Sadly, the CDC was derided and diminished by the "Former Guy."
It used to be a very accessible and helpful government organization. In 1991, while I was in a coma in a hospital in Palm Springs, one, and only one, of the doctors on my case allowed as how I might have viral encephalitis. The rest thought my brain inflammation was caused by either drug use, herpes, or something else, despite my fiancée's assurance that I used no drugs and did not have herpes.
So, after that doctor mentioned a virus, my fiancée called the CDC. A very nice person talked to her, asked about my travels, and the onset of my illness. Then, she told my fiancée that there had been several recent cases of Western Equine Encephalitis reported from Illinois, where I had just been for a couple of weeks when I went to move her to California. I started feeling ill about the time we left Illinois, and conked out near Phoenix.
My wife reported that conversation to the medical team trying to keep me from dying. One doctor said to her, incredulously, "You called the CDC?" My wife, who is quite an outspoken person, replied to the doctor, "Yes. Why didn't you?" Anyhow, the doctors changed my treatment, focusing primarily on relieving the inflammation, using a high dosage of prednisone. I came out of that coma the next day and got transported to a different hospital, at my father's insistence.
I'm not sure what would happen if someone's fiancée called the CDC now about some guy in a coma in Palm Springs. The CDC is not as well-staffed now as it was in 1991.
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THEY were there to impose THEIR corruption, and THEY rewrote the reports of scientists to say what Trump wanted.
THEY are gone.
What is not to understand about that?
In spite of Trump intentions to destroy it, the CDC is still/again the planet's leader in battling epidemic disease and CDC information on disease the gold standard for epidemiologists in other nations.
Btw, don't want it interfered with by politicians with evil agendas? First step: Know who the good guys are.
None of this could have happened with HRC in the oval office and Democrats running the senate. But now heading for a million deaths later, Democrats are in charge and Trump is out.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, new head of the CDC:
Of course. The CDC is now under the control of evil socialist, diversity-loving plotters.
2. Anti-vaxxers, animated by anything from RW political spite to just plain craziness (but now that Democrats are running it, exploding in fear and virulence).
3. Anti-government conservatives in and out of office (at all times but now that Dems are in and consulting the CDC for policy recommendations threatening business autonomy and profits, emergency action required!).
3. The sedition caucuses, who still scheme to use the pandemic chaos to take power.
4. And of course Trump and his inner scum. In addition to the CDC's danger to his fascist-dictator ambitions, Trump resents that he was talked out of closing the CDC down altogether. And still intends to.
These are not good people to inadvertently be lending aid and comfort to, which begs the question: through what insidious paths did they manage to instill hostility HERE toward the CDC? Unbelievable. The CDC is THE world leader in combatting epidemic disease with 11,000 employees headquartered here and doing work critical to our wellbeing in over 60 countries.
NO accident that the world fell apart when Trump-Repubs got control and stopped all our systems from working as they were supposed to and often at all.
So one would think the crimes committed by Trump/Repubs and his corrupt appointees, now under investigation, would have caused anger toward them.
A CDC team combating cholera in Zimbabwe by improving water quality. J
They would have had to overthrow both President Trump and the Republican-controlled senate first.
The CDC's power to act all through 2020 was only what Trump allowed, and for the most part he didn't, and had his agents issue phony, lying "CDC" statements. The current director, an HIV denier and widely known, and proven, to both corrupt and horribly incompetent, was Trump's second appointment after his first resigned in a scandal. Of course, etc, etc.
You may remember Trump's refusals all through 2020 to do what all the experts knew was critically needed; even his own puppets begged him. Remember heroic hospital personnel working in garbage bags because Trump refused to authorize manufacture and purchase of PPE?
By this time last year, 100,000 people were dead, another couple hundred thousand at very least were doomed, and deaths exceeding 2 million were possible. Trump apparently realized this could affect his reelection, and that was when he announced, five months late, that his government would give resources to private companies already working on developing a vaccine. But, he continued to refuse and even block all the other efforts that should have been activated months before.
While you're blaming, note that Republicans in congress also could have taken legislative and funding actions all along to require actions and stop spread. They knew what to do -- they'd done it before, even helped write the book. Instead, along with Trump they refused to do anything that would stop the spread of the pandemic and even in some ways helped it spread. McConnell did allow a giant emergency spending bill to pass so he could use it to spread big treasury money to his donors and business. (Though only a fraction of what he first tried to put in it went to the wealthy, we blocked most.)
January 20, 2021, President Biden was sworn in and issued his first executive orders for his top priority of stopping the pandemic and his new CDC director took charge of the ravaged CDC in the midst of the raging crisis the Trump/Repubs created. The very first day. January 20 was a giant inflection point for America suffering under pandemic raging out of control up to that date and the Biden administration after.
