so convoluted and bureaucratic one wonders how anything is accomplished with its group think, paralysis, and a web site that is more propaganda than instructional (Ref.2,3,4).
Washington group thinking is well demonstrated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CDC unwillingness until most recently to recognize the efficacy of the immune response to previous Covid-19 infection versus vaccination. The NIH refused to acknowledge the value of natural immunity being unsure of its duration, but never did the studies to answer the question. Similarly, the CDC had data on Covid-19 reinfection rates from New York and California revealing that previous infection gave significantly better protection than vaccination; it only very recently released the data. Many individuals who have had Covid-19 and with excellent immunity when refusing vaccination have been unjustly poorly treated, because of our government’s inflexibility. It is yet another example where a simple antibody test would be most helpful (Ref.5,6,7).
Why did the U.S. embark on a futile task of trying to stop the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with lockdowns, masking, and social distancing? A recent study from Johns Hopkins has demonstrated that lockdowns and other measures decreased deaths by a meager 0.2% (Ref.8). Why did our experts ignore the multiple reasons it is impossible to prevent the spread of a respiratory virus that has minimal and asymptomatic carriers (Ref.9)? Not only did we ignore previous work, but our government’s senior health scientists did their best to squelch any debate on the subject while knowing that vigorous discussion is essential to good science (Ref.10,11). The answer is relatively simple when examining the culture of our national government. We have a yearly budget process where each agency and its employees appeal to Congress to maximize its allocation of funds. This yearly appeal to funding among agency leaders creates a single-minded approach: build your bureaucracy, make no waves, while trying to outdo each other by proving how important they are. This environment creates group thinking which in healthcare is led by the leaders of the NIH.
This underlying process of conformity and the present intolerance of dissenting views helps explain why we pursued a failed Covid policy. Dynamic discussion including dissenting views are essential to the creation of good science and policy; this was lacking. Hopefully, we will learn from this failure as we face future challenges.
- Felicia Schwartz, Embattled CDC Rethinks Pandemic Response After Criticism of Guidelines, Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2022, available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/embattled-cdc-rethinks-pandemic-response-after-criticism-of-guidelines-11643371202 (accessed January 29, 2022)
- Ryan McMaken, The CDC’s Budget Is Larger Now Than Under Obama, Mises Wire, March 11, 2020, available at: https://mises.org/wire/cdcs-budget-larger-now-under-obama#:~:text=That%20is%2C%20the%20actual%20enacted%20program%20budgets%20for,nearly%20%247.7%20billion.%20Here%27s%20the%20analysis%20from%20Factcheck.org%3A (accessed February 5, 2022)
- Adam Andrzejewski, 10,600 CDC Employees Earn $1.1 Billion Annually, Forbes, February 28, 2020, available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/02/29/10600-cdc-employees-earn-11-billion-annually/?sh=4d4f1a6024da (accessed February 5, 2022)
- About CDC 24-7, CDC Organization, CDC, May 7, 2021, available at: https://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/cio.htm (accessed February 5, 2022)
- Marty Makary, The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid, Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2022, available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-cost-of-disparaging-natural-immunity-to-covid-vaccine-mandates-protests-fire-rehire-employment-11643214336 (accessed January 27, 2022)
- Jennifer L. Alejo, MD., Jonathan Mitchell, MBBS, Amy Chang, MD., et al., Prevalence and Durability of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies Among Unvaccinated US Adults by History of Covid-19, JAMA, February 3, 2022, available at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788894 (accessed February 4, 2022)
- Ken Fisher, M.D., Waiting for a Sensible Approach to SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: How Long Will It Take, Authentic Medicine, August 28, 2021, available at: https://authenticmedicine.com/2021/08/waiting-for-a-sensible-approach-to-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic-how-long-will-it-take/ (accessed February 6, 2022)
- Tristin Hopper, Lockdowns only reduced COVID deaths by 0.2 percent, Johns Hopkins study finds: We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality, National Post, February 2, 2022, available at: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/johns-hopkins-university-study-covid-19-lockdowns (accessed February 2, 2022)
9. Phillip W. Magness & Peter C. Earle, The Fickle ‘Science’ of Lockdowns, WSJ, December 19,2021, available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/lockdown-science-pandemic-imperial-college-london-quarantine-social-distance-covid-fauci-omicron-11639930605 (accessed December 19, 2021)
10. The Editorial Board, How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate, WSJ, December 21, 2021, available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116 (accessed December 22, 2021)
11. Health, intelligence Debates, available at: https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/topics/health (accessed February 6, 2022)
It could be argued that the CDC could fall under the DoD with its only role to predict, analyze, and fight emerging natural or manmade biological threats as part of the defense role for the feds outlined in the Constitution.
There should not be an NIH, NIAID, HHS, CMS, or Medicare/Medicaid, as there is no appropriate federal role in the daily provision of health care. The greatest sharks have been wrought not by COVID, but by our response to it, and the legacy of injecting bureaucratic heroin into the veins of health care, making us all sick forever.
“Harms”, not sharks. &$#@*% autocorrect.
A lot of the problem is that the CDC is an extremely cautious and deliberate organization that functions poorly in an emergency such as a pandemic. They are used to deliberating for years before making any decisions. That doesn’t excuse their tunnel vision in situations like aerosol vs droplet transmission and failure to admit some masks are better than others.
They compounded the problem with a know it all and lecturing approach despite a great deal being unknown and recommendations constantly shifting.
Bravo. Well said, well researched, non partisan. All things I cannot say about anything the cdc has done in the last 2 years.
If the CDC was a corporation, the trial lawyers would sue them into oblivion. The CEO would be fired, and half the employees let go.
The big problem is union government employees that can’t be fired, leading to poor and effortless performances, and poor results.