CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has resigned her post as the head of America’s top public health agency. In honour of her resignation, it’s worth revisiting some of her most obvious disasters. There’s a nearly endless number of possibilities to make Walensky’s list of shame. But here are a few favourites.
Vaccinated People Don’t Get Sick
Soon after taking over her post, she told the public that vaccinated people were not only protected from serious illness and death, but all infection.
“Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick, and that it’s not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real-world data,” she claimed.
There may never be a more inaccurate statement issued by a public official on any issue. It was utterly incomprehensible at the time, totally unsupported and designed to provoke mandates.
Soon afterwards, real-world data confirmed she was completely wrong about vaccine efficacy.
Masks Are Effective
One of the most pernicious, inexcusable mistakes was repeatedly telling the public that masks were protective at preventing transmission or infection.
That delusional, evidence-free assertion caused immense harm, leading to states like California issuing pointless, useless mask mandates throughout 2021 and into 2022.
Even more infuriating was that she told Congress that CDC guidance on masking would essentially never change.
That’s correct, no matter what the evidence showed, no matter how many studies disproved masking, Walensky would never stop recommending masks.
Somehow even that undersells just how bad that statement was. Her remarks were said in the context of masking kids, meaning the agency would never be revisiting its guidance on school masking.
Not to mention her desperate defence of masking on planes, which continued even after it was abundantly clear that maskless travel was completely safe.
She also, before Congress, inaccurately dismissed the Cochrane Review on masking to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.
That type of arrogance, hubris and commitment to inaccuracy was a consistent feature of Walensky’s tenure.
Risks of Myocarditis
All of Walensky’s mistakes were harmful and dangerously misleading. But one of the most indefensible was her efforts to downplay concerns over post-vaccine myocarditis.
Following discovery of the side-effect, countries like Sweden worked to limit distribution of the mRNA vaccines to younger people and children. Many experts also recommended potentially changing guidance to suggest just one dose, with research saying complications could be exacerbated by the second dose.
So what did the CDC do in response? Absolutely nothing, of course!
Even after the agency finally acknowledged the risk of myocarditis to young people, Walensky still urged parents to vaccinate kids regardless.
Her endless promotion and refusal to properly frame risks and benefits led to the rapid proliferation of vaccine mandates for young, healthy individuals.
Places like California and Washington, D.C. moved to enforce mandates to attend school, in defiance of scientific evidence and in support of Walensky’s fact-free claims.
Colleges jumped on the bandwagon as well, with university after university falling in line with CDC recommendations.
Turns out, further research showed that dangerous side effects were potentially not as uncommon as the agency claimed.
Great work, Walensky!
How Much Worse Will the CDC Get?
These are just a few of her more obvious mistakes.
Her agency also promoted shoddy study after shoddy study. One graphic put out by the CDC even highlighted a result designed to promote masks that referenced a result that was not statistically significant.
That’s an inexcusable abdication of scientific responsibility. Presenting as meaningful results that don’t reach the threshold of significance is irresponsible misinformation.
But the concerning thing about her resignation is the possibility that her replacement may be even worse.
The Biden administration has repeatedly shown its incompetence. Through their efforts to mandate vaccines for private employers, continue the ban on unvaccinated travellers, hiring Walensky in the first place, and relentless promotion of masks, officials have got virtually every major decision wrong.
Why would they stop now?
Robert Redfield, the former head of the CDC, famously claimed that masks would be more protective than vaccines. And yet his replacement was somehow significantly worse.
Just imagine how much worse it could get in the post-Walensky era.
Even as the pandemic fades, the CDC and the administration have now realised they hold immense power over Americans’ daily lives.
Huge numbers of individuals, influential corporations and administrators will outsource their decision-making to CDC recommendations.
No matter how ineffective people like Walensky have proven to be.
Ian Miller is the author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. He writes a Substack newsletter, where this article first appeared.
Stop Press: Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson write about Dr. Walensky’s misleading assertions to Congress about the Cochrane review, of which Jefferson was a lead author.
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Lying, incompetent POS. That’s what she is. Therefore, perfect material for whichever pharma company decides to snap her up next.
https://pharmafiles.substack.com/p/cdc-director-walensky-resigns
Couldn’t have put it better myself..
Isn’t she Jewish….just a Jewishcidence I understand. Don’t want to be racist now….
Indeed. What I find interesting is that most “public health experts” from rich world countries and the WHO itself all spouted the same lies
That’s the reason why COVID suceeded where the swine flu of 2009 failed: They had centralized, professional PR from the start and aggressively attacked pandemic dissidents regardless of academic standing or qualifications. I’ve been following COVID news from both English/ American and German sources and can thus confirm that they were very likely both reading from the same text book, just with one version translated – often badly – into German.
Interesting. All just a cock-up….
I do still believe it was a cock up….by weak kneed ninnies like Bunter.
Bunter, inexperienced, hopelessly out of his depth, simply caved to pressure from Macron.
The fact that the message was often the same from country to country is best explained by the way a bunch of dreadful WHO/Gates toadies, Nabarro, Farrar, Drosten, Ferguson, Whitty et al, all buddies, spread their message on both sides of the Atlantic and across Europe.
‘I’m (WHO DG) also pleased to announce that today we are appointing six special envoys on COVID-19, to provide strategic advice and high-level political advocacy and engagement in different parts of the world.
I’m pleased that the following eminent individuals have accepted my invitation to act in this role:
Professor Dr Maha El Rabbat, former Minister of Health of Egypt;
Dr David Nabarro, former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change;
Dr John Nkengasong, Director of the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention;
Dr Mirta Roses, former Director of the WHO Region of the Americas;
Dr Shin Young-soo, former Regional Director of the WHO Region of the Western Pacific;
And Professor Samba Sow, Director-General of the Center for Vaccine Development in Mali.’
https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19-on-21-february-2020
Walensky was simply a Biden puppet.
‘McDonald said the CDC sought input from 14 organizations, including the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, to develop school guidance.
Past reports have shed light on the Biden administration’s coziness with unions – who spent big for his 2020 campaign – regarding Covid-19 guidance.’
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cdc-director-union-leaders-tightening-masking-guidance-calendar
Not much of a cock up if the WHO/Gates toadies were conspiring is it? The UK PM was hardly unique among rich world leaders.
The toadies had no power.
The cock up was the sheer incompetence of leaders like Trump, Biden, Bunter, Macron, Merkel……
Just reciting their names gives clarity……
Hard to believe they are all dumb & weak. Who knows?
Unless these people are driven by a common ideology, avarice etc. and therefore do not need any guidance: they know what motivated them, what the incentives were, who they were corresponding with.
We’re unlikely to find out but we have to wonder if these people are more cautious when out in the real world as a result of their actions. Whitty did not look comfortable having his perceived level of personal threat raised when he encountered someone that was actually a fan.
Really? Try reciting the names again and see if it works this time?
I honestly don’t know. Politicians are a weird bunch – alien to me. I can’t get inside their heads. I struggle to believe that at least some of them are not simply malevolent.
Give it a rest.
Why not have a bit of a lie down and a nice cup of tea yourself?
Isn’t that the Fraser Myers position?
I personally don’t buy it
I don’t think you get to the top in politics by being a weak dummy
It appears to work in many other fields of human endeavour.
Examples? The Gumby Brothers, the well named Hancock, Sooty…..
Again, I don’t know. I think none of them are “stupid” by any reasonable definition – they have IQs way over 100. I imagine you’d need to be quite ruthless and manipulative at times.
Mogs, I am inclined to the view that she has resigned because a better paid position has been offered. Doubtless the new position will have absolutely no concern for scientific veracity so she will slot right in. We’ll see.
https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-laws-limiting-power-public-health-institutions-opinion-1798960
It’s Time for Laws Limiting the Power of Public Health Institutions | OpinionJay Bhattachaya, Professor of Health Policy, Stanford Medical School…
ON 5/8/23 AT 6:00 PM EDT
Contrary to what you hear these days from those making poor decisions throughout the pandemic, many of the errors were not honest mistakes. Public health embraced positions at odds with the scientific evidence throughout the pandemic, for instance, by pretending that immunity after COVID recovery does not exist, and by overstating the ability of the vaccine to stop COVID infection and transmission. Despite many getting vaccinated, COVID spread and people died anyway, with tremendous collateral harm—both economic and in terms of public health—deriving from the favored policies of our public health institutions.
It is time to adopt laws to limit the powers of public health.
”…and so say all of us!”
“No matter how ineffective people like Walensky have proven to be.”
I’ve said it many times, there’s no such thing as scandal anymore, it’s become a thing of the past! So all these so called “experts” have free reign
How many unnecessary deaths is this Demon responsible for?
Good riddance!