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Return COVID briefings to where they began, with the career scientists at Atlanta headquarters
Although the CDC was included on the White House COVID Response Team to bolster the scientific credibility, it ended up being at the expense of its own.
CDC and its director, Rochelle Walensky, MD, need to reclaim their independence and return to Atlanta. Let the White House continue to tout its pandemic accomplishments, and return the COVID briefings to where they started, conducted by career scientists at CDC headquarters.
The agency’s presence in Washington has hindered, not helped, its reputation. Rather than effectively and expertly managing the crisis, the White House COVID Response Team’s uneasy marriage of politics and public health has instead fueled distrust of public health guidelines. And this unbalanced partnership has tainted the formerly apolitical health agency.
