Polls have shown that trust in our health agencies has taken a huge hit during the pandemic, but their poor decision-making is now undermining the agencies internally. According to a report from Common Sense, a Substack run by New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are losing staff in large numbers.
Dr. Marty Makary, a top public-health expert at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, an epidemiologist affiliated with The Florida Department of Health, report that the agencies, along with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are not following the science
Among the major decisions that have hurt these agencies were supporting school closures, masking in schools, and recommending COVID-19 vaccines for young children, when the science hasn’t supported these interventions.
“The CDC failed to balance the risks of COVID with other risks that come from closing schools,” a CDC scientist told Common Sense.
Last summer, the CDC acknowledged that “multiple studies have shown that transmission within school settings is typically lower than — or at least similar to — levels of community transmission when prevention strategies are in place in schools.” Yet after teachers’ unions lobbied the CDC to keep the mask mandates in schools, the CDC caved to the teachers’ unions, then released a bogus study that claimed mask mandates were effective as cover.
One FDA doctor lamented that the agency had recommended COVID vaccines for infants and toddlers, even those who had already had COVID, despite there being “no solid clinical data” to support it. The organization also had previously bypassed its internal experts to authorize boosters for young children.
“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” the FDA official told Common Sense. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”
Low morale and staff shortages are also plaguing the NIH. “The NIH’s Vaccine Research Center has had many of its senior scientists leave over the last year, including the director, deputy director and chief medical officer,” Common Sense reports.
“They have no leadership right now. Suddenly there’s an enormous number of jobs opening up at the highest level positions,” one NIH scientist explained.
The same thing is happening at the CDC. “There’s been a large amount of turnover. Morale is low,” one high-level official at the CDC told us. “Things have become so political, so what are we there for?” A CDC scientist asked. “I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.”
Earlier this year, the CDC discovered a “mistake” and curiously “revised” pediatric deaths from COVID-19 down 24%. As PJM’s Kevin Downey Jr. noted, “this ‘mistake’ was found well after the CDC’s head honcho, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, used the data to recommend vaccines for kids 5 to 7 years old back in November of 2021. Funny how that worked out.”
The COVID pandemic is pretty much over, and yet the fallout of our health agencies making decisions based on politics, not science, may have an impact that lasts for years to come.
