At this point, there has been a growing realization for some time now that there appears to be something significantly wrong going on at the CDC. Most of the mainstream media has refused to question the edicts being handed down from Rochelle Walensky and her merry band, but word has been getting around that something simply isn’t right. It’s not just that they appear to have gotten many things wrong during the pandemic because anyone can make mistakes. But as the Twitter Files have revealed, people from the CDC were actively engaged in trying to suppress the voices of anyone foolish enough to ask questions or point things out. This has apparently begun to sink in and even Walensky is announcing that changes need to be made to how her agency operates. This comes in response to a new report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which found that the CDC is currently in a “moment of peril” and they won’t be able to right the ship by themselves. (Government Executive)

The nation’s public health agency currently “faces a moment of peril” as it works to restructure after issues raised during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report that suggested the agency establish a greater presence in the nation’s capital and make hiring reforms, among other changes.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, outlined in August how she seeks to change the culture and operations at her agency to improve timeliness, collaboration, communication and accountability after it underwent a review earlier in the year. This came after the agency faced criticisms for various aspects of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic response under the Trump and Biden administrations. Additionally, the fiscal 2023 government spending package that President Biden signed on December 29 gave the CDC a funding bump, increased investments in public health infrastructure and made the director a Senate confirmed position.

For only one of many examples of how badly the handling of the pandemic and the vaccines were botched, check out this thread posted today by Dr. Alex Berenson. An expert in the field of virology, he was banned from social media for a very long time because he questioned “The Science,” though he is now back on Twitter thanks to Elon Musk.

1/ There is just no easy way to say this:

The recent UK and Euromomo death figures are frightening. In the last few weeks, deaths have surged to higher than any point since early 2021…

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) January 18, 2023

The report from the CSIS describes how the CDC “has suffered a rapid, dramatic decline in public support.” They seek to attribute this less to problems inside the agency and more to what they describe as “a broad attitudinal swing in America toward higher skepticism of science, the federal government, and U.S. health-centered institutions.”

I will partly agree with the group’s conclusions, at least as far as a significant decline in public support goes. After witnessing what we’ve seen and learning of the rushed way the vaccines were developed and deployed with minimal if any testing in some cases, why wouldn’t people be left with questions and potentially mistrust? We’ve also learned that BioNTech (the developer of the Pfizer vaccines) worked with the government to suppress people who publicly asked for them to develop a traditional, low-cost vaccine in addition to the experimental mRNA vaccines that were being pushed. Obviously the public’s level of trust should be dropping.

But I disagree that there is some sort of growing “skepticism of science” among the general public. People aren’t skeptical of actual science for the most part. What they are skeptical about is how “The Science” is being practiced in too many places, including at the CDC. Even those of us with no medical training whatsoever are mostly bright enough to know that real science is an ongoing process that requires rigorous testing using the scientific method and a need to always face questions and find the right answers to deliver transparently.

That’s pretty much the opposite of what’s been going on at the CDC. What they badly need more than anything else is a lot more oversight, a point made in the CSIS report. The problem is figuring out who will conduct that oversight. Too many bad actors in Congress, the White House, and even our law enforcement and intelligence agencies were more than willing to go along with the censorship of skeptical voices and ignore the findings coming out of other countries suggesting that something had potentially gone very wrong.

How will that happen? Perhaps a good start would be some serious housecleaning at the CDC and a full examination of how the process was handled. Then we could use an actual bipartisan congressional push to put new people in place who are honestly committed to following the science and not the politics. I’m not holding my breath, but it would be a good agenda item to add to Keven McCarthy’s to-do list.