The CDC moved too slowly at various points in the coronavirus pandemic, eventually hampering the U.S. response, writes former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb in a new book: Uncontrolled spread.
The big picture: The book argues that U.S. intelligence agencies should play a much more important role in preparing for the pandemic, even if it is sometimes at the expense of public health agencies like the CDC.
- “Normally, security agencies have seen the CDC as‘ having this mission ’or‘ having the ball in it. ’Clearly they don’t,” Gottlieb told Axios.
Details: Initially, the CDC recommended 10 meters of social distancing, but Trump administration officials pushed the agency to reduce it to six feet, which still required many schools to be closed.
- “If that had come out at that point, everyone would have said‘ Oh my God. It’s White House interference in the CDC. “But the White House was right to oppose it. It was arbitrary and could not be implemented,” Gottlieb said.
- “This was the most costly recommendation the CDC issued during this entire pandemic,” he said.
- Under the Biden administration, the CDC finally reduced social distancing recommendations to three feet, based on data that had been available for six months.
Better intelligence at the start of an outbreak it would also help the U.S. act faster, Gottlieb writes.
- “We need to have human resources in the medical community so we can understand when an outbreak occurs,” he said. “We need to have the ability to control typical intelligence flows, such as signal intelligence and perhaps even satellite intelligence, in search of things that can be output cables for to an outbreak of disease “.
The plot: Gottlieb confirms that some Trump administration officials had an “attitude of emphatic indifference about the pandemic, often mocking personal precautions as signs of weakness, mocking colleagues wearing masks.”
- Gottlieb said he told Trump not to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, but also criticized the Biden administration’s “hasty” return to the WHO without certain conditions.
The book comes out on September 21st.