With thanks to Global Health Now. This paints an ugly picture whereby dissemination of reliable information by the US's leading health agency was suppressed by the White House. In my view policymakers should be held more accountable for actions that threaten public health.
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At the CDC in 2020, Knowledge Wasn’t Power
“All of us knew tens of thousands were going to die, and we were helpless to stop it.” That’s how Daniel Wozniczka describes being a trainee with the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service in the COVID-19 pandemic’s early days.
Texts, documents, and interviews with current and former staff reveal how the agency — under intense pressure from the Trump White House — delayed telling the public what it knew about the possibility of asymptomatic COVID transmission, the New York Times reports.
Example: EIS officers were deployed to screen passengers arriving from China—who were wearing N95 masks—to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread, but told not to wear masks to avoid alarming the public.
Many staffers harbor intense regret about the delays in deploying information.
“I wish I had taken my cellphone and just live streamed myself yelling at the top of my lungs,” Wozniczka said.
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HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
