Thread by @ECooperAuthor

Before Covid, I had a huge amount of faith in the CDC. I am a pro-science person and I believed that they would act in accordance with the science to protect public health. Let's outline all the reasons that I no longer believe that.

1) Let's start with masking.

https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1233134710638825473

Why on earth did they do this? That they insisted masking was unnecessary made me believe that they already understood Covid transmission. I thought they knew that it wasn't airborne and that it wasn't being transmitted by asymptomatic people. Turns out they didn't know anything.

Despite the utter lack of data, even in March as things were locking down, they continued to insist that no one needed to wear masks. Like an idiot, I believed them. (Spoiler, I caught Covid in March 2020 and am still sick so thanks CDC!)

It took them weeks to finally say, yeah, maybe people should wear masks. Oops. Even then, they insisted that cloth was just fine. Only medical professionals needed N95s. It wasn't until many months later they began to discuss mask efficacy and how cloth was not cutting it.

2) A huge part of the whole masking fiasco was the belief that Covid was spread via air droplets versus aerosols and an associated continued reliance on social distancing as a way to prevent transmission. In 9/2020, the CDC accidentally posted that said Covid is airborne.

Within 2 days, it was taken down as a "mistake" because "data do not suggest the coronavirus is spread primarily through the air." Thousands of scientists around the world were begging the CDC and WHO to acknowledge that covid is Airborne.

In March of 2022, Biden stepped away from CDC language to confirm that Covid is airborne. 2 full years after Covid hit the US, the CDC was still refusing to use appropriate language on aerosols, now well established as the primary source of Covid transmission.

3) Testing. When I got sick in 2020, I was told I couldn't test because I had no exposure (I hadn't been to China nor was I exposed to someone who had been to China). Here's a look at the early roll out of testing. science.org/content/articl…

4) In March 2021, the CDC said that you no longer needed to mask or distance if you're vaccinated! Hurray! I was so relieved. I thought that they must have good data that vaccines prevented transmission! Turns out nope, there was a drop in transmission but not 100%.

At the time, new variants were spreading rapidly and many experts warned that we didn't know how well vaccines would work against those variants. But rather than pull back on their recommendations, they went full let it rip mode.

Breakthrough infections were deemed rare. Even if you did get it, if you were vaccinated it would likely be "no worse than the flu." The Omicron death toll has long ago surpassed the Delta death toll. It was more mild, but significantly more transmissible apnews.com/article/ap-int…

These are just the main things that the CDC got wrong. Each of these caused untold harm. I can understand that they lacked power under Trump, but where is the messaging on Long Covid now? On clean indoor air and ventilation? The support for mask mandates as cases rise?

I no longer have any faith in them as a public health organization and I no longer trust anything they say. I know there are scientists at the CDC doing everything they can, but as an organization it has gone horribly wrong and we need a place to turn for accurate information.

I'll add some of the other major "mistakes": variants will evolve to be less deadly (BA.5 looks scary), vaccines will protect you from long covid (15% reduction), infection+vax=super immune (or you can get reinfected with every variant), we're now "living with Covid!"

ETA: some people have pointed out that the CDC has failed many other diseases. I knew first hand about the nightmarish way they dealt with HIV/AIDS but I blamed Reagan for all that. I was totally unaware of the ways they borked ME/CFS and Lyme. Now I see how wrong I was.

ETA2: some people seem confused about my position. I believe Covid is far from over and that #LongCovid is going to disable millions of Americans and decimate our economy. I want everyone that can to vax/boost and wear N95 masks or better.

I want a Clean Indoor Air Act providing ventilation and filtration to all public indoor spaces, especially schools. I want the dang @CDCgov to step up and push for those things. Finally, I want accurate information from them about Covid and things like Monkeypox.

A note on Monkeypox: It certainly looks like they're repeating the exact same mistakes. Restricting testing, downplaying the potential risk to the public, denying that it could even possibly be airborne. I have no idea what the reality is, but I have no faith in their response.

Sadly, instead of listening to the CDC, I listen to people like @edyong209 whose coverage of Covid, and now Monkeypox, is always amazing. theatlantic.com/health/archive…

ETA2: Lots of folks have pointed out 2 other big CDC mistakes that I'll add for a more complete list. 1) The idea that people could return to work at 5 days. Studies show people are contagious a median of 8 days after symptom onset. The CDC's messaging was a disaster on this one.

The basic take away by the general public (and bosses everywhere) was that, after 5 days, it was fine to return to work or school without any further testing. This was completely wrong and has contributed to continued the spread of Covid.

2) The CDC switching away from community spread maps to show hospitalizations instead. Out of curiosity I went and looked at the 2 maps for today.

The map on the right shows “community levels” and is the map they suggest people use to evaluate covid risk. It's a measure of hospitalizations in an area. The problem with this is that hospitalizations are a lagging indicator, 1-3 weeks behind things like positivity rates.

The map on the left is "community transmission" which is a much more accurate depiction of the general levels of Covid out in a community. And this is an under count given the new reliance on rapid tests. Experts suggest this # should be multiplied by 8 or 10.

The good news is that, thanks to vaccines and some level of natural immunity, a much smaller % of people infected end up hospitalized. But, high transmission still leads to much higher numbers of hospitalizations and death and people need to know a wave is coming.

And then there is #LongCovid. Even the CDC agrees that 1 in 5 people who have Covid will develop some form of long covid. There are now hundreds (maybe 1000s?) of studies showing damage done to the brains and vascular systems of people with even mild covid.

People need to understand when Covid numbers are rising in their area if they want to avoid infection or reinfection if for no other reason than to avoid Long Covid. Put bluntly, the CDC obscuring transmission data is contributing to the rise of people with #LongCovid.