The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to adapt its Covid recommendations more quickly when a new science emerges, Dr. Scott Gottlieb on CNBC, who added that the agency should also do so with more transparency.
“These guidelines have more of an impact on the economy than regulation,” but they go through much less public control, Gottlieb told Squawk Box.
Comments from the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner came after the CDC on Friday changed its guidelines on social distancing in schools and not society at large. The public health agency said with universal masking most students can sit 3 feet away, instead of the previous 6-foot protocol. The CDC also continued to recommend a minimum distance of 6 feet between adults in schools and between adults and students.
In an opinion piece published Sunday in The Wall Street Journal, Gottlieb urged the CDC to be more prone to the science behind its guidelines, and wrote that the “exact basis for his initial view of staying 6 feet away ”is still unclear. In the Journal and CNBC, he said initial recommendations and precautions early last year were based on the new spread of coronavirus such as seasonal flu.
“It was reasonable to do that because we didn’t know much about the coronavirus, so we assumed it would behave like the flu. It didn’t behave like the flu,” Gottlieb told Squawk Box. directed health workers to “overestimate and underestimate this virus” in crucial ways.
“It’s not so much an important question of whether we were wrong.” We were wrong in certain respects, “added Gottlieb, who led the FDA from 2017 to 2019 to the Trump administration.” But, ‘Did we learn fast enough and adapt our recommendations and guidelines fast enough?’ The answer is no “.
In a statement to CNBC, a CDC spokesman said that “during the first year of the pandemic, there were concerns about some of the CDC guidelines.” However, the spokesman said the new director of the agency headed by President Joe Biden, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, has “committed to restoring scientific credibility and public confidence in the agency,” and has noted that a revision of the agency’s Covid guidelines has been included to ensure they reflect the latest science.
We underestimated the role of air quality and high quality masks because we did not appreciate that it was spread by aerosol transmission.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb
Former FDA Commissioner
Gottlieb told CNBC that health officials “overestimated the usefulness of physical distancing because the flu spreads primarily through the transmission of drops and we know that the drops do not extend more than a meter.” On the other hand, he added: “We have underestimated the role of air quality and high-quality masks because we have underestimated that it extended by aerosol transmission.”
Initially, there had been some skepticism on the part of doctors about whether it would be advisable to advise Americans to wear a face cap (especially something homemade like a handkerchief or handkerchief). In early April last year, however, the CDC began recommending that people wear them in public, especially in environments such as grocery stores where social distancing was more difficult to maintain.
There is now little debate in the public health community about the importance of wearing face masks and some experts like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, have even begun to advise that wearing two masks is likely to be more effective.
In October, the CDC recognized that the spread of coronavirus can occur through airborne particles, which can “stay in the air for minutes to hours” and end up infecting individuals who were in addition to six meters away.
On the CDC’s website titled “How COVID-19 Spreads,” the public health agency says it “most often” does so through close contact between people less than 6 feet away.
“There is evidence that, under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 appear to have infected other people who were more than 6 feet away,” the CDC adds. “These transmissions occurred indoors that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person breathed heavily, for example while singing or exercising.”
Areas where Covid’s risks were initially overestimated also include contaminated surfaces, Gottlieb told CNBC. The CDC in May 2020, about two months after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, updated its website to emphasize that the virus was not easily spread by a person touching a surface. contaminated, according to NBC News.
Gottlieb acknowledged that in the early stages of a health crisis such as the Covid pandemic, there may be a lack of quality information to use as a basis for guidance.
“When CDC issues recommendations, there are different levels of evidence behind those recommendations and different levels of certainty,” he said. “When the agency isn’t safe or preaches a recommendation on less secure sciences, they should be transparent about it so we can make a serious interpretation we want to take, but they don’t usually do it.”
The CDC spokesman told CNBC that, following the agency’s recent review, “key learnings” have already been implemented, including “reviewing key guidelines on possible updates at least every three months,” as well as ” improve clarity and usability “.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer, Tempus genetic testing startup, Aetion healthcare technology company and biotechnology company Illuminate. He is also co – chair of Norway Cruise Line Holdings′ I Royal Caribbean“Healthy sailing panel.