“I actually really think many people have thought, this is CDC’s responsibility, to fix public health [and] the pandemic,” Walensky said. “The CDC alone can’t fix this. Businesses have to help, the government has to help, school systems have to help. This is too big for the CDC alone,” she said…

The CDC director called for broadscale investment in public health — including helping to hire more nurses locally, staffing emergency departments and recruiting statisticians and data crunchers. Walensky’s focus on strengthening public health offices underscores the extent to which she thinks the CDC must improve its federal response by revitalizing the local and state health systems it relies upon…

Walensky said she thinks Covid-19 might be the catalyst for change.

“Ebola didn’t touch everyone. Zika didn’t touch everyone. Even during those what I would call public health crises, people didn’t always know what the CDC stood for. People were not talking about science on the nightly news,” Walensky said. “And I think this pandemic has by far touched everyone every day for the last two years. And I think people have realized that we can’t be in this place again.”