ANALYSIS: Biden Administration, CDC, caught many offguard with sudden mask guidance

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Fri, 2021-05-21 11:51 — mike kraft

Biden vowed to ‘follow the science,’ but left many out with sudden mask guidance Local and state health departments, labor unions, governors and numerous other public officials were caught off guard by one of the most significant developments of the pandemic. Annie Linskey, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Lena H. Sun, Tyler Pager Washington Post

President Biden repeats the phrase frequently. “We follow the science,” he pledged on a visit to the National Institutes of Health. “Follow the science,” he told staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This administration will follow the science,” he said during a White House event announcing the 50 millionth vaccine shot delivered to an American.

A week ago, the president did just that — strolling to the Rose Garden to trumpet new guidance from the CDC that fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks or socially distance in most instances.

But in following that scientific advice, the administration left out nearly everyone else — local and state health departments, labor unions, governors and numerous other public officials, many of whom were caught off guard by one of the most significant developments of the coronavirus pandemic.

And in Biden’s rush to share the mask news with little context or discussion, some White House insiders, Biden allies and public health experts worry that the administration may have inadvertently encouraged millions of unvaccinated Americans to stop wearing masks.

“This guidance may be quite appropriate as individual guidance, but it is not appropriate as guidance for community action,” said Tom Frieden, who was the CDC director under President Barack Obama.

“There was no urgency to change the mask guidance. That should have been done in a more planful way,” Frieden continued, adding: “I haven’t said that on the record before.”

Zeke Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on Biden’s transition task force, was similarly critical.

“It wasn’t well done,” Emanuel said. “Slowing this down would have been the prudent thing to improve the communication and ensure that all the considerations that were needed on such a momentous decision were in fact taken into account, and that the administration had answers for the very, very obvious potential scenarios.” ...

Some Biden allies said the administration appears to have overcorrected for the unprecedented political interference the CDC faced under the Trump administration. ...

ALSO SEE: The new CDC mask guidelines are confusing and could actually make the spread of COVID-19 worse, a group of leading physicians said

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