Notoriously political CDC director warns of ‘politicization’ on her way out
Jack Elbaum
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If you thought the gaslighting couldn’t get any worse, think again.
In what was likely her last interview as director of the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky lamented how political our response to COVID-19 became. The Wall Street Journal wrote that she “has a warning for the American people: Be on guard against misinformation and the politicization of science.”
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Walensky herself said that people should make health decisions based on “their own risk assessment and their own personal risks, but not through politics.”
That’s nice rhetoric. But it’s also rich coming from the woman who may have been the most political CDC director in American history.
During her tenure, Walensky repeatedly made public health decisions based on politics. Likely the clearest case was when she literally changed the wording of CDC guidance on school reopenings in early 2021 because the leader of the country’s second-largest teachers union, Randi Weingarten, texted her upset that it pushed too much for in-person learning.
When Weingarten saw the change, which gave schools significant leeway to remain online, and thanked Walensky, Walensky replied, “This gave me the biggest smile of the week. Thank YOU, Friend!”
If that wasn’t enough, it was recently revealed that Walensky pushed for vaccine mandates under the pretense that vaccinated people “don’t carry the virus” and “don’t get sick,” even though she knew at the time it wasn’t true. Emails obtained from Freedom of Information Act requests confirm she knew about the research into breakthrough cases in January 2021, when vaccines first became widely available, yet did not acknowledge it for months.
If this is not political, I’m not sure what is.
In the interview, Walensky discussed how difficult it was to communicate the proper messages to the public during the pandemic. And I’m sure it was quite difficult. However, the fact that communication was difficult has nothing to do with the numerous overtly political, unscientific decisions made by Walensky. In fact, I’m sure it is pretty difficult to sell policies as “evidence-based” when they are anything but.
As she leaves her post, it is with a rising distrust of institutions similar to the one she just led for 2 1/2 years.
It is easy to sit back and list the problems with the political discourse over COVID-19 as if they arose in a vacuum. But if Walensky and others actually took some responsibility for the declining trust in public health institutions and the “politicization” of science, it would not only serve themselves well — it would serve the country well too.
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Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.