American Consequences - August 2021

DUNCE OF THE MONTH

INSTITUTIONALLY UNWELL Meanwhile, Rochelle Walensky, newly minted director of the CDC, seems nearly unhinged. My mother, a career nurse anesthetist, put it more politely: “That *&^% seems crazy.” During a White House press briefing this past spring, Dr. Walensky had this to say: “I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom.” Walensky, we’re all filled with apocalyptic doom at the moment... The American citizenry is years past fatigued, trodden down, weary – tired masses not huddled together but instead sequestered with digital misinformation and recreational outrage on our screens. We needn’t have the CDC Director remind us of the psychological horrors of 2021 – instead, a focus on epidemiology and sound advice would be most befitting. We need a calming voice amid this shitstorm – we don’t also want to have to worry about your mental health along with our own. And then there’s her role in the latest federal moratorium on evictions – one with health czar overtones. No matter what argumentative side you take on this issue (landlords’ property rights versus tenants’), Biden urging her to sign this order earlier this month may have been unconstitutional... his own White House officials agree. And even if it was well-intentioned (keeping people housed during a pandemic), it still speaks to this mutant variant of governance in the COVID age where health officials’ words bleed into public policy – and not always for the better.

THE VIRAL VIRUS Another misstep of hers includes a recent CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer, where she claimed vaccines don’t prevent transmission. Wait, what’s that, Rochelle? The CDC gleaned from Provincetown data that an infected vaccinated person might be capable of transmitting the virus. That’s a hell of a qualifier... Walensky’s claim flies in the face of logic and her own organization’s research that the vaccine mitigates transmission rates, thereby playing into the hands of the anti-vax crowd and prolonging this pandemic. Muddied vax messaging is riskier than mixed- up mask messaging (though they feed into each other)... Vaccine hesitancy exists beyond just MAGA Floridians who refuse to get the shot... The tentativeness also lurks in Black Americans with residual Tuskegee paranoia and in L.A. Lululemon yoga influencers who take their clean-body ethos beyond its limit. Some undecided Midwesterner perhaps saw that Walensky clip and thought, “ Eff it – if it’s not going to help me, then why bother getting the vaccine ?” And this utterance is a meta-indictment for all politicians and public health officials right now. If you’re not going to help us, please leave the room and get the hell out of the way.

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August 2021

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