Thread by @pleasesaveour

💥The trouble with the GOP and the CDC - Lancet, leading medical journal - Thread

thelancet.com/journals/lance…

Funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conserv politics that have increasingly eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses.

In the 1980s, the Reagan admin resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to

fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The GWB admin put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.

The Trump admin further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases.

CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge

In a press conference on 2/25 Nancy Messonnier, dir of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and

Respiratory Diseases warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to mvmnt and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at WH briefings on COVID-19.

More recently, the Trump admin has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have

undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic.

The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits.

But punishing the agency by marginalizing and hobbling it is not the solution. The Admin is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and

isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency.

The Trump admins further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO.

A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided

by partisan politics.

#PresidentBiden #Vote #VoteBlueToEndThisNightmare

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