For C.D.C.’s Walensky,
a Steep Learning Curve
on Messaging
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has stumbled in explaining her policy decisions.
Oh, who gave her the nickname "Walk-Balk" ten months ago? Oh yeah, me.Two days before Christmas...the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alerted the White House that she planned to recommend that people infected with the virus isolate for five days instead of 10.
The director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, had faced previous criticism for issuing recommendations that confused the public and in some cases caught the White House off guard. Determined to avoid that this time, she briefed other top Biden health officials on her proposal so they would all be on the same page, according to two people familiar with her actions.
It did not work out that way. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the surgeon general, were concerned that the new guidance did not urge people to get a negative Covid test before ending their isolation. After the new recommendation became public, they both took issue with it on national television, saying they expected the C.D.C. to clarify its advice.
... “How do you expect people to keep track of what they can and can’t do?” a CNN reporter demanded of Dr. Walensky at a White House briefing.
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...in his first year of battling the coronavirus, Mr. Biden has presided over a series of messaging failures that have followed a familiar pattern, with Dr. Walensky and her team making what experts say are largely sound decisions, but fumbling in communicating them to America.
Who said about ten months ago she should be replaced? Modesty prevents me.
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In May, she said that vaccinated people generally did not need to wear masks in public, a sudden change that flummoxed state health officials. Two months later, she reversed that guidance after it was shown that vaccinated people could still transmit the virus.
I think we all remember that, do we not? The Barnstable County outbreak of breakthroughs.
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The crux of the problem, several administration officials said, is a failure by the C.D.C. and the Biden administration’s messaging experts to work in concert.
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[The fumbled messaging] has been exacerbated by a health secretary, Xavier Becerra, who receives routine briefings from scientists but does not settle interagency disputes about the pandemic response.
Dr. Fauci, the administration’s best-known spokesman on the pandemic, has further muddied the waters at times, publicly contradicting the C.D.C. as he did this week or making statements he has later walked back.
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...even some within Dr. Walensky’s own agency agree that the C.D.C.’s public pronouncements on the pandemic have repeatedly fallen short, long after experts say the agency should have mastered clear and concise public messaging on the worst public health crisis in a century.
Nine days later Walensky still has not "recommended" that Americans test negative after isolating.
“The new recommendations on quarantine and isolation are not only confusing, but are risking further spread of the virus,” the American Medical Association said in a statement on Wednesday.
OOF.
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Dr. Walensky verbally briefed other senior federal officials on the new guidance at least twice [over the Christmas weekend when she made the decisions: 5 days, no neg. test] weekend, defending her decision not to recommend that people test negative first. One person familiar with Dr. Walensky’s account said no one raised serious objections.
But Dr. Fauci said in an interview that he did not see the final version before it was released. Others familiar with the situation said the C.D.C. did not share it before posting it publicly on Dec. 27.
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The agency’s minimalist explanation immediately set off a fraught debate: Why not recommend a negative test before ending isolation? Was it because tests were in short supply? Was the agency shortening the isolation period to keep the economy running instead of for science-based reasons?
Right? When you don't get a complete, thought-out, reasonable explanation you start reaching for the unreasonable.
“Where the messaging gets muddled is where it is unclear what is driving the decision,” said Dr. Celine R. Gounder, an infectious disease expert at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York who considers Dr. Walensky a mentor.
Dr. Gounder said she and other experts suspected that a shortage of tests was behind the decision, [Oh!] and that if Dr. Walensky had said so, “the public health community would have been more understanding.” Dr. Walensky said Wednesday that the guidance had “nothing to do with the shortage of available tests.” [Oh. So be stupid then.]
...[Walensky] said rapid tests were meant to diagnose infection, not predict the risk of spreading it — a position echoed by the F.D.A., which regulates the tests.
Guys, Walk-Back, Woodcock, let me see if I understand your position: Testing positive for COVID-19--AND THE DOMINANT HYPER-INFECTIOUS OMICRON MUTATION THAT HAS CAUSED OVER 500,000 NEW CASES/DAY--does "not predict" the risk of spreading COVID-19?
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“They’re not authorized for that use. They haven’t been studied for that,” Dr. Walensky said. “So, in my sort of clinical judgment, and my public health judgment, you don’t necessarily do a test if you don’t know what you’re going to do with the results.”
THEN WHY DID BIDEN PROMISE FREE TESTS FOR ALL?! DID YOU AGREE WITH THAT NATIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT, WALK-BACK, WOODCOCK? That detail aside Walensky's answer "sort of" makes sense to me--as far as it goes--since I had the question when the president announced "free tests for all!": What do I do if I test positive? At the time of the president's announcement there was no "then" to follow the "if." Walk-Back gave us the "then" after her Christmas brain bowl. If we are symptomatic then we isolate for five days. After that you should be good to go. Negative test, you know, to make shur? Meh. Walensky, Woodcock, we ask the same thing of you ten days after Christmas that we asked four days before Christmas: Why test at all then?
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In an interview Tuesday evening, Dr. Fauci said he favored a testing recommendation because a positive test was “very much associated” with the virus replicating in a person’s nose and throat — an indication of infectiousness.
Two people familiar with Dr. Murthy’s thinking said he shared Dr. Fauci’s views.
Actually, Walk-Back, Woodcock, don't answer either of you. Woodcock, change your name to Woodhead and then both of you--Go! In the name of God go!
