“Dr. Walensky, I used to have the utmost respect for the guidance from the CDC,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, last week, in detailing her belief that the CDC has been slow to keep up with the science. “I always considered the CDC to be the gold standard. I don’t anymore.” That exchange, during a hearing of the Senate Health Committee over the CDC’s confusing—and at times contradictory—criteria on public mask-wearing, was followed only days later by a stunning about-face: Vaccinated people could ditch masks virtually anywhere, according to the CDC. And Collins, for one, thinks the timing is more than a little suspicious. “Doesn’t that tell you something, that it must have been underway at the time?” Collins told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “Wouldn’t you think the CDC would respond by saying, ‘We agree that the science has caused us to take a second look, we’re in the process of that, and we expect that we will have something to say on this issue shortly’?”