DUNCE OF THE MONTH
Montauk cottage with your cousin, living out the rest of your days in tranquil dignity. You could still throw out a pitch at Yankee Stadium now and again with the memory of you as Gotham’s peerless defender forever preserved in the amber of nostalgia from the boroughs to the heartland. Let that possibility wash over as you’re contemplating flipping on an ex-president to avoid prison time. But if you don’t, you can always catch the Yankees’ games from the Otisville Correctional Facility. Now, onto this month’s runner up... THE CDC Did most Americans have a vested interest in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) before COVID-19? No, but it was one of those institutional
Vaccinated Americans don’t have to hole up like hermits anymore? It’s safe for children to return to school even though they’ve been low-risk this whole time? Oh, wait, corona’s airborne ? We don’t need to wipe down every crevice and crook of ourselves and furniture with beaucoup Lysol wipes? What would we do without you, CDC ? Its glacial guidance never kept pace with published research or even the common sense of we plebeians. It perpetuated the groan-inducing fairy tale that COVID’s transmittable via surfaces. It stood seasons late on the reality that COVID rarely spreads outside, and its casually schizophrenic back- and-forth stances on mask-wearing and protocol for the vaccinated still continue. And the CDC seems they know how much it’s failing, as it’s seeing the exodus of longtime senior scientist Nancy Messonnier and the agency’s principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat. Last month, its relatively loosened guidelines appeared in a labyrinthian, color-coded Rube Goldberg bit of visual calculus that feels like Twister on the ceiling with too much ketamine, except decidedly less fun. Not even experts grasped the overlapping tedium. C learly D isorganized C haos appears to be its messaging marching orders, muddling the lines between sound science and bureaucratic incompetence and inconsistency. So yes, you can take your masks off, vaccinated America... and then muzzle the CDC with them.
acronyms that everyone casually gave credence with. Before 2020, someone peppering “According to the CDC...”
into their argument netted them proper gravitas points. But fast-
forward to today, and one wonders if there’s any point to this organization. As medical doctors take the Hippocratic Oath of not harming patients, it appears the CDC’s engrained with the hypocritical creed of misleading and confusing as many panicked Americans as possible while presenting itself as a beacon of unquestionable reality. Every time there’s a CDC-centric news notification on your phone, it’s always a “no sh*t” moment...
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May 2021
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