TIME TO GET RID OF THE CDC

Asleep at the Wheel of Medicine, Awake to Wokeness

“For 75 years, CDC and public health have been in preparation for Covid-19 and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director

Walensky is right.  The CDC was founded in 1946 as a small institute charged with battling malaria.  With success, the founder, Dr. Joseph Mountin, advocated to grow the organization into other communicable diseases.  But as drug companies successfully conquered most of these with antibiotics and later, interferon and more, the mission became less clear. But unlike public companies, government agencies don’t dissolve.  Instead, they added to their mission the prevention of disease, injury and disability, not just in the US, but worldwide.  More recently, they’ve taken on obesity and gun control as part of their mission.  Sadly, for most of these goals, success has been minimal. 

In 2018, the CDC budget was $11.9BB and I’m sure Covid got them far more money than that.  At the same time, they employed 15,000 personnel.  It’s huge, though not as big as the IRS.  The question is—do we need them anymore?  Despite the many, small challenges they have taken on in the past few years, their response to Covid-19 (the CCP virus) was almost purely political.  And most people knew that a pandemic could occur at any time.  We had plenty of warnings, with bird flu, SARs and other nasty bugs.

The private sector stood up and did amazing things.  Despite the negative press, scientists quickly determined the value of old-school and cheap treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.  Fluvoxamine also made a big difference in ensuring that while you might not enjoy being sick, you wouldn’t need to be hospitalized or die from it.  Good levels of vitamin D-3 made a huge difference in outcomes.   But the CDC ignored all of that and offered no treatments of any kind, even knowing that vaccine development generally takes a lot longer than finding ways to alleviate disease distress. 

Testing seemed important, but the CDC insisted only their tests were acceptable.  Those tests turned out to be almost useless while the private sector kept innovating, making much more accurate, quicker and cheaper tests available.  The CDC “led” with conflicting and non-science-based recommendations.  They mandated no masks, one mask, multiples and then special N-95 masks , all while knowing that they were really useless.  Physical distancing (not really “social” at all) went from 6 feet to 3.  No evidence supported this.

The vaccine mandates also made no sense when you look at the history.  When a vaccine actually stops the disease, people line up in a hurry to get it.  Polio was a great example of this.  But people at low risk because of being young, being healthy, having enough D-3…they should be able to choose to forgo these new, poorly tested vaccines.  The adverse results in many people and the lack of efficacy in kids should have made it obvious that we shouldn’t mandate anything.

Well-Funded, Not Prepared

The CDC was not prepared, nor were allied agencies at all levels of government.  They had plenty of money and people, but mismanagement, lack of focus, government bloat and politics kept them from doing their job. The CDC’s mission statement is “confronting global disease threats through advanced computing and lab analysis of huge amounts of data to quickly find solutions.”  Anyone see them delivering on this promise?

The CDC lied about the spread, first denying it was a problem here.  They lied about their testing capability and the efficacy of available medicines.  They begged for statistics showing the lethality of the disease, leading hospitals to write fraudulent death certificates indicating Covid as a cause of death, when there was no doubt that the virus was simply there.  Victims of heart attacks, cancer, and car accidents were labeled as “Covid,” to make people tolerate the government overreach of shutdowns and lavish spending on useless programs.

If you look at their budget, little is spent on infectious disease. Instead, they have spent most of it on areas covered by other agencies, trying to justify their existence. But the growth in obesity, diabetes and other problems shows that they are ineffective in these areas, even as their budget and scope keep growing.  Youth vaping is a big concern for them; is that a priority for you?

The Cost

While the CDC burnished their laurels on TV,  we were stuck at home, kids lost vital schooling, and businesses closed because they couldn’t survive the long shutdowns.  And there is no evidence that anything the CDC did helped the situation.  Time to defund the CDC and let the private sector handle things in the future.  They couldn’t do worse, and we’ve seen, in the case of Covid, they did do better.