I gotta be honest, Papa...the CDC has been such a dumpster fire for the past two years I have been discounting anything coming out of that agency, full stop...especially since Walensky took over. She's even worse than Redfield, which I didn't think was possible.
And this is from someone who remember how heroic the CDC was during the early years of the AIDS epidemic...it really is hard to believe this is the same agency of a generation ago.
Having said that, I'll give your read a go when I'm not so bleary-eyed...tomorrow morning.
It absolutely has. I would point back to 45s administration on that one though since they held a federal hiring freeze which underemployed the CDC by at least 400 employees and then 45 hid the fact that he was aware it was airborne but didn't release the info, but it came out with B0b Woodard interview. If that piece of info if given to the CDC, would have allowed them to employ higher level precautions in the hospital instead of what we had to deal with. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were encouraged NOT to wear masks in the hospital because it scared patients and the CDC hadn't made their recommendations yet. We were told to take them off because were burning supplies and scaring patients. The infighting between nurses and admin got so bad, nurses were getting ready to strike, the unions stepped in and got universal masking in place under the threat of strike but it was too late for some people. The non union hospitals followed much later and were able to get masks in place. Some of us haven't forgotten or forgiven admin for pushing us on that, but to find out the that 45 knew and held it back costed a lot lives. More nurses have died from this than many wars combined and it was preventable. IF we knew this and the CDC had been properly staffed, masks would have been put in place in the hospitals, we could have focused more on production. While we waited, our N95 supply sat there. No movement happened to excelerate production. Hospitals started to rebel and put machines in the room which actively filtered at Merkel Level IV, higher than HEPA filter, to clean the air to a higher level because we kept seeing that this was pointing in the direction of being airborne although we couldn't prove it. But if we had that info, those filter would have already been in place. It was the 1st time, I saw the hospitals go their own way in precautions and just say F it. In retrospect, it's easy to paint a pic of this and look at CDC as the culprit but the WH overstepped it's line by a mile. The CDC was never supposed to implement public policy, but it does control hospital direction and the precautions they take. All our precautions on infection management come from there. As it relates to hospital policy, we can't write one unless it's within their guidelines on infection management, prevention. The President can then take their advice or blow it off as it relates to public policy, but the hospitals can't. Since 45 chose to try to suppress and redirect their recommendations to not scare anyone, it caused a lot of unnecessary harm The Chinese had already shared that info with us and our administration held it back. and then blamed them anyway. While I agree with a large chunk of their criticism and they have their own issues, it was just deferring blame away from some of the responsbility that should be shared.
In Korea, Vietnam wars, our gov has done a shit job at keeping our troops prepared with boots on the ground. Supply lines, not having good intel because they never check in with boots on the ground. This applies to multiple field of work. There is a good book out there called About Face where a retired Colonel David Hackworth discusses in detail about the negatives of sharing poor intel, not being dialed in to boots on the ground and the happenings around us and the dangers of Yes Men. From the lack of quality people in those positions or training or supplies those in the trenches and on the ground pay the ultimate price. I don't consider it too far off from that because this was an active suppression of info for better polling and so people "don't panic". But that kind of BS weakened our health care system, burned out a lot of ICU nurses or just retired them because they saw the writing on the wall and the ineptitude from leadership. What was left was a lot of new ICU nurses who had to learn on the fly instead of getting all the info from seasoned nurses who knew their shit and could not be taught in books. But if we had the right precautions in place, we could have retained staff, started off much stronger and maybe directed our limited scientific resources to a higher footing and higher level of studies. Instead we choked ourselves by starting from scratch wasting resources on DIY hand sanitizer and cloth masks and how far droplets can go when we sneeze when we already knew the info. We could have directed that research to meds like steroids much sooner but our resources were already trying to understand spread when we knew it all along. It took us a year to find out Decadron, a cheap med, helps stave off and control inflammation because we were still studying spread but we had the info before it even really hit the US and it was sat on and the rest of us on the ground paid for it in tears at losing our staff members to vents, death and disability.
On a personal and anecdotal note, one of my sisters on my unit just was able to walk 100 yards on a beach for the first time since she got sick. She was one of the 1st of us to get sick. She's in her 40s. On heart meds now. That's just one person on my unit. Otherwise healthy. You see a lot of us just throw ourselves into it because it is for our patients. We did a mock code when the higher level precautions went into place and I ran into the room without my PPE and I realized if I don't think clearly, I'm gonna get my ass killed. It changes so much about what we do and how we function and we were so careful we had to train, train again, and train again, rinse repeat. Beause you realize, you have to survive for the next patient. I'm no good dead for the next one so we have to make adjustments and that may mean the patient isn't as safe either. The first time I had one patient, it was like disarming a landmine. You can't see it and someone is coughing all over you. If I get this, my kid and wife will possibly too. I slept in a different room than my wife until May (2 months) until she insisted that we all go through this together if I catch it, keep in mind we didn't know what we were looking at. They didn't ask for this and I didn't sign up to hurt them. But these are things we think about as we drive home. To find out later that 45 sat on that info which would have accelerated the CDCs approach to help us in the field is something I have to let go of, but I can't point it at the CDC. It's a shared responsibility. It was only with those who wore scrubs stood up, that things started to change.
