{"id":781,"date":"2022-08-19T04:53:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T04:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=781"},"modified":"2025-09-29T02:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T02:42:12","slug":"director-of-cdc-says-their-response-was-botched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=781","title":{"rendered":"Director of CDC says their response was botched"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rochelle<\/a><\/p>\n

Give her credit for the admission.  Below the NY Times article and excerpts there's a short video worth watching if you care about the subject.<\/p>\n

Here's the NY Times –<\/p>\n

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Wednesday delivered a sweeping rebuke of her agency\u2019s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had failed to respond quickly enough and needed to be overhauled.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTo be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes, from testing to data to communications,\u201d she said in a video distributed to the agency\u2019s roughly 11,000 employees.<\/p>\n

Dr. Walensky said the C.D.C.\u2019s future depended on whether it could absorb the lessons of the last few years, during which much of the public lost trust in the agency\u2019s ability to handle a pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans<\/a>. \u201cThis is our watershed moment. We must pivot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Note last paragraph excerpted below. When you are a research scientist getting you name on multiple publications is a big deal – too big a deal.<\/p>\n

A new executive team will be created to set priorities and make decisions about how to spend the agency\u2019s annual $12 billion budget \u201cwith a bias toward public health impact,\u201d according to a media briefing document. Two scientific divisions will now report directly to Dr. Walensky\u2019s office, a move that appears aimed at speeding up delivery of data. Mary Wakefield, a former deputy health secretary in the Obama administration, was appointed to lead the reforms.<\/p>\n

Dr. Walensky hopes to cut down the review time for urgently needed studies, emphasizing production of \u201cdata for action\u201d as opposed to \u201cdata for publication,\u201d the briefing document said.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Dr. Walensky said that while \u201csome of the data are messy, and some of the data take time, I\u2019ve really tried hard to push data out when we had it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency aims to alter its promotion system so that it rewards employees\u2019 efforts to make an impact on public health and focuses less on the number of scientific papers published.<\/p>\n