I still have trust in Rochelle Walensky and think she is the right person for the job. President...

[Botany]

... Biden has more than shown me that he is the right man for the job as POTUS right now and if he has her
back then that is good enough for me. Things, situations, and data can change during this pandemic and so
the responses to what is happening might have to change to.

**********

Time: CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Faces a Surging Virus—And a Crisis of Trust

If viruses know no borders, they
 have an equal disdain for human holidays. On Thanksgiving 2021, Dr. Rochelle Walensky shut off her phone for about 45 minutes and placed the turkey on the dining table to enjoy the holiday meal with her husband and three sons. When she turned the phone back on, she found, among the messages that had piled up, warnings that SARS-CoV-2 had morphed into a potentially dangerous new variant, identified in South Africa. Health officials there predicted that what would become known as the Omicron variant was much better at spreading than previous variants, and Walensky knew it was only a matter of time before Omicron cases would appear in the U.S.

As director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Walensky’s job is to protect the nation, and by extension the world, from threats like this one. To buy time as she and the country’s public-health experts learned as much as they could about the new variant, she joined them in advising that flights from South Africa and nearby nations reporting cases be temporarily halted. She also beefed up genetic-sequencing efforts to monitor for the new variant so health officials would know as soon as the first cases hit the country.

By Christmas, Omicron had overtaken Delta as the dominant variant, accounting for almost 60% of new infections in the nation, and over that holiday weekend, Walensky and the country’s top COVID-19 experts wrestled with a difficult decision. With thousands of flights canceled as airline staff tested positive for COVID-19 and were unable to work, and with hospitals, schools and food industries similarly tottering under the pressure of maintaining an adequate labor force as Omicron pulled employee after employee into the COVID-19-positive ranks, Walensky and the CDC made the critical, and controversial, decision to cut the isolation times for people who were infected by half, from 10 days to five. Business groups supported the change, which provided a release valve on their increasing labor problems, but health care workers and certain labor unions pushed back, arguing that employees would be compelled to work while potentially still contagious, which could lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases.

Walensky defended the move, telling TIME, “There are a lot of studies [from other variants] that show the maximum transmissibility is in those first five days. And [with Omicron] we are about to face hundreds of thousands more cases a day, and it was becoming very, very clear from the health care system that we would have people who were [positive but] asymptomatic and not able to work, and that was a harbinger of what was going to come in all other essential functions of society.” The decision reflects the balancing act that Walensky has been performing since becoming director of the CDC last January: integrating the scientific reality that an infectious and quickly adapting virus ideally requires intensive lockdown with the economic and social realities that make it impossible to do so for lengthy periods of time. In addition, Walensky confronts another equally monumental task: restoring the public’s trust in science, and educating people about the iterative nature of science so they don’t see changing recommendations as so confusing and conflicting that they stop listening.

https://time.com/6132792/rochelle-walensky-covid-19-cdc-profile/

[Hugin]

1. "Business groups supported the change..."

Did the movie "Jaws" flash through anyone else's mind's eye?

I move that any time business groups are cited in COVID restriction related articles, that the qualifier "safely from their enclaves" be added.

[MineralMan]

2. When the Omicron Variant Appeared, I knew

that holiday travel would be a very bad idea and would trigger a sharp increase in infections. If I had made plans to travel over Christmas or New Years, I would have cancelled the trip. No question about it.

The CDC Director is in a terrible position. Reality is a very harsh mistress. I would not have her job for any amount of money.

Bottom line is that we have been facing off with an unprecedented pandemic situation. The development of the newest vaccines was a promising thing, and they were very effective. However, the resistance to taking those vaccines meant that a sizable portion of the population went completely unprotected against this novel virus.

So, more variants developed in people who became ill with COVID-19. Inevitably, one of them was able to partially avoid the protection offered by the vaccines. Had we achieved something like 90% vaccination rates right away, that might not have happened or might not have mattered very much. We did not get there.

So, Omicron. So Holiday spread of the new variant. Nothing Walensky might have done would have mitigated that. Shutting down airline travel before Christmas, however, might have slowed the spread. That, however, was probably not a real possibility.

I'm vaccinated and boosted with Moderna. That should be enough to keep this 76-year-old geezer out of the hospital and morgue, I hope. I'm back in full protective mode again, as well.

Sadly, we still have a sizable unvaccinated population, so the pandemic continues...what a pity!

[Botany]

3. If you look @ Rochelle Walensky's credentials you can tell she is more than qualified for to head..

... the CDC and her science, teaching (Prof. Harvard Med School), and medical background lets her
analyze the data and change what she and the CDC doing how ever she is running up against a
Republican Party that sees keeping the C-19 pandemic going as their ticket back into power and
cement heads on Cancers on America like Fox trying to paint her changes on the length of time
people need to be quarantined as some kind of flaw or weakness.

[LisaL]

4. I don't.

NT