President Joe Biden has made a strong appeal to Republican governors in Florida and Texas not to hamper measures to control the new wave of coronavirus, which is dominated by the delta variant. The two states account for one-third of all new infections in the United States.
Biden expressed frustration with the way Republicans are sabotaging pandemic messages, using the state’s executive branch to block mandatory masks or punish companies that require proof of vaccines.
But the US president has another major source of inconsistent messages in his own backyard. The CDC, Centers for Disease Control, one of the most prestigious federal health agencies in the world, has done its part to help confuse the exhausted public by the new setback caused by the superinfectious delta variant.
This time, we can’t lay the blame on the knees of a sloppy president who, in April 2020, asked his team of epidemiologists to see if injecting bleach into the body would be a good treatment. against Covid-19. Biden arrived in Washington with the crème de la crème of public health professionals and has as chief of staff Ron Klain, the man who led the fight against the Ebola epidemic under Barack Obama, a power adviser. which inspired him the nickname of Prime Minister.
But President Biden must fight a pandemic whose facts are changing rapidly and with limited medical knowledge.
It is the first global health disaster in which, in addition to fighting the virus, the government faces the far-right media machine that isolates a large part of the public in a bubble of disinformation.
Since the quarantine began, the CDC has had communication blocks. Most obvious was the initial instruction to the public to avoid masks, meaningless to any rational layman who must have caused infection and death.
By May of this year, it was already clear that the Delta variant was exponentially more contagious and would put a severe brake on the return to normal. Contrary to common sense, the CDC issued new instructions in the second week of May, easing the requirement for those vaccinated to wear masks indoors at a time when resistance to the vaccine was on the rise in the country. As was to be expected, the return of masks is more difficult to implement.
Also in May, the CDC inexplicably suspended national surveillance for infections among those vaccinated, a frightening new wave phenomenon. The government wasted precious time, leaving the impression that it was giving in to political considerations, to a narrative of economic recovery.
Different protagonists of the Biden administration contradict each other in weekly interviews. The most prominent of them, Anthony Fauci, had to clear up the confused statements of CDC director Rochelle Walensky about the use of masks and the advancement of the delta variant, which reinforces the skepticism of the nearly 100 millions of Americans who have chosen not to get vaccinated.
In fact, the only certainty, for now, is the courtesy of these pro-death activists. On Wednesday (4), Dr Fauci warned: The number of infections in the United States is expected to double in two weeks and contribute to the spread of the next strain – more infectious and a challenge for available vaccines.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this column? The subscriber can free up five free visits to any link per day. Just click on the blue F below.