CDC officials hope that the agency's marginalization is coming to an end, but a pressing question remains: Can the agency reclaim its voice while avoiding political blowback from the White House?
WASHINGTON — On June 12, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did something it had not done for months: It held a press briefing.
CDC Director Robert Redfield was on the task force, but he rarely stood on the podium of the Brady Briefing Room alongside Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. Redfield’s most prominent appearance at a task force briefing was on April 22, following an interview he gave to the Washington Post in which he said that if the coronavirus and influenza viruses attacked in concert next fall, the effect could be disastrous.
But as far as the White House is concerned, the CDC has been too concerned with its own stature. “The CDC feels like they should be in charge of this,” said an official who works with the White House Coronavirus Task Force. “The response effort is more than just one agency.” The task force official went on to say that there was some frustration with those in the CDC who saw the Trump administration as making “political decisions — when they're not.
Just days after the spokesperson spoke to Yahoo News, Politico reported that the White House was planning to blame the CDC for the administration’s shortfalls in handling the pandemic, which has killed 130,000 Americans. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., charges that the CDC was not “agile” or “entrepreneurial” in its response, while one close aide to President Trump echoed that complaint, saying that the agency’s “bureaucratic mentality”deprived it of “the fierce urgency of now,” a reference to Barack Obama’s famous slogan from the 2008 presidential campaign.
Messonier and Schuchat went silent for virtually the entire spring, as Redfield also receded from view. Others are unconvinced, seeing the CDC’s silence as a potential fatal mistake that deprives Americans of critical information. James Curran, a former top CDC official who is now dean of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, which is adjacent to CDC’s campus in Atlanta, says it was incumbent on the agency to explain the importance of testing and contract tracing, something he says it never did.
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