Good-Bye, CDC

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Good-Bye, CDC

    I can't imagine how demoralizing it must be to be to be working for the CDC today. 
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is - well, make that was - the preeminent public health institution in the world, employing the top scientists, doctors, biologists, virologists, epidemiologists, and health care experts on the planet. Their mission is stated clearly in their name: to prevent and control disease, not only for the citizens of the United States, but internationally as well. Since its founding in 1946 there hasn't been a public health emergency in this country or in the world during which the CDC hasn't been on the front lines, fighting to find cures, vaccines, treatments, and the best defensive health practices and policies. When the Centers for Disease and Prevention issued guidance the whole world listened.
      Then came Donald Trump.

     What bad luck for the CDC - not to mention our country, not to mention the world -  that the worst global health crisis in a hundred years materialized during the time of this incompetent, narcissistic, one-trick-pony of a President - his one trick being self-promotion, which trick he excels at above all.  And if there's one historical lesson to be gleaned from Donald Trump, it's that any person or entity that comes within his sphere is guaranteed to be end up with their reputation trashed or at least tarnished and their purpose invalidated.
        (Though, of course,  some arrogant, purposeless individuals, with no  reputation for decency or morality to begin with, have profited well from the association).

      And so now when our nation and the world needs the CDC, this organization has been denigrated, pushed aside and rendered ineffectual by Donald Trump. From the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak Trump has ignored or overruled CDC guidelines and directives for preventing the wildfire surge of the virus in our country. The chaos and disorganization of the Trump Administration has infected the CDC and now here we are in the United States, six months into the COVID epidemic  with the virus spiking out of control nationwide and still no national plan for stopping the spread of the disease, no national program for testing, no organization of national resources. And the virus rages on with thousands of Americans sickening and dying every day and our economy suffering commensurately.
     And so imagine how the disease warriors of the CDC, the best in their field on the planet,  must feel, seeing the challenge of their lives, the kind of challenge they've spent their whole careers training for, and instead of being deployed for duty being left behind, immobilized, underused, devalued.
    Up until now it has been unthinkable that the world would have to fight a pandemic without the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leading the way.
      But it's a strange new world,

...and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once the vanguard in the fight against any epidemic  world-wide, has become one step from irrelevant.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/where-is-the-cdc-trump-covid-19-pandemic

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cut-cdc-budget/

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/506609-azar-points-to-individual-responsibility-as-answer-to-mounting-outbreaks