There’s an internet meme about simple tasks that have been bungled, such as misapplied street markings or a misspelled sign, with the snarky superimposed text: “you had one job.”
For the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s not quite as simple — the sprawling federal agency is in charge of propelling research into curing transmissible maladies and supporting local health departments, among other tasks — but no one can dispute that its overarching, basic job is to control the spread of deadly pathogens that threaten human life and wellbeing. Similarly, no one can dispute that the CDC failed in this fundamental task in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the earliest days of the health emergency, the nation’s highest authority on matters of disease control failed again and again to quickly, clearly, and succinctly communicate to the public what it knew and what we should all be doing to safeguard ourselves. The agency’s penchant for caution and thorough internal deliberation is all well and good for developing new therapeutics or discerning the lineage of a bacterium, but it’s a terrible way to respond to a fast-evolving crisis where thousands of lives are on the line and at greater risk with each passing day of incomplete or outdated guidance.
We commend CDC Director Rochelle Walensky for acknowledging this reality and acting to keep that situation from repeating itself. Leaning on a review of the CDC’s practices during COVID that she ordered in April, Walensky has now taken the bold step of ordering a cultural shift and management restructuring of the agency, focused in part on reforming the bureaucracy to share emerging health information much more quickly and issue public recommendations early and often when public health threats materialize.
It won’t be an overnight shift, and the toughest lift will be combatting the CDC’s deep-set culture, but it is a crucial initiative that will very likely save many lives as we face increasing threats from the microscopic menaces that would do us great harm.