The CDC Has Lost The Bubble

I woke up this morning to see new signs -- unusual for a weekend -- that the CDC is losing control of the narrative. A big one is that people there are leaking. As of Thursday, an internal PowerPoint reached the Washington Post:

It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures, including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.

. . . The data and studies cited in the document played a key role in revamped recommendations that call for everyone — vaccinated or not — to wear masks indoors in public settings in certain circumstances, a federal health official said. That official told The Post that the data will be published in full on Friday.

However, this didn't happen. Instead,

The White House on Friday struggled to explain to reporters why it suddenly stopped holding coronavirus briefings after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its latest masking guidance.

“Why are the doctors not here in the briefing to take our questions?” asked NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell during the White House press briefing on Friday.

. . . Since President Joe Biden took office, he promised regular public briefings with federal health officials to talk about the ongoing battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

. . . But the briefings stopped after the CDC announced new masking guidelines on Tuesday, even for fully vaccinated Americans.

“Of all the weeks not to hold have a COVID briefing, why this week?” asked CBS reporter Weijia Jiang.

That the legacy media, NBC and CBS, would be asking essentially hostile questions is a bad sign. The ongoing mask mandates are increasingly unpopular, and the masks cause stress. Add to that the normally high stress level of air travel, and the result should be predictable:

Nearly one in five flight attendants say they have witnessed physical incidents involving passengers this year, and their union is calling for criminal prosecution of people who act up on planes.

A union survey supports what airlines and federal officials have been saying: There has been a surge in unruly passengers this year, who sometimes become violent.

The most common trigger is passengers who refuse to follow the federal requirement that they wear face masks during flights, according to the survey by the Association of Flight Attendants.

And then add to that the sense that arbitrary increases in controls are inevitable.

President Joe Biden confirmed Friday that Americans should expect more coronavirus-related restrictions, as the Delta variant of the virus continues to spread.

Biden spoke about more restrictions on Americans after CBS reporter Weijia Jiang asked him if he expected more restrictions as the virus spreads across the country.

“In all probability,” he replied as he left the White House for a weekend trip to Camp David.

. . . The White House continues to fail to explain to Americans why fully vaccinated people in some areas have to wear masks, leaving future restrictions entirely up to public health officials.

Another commentator in independent media said,

That response set off alarm bells on social media, with lots of expletives being shared. Most Americans are simply not up for another round of science-less proclamations made to protect politicians more than people.

So is there something in the works here? Or is Biden just doing the “old man says stuff” routine he’s so fond of?

Earlier today, CDC Dir. Rochelle Walensky stated that there will be no national mask or vaccine mandates, claiming that any prior comments to that effect were speaking strictly about private entities. Further, Deputy White House Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre said that lockdowns were not in the cards despite indicating a day earlier that Biden would do whatever the CDC recommends.

Given that, what other restrictions could Joe Biden be talking about? While I could spend the next few minutes racking my brain to try to come up with hypotheticals, I think the answer is simple enough — Joe Biden does not know what he’s talking about.

It's interesting that the CDC gave the impression that it was issuing a national mask mandate, or recommendation, or exhortation or whatever it was, on Tuesday, but by yesterday, Dr Walensky said she hadn't done that at all, except that President Biden thinks they're going to go ahead and issue more something or others. Meanwhile, the New York Post Editorial Board says It’s time to take CDC chief Rochelle Walensky off the air:

Even if it were better qualified, the message all too many Americans get is that the agency’s advisories are arbitrary and senseless — or, worse, that it has lost confidence in the vaccines to protect us right now.

It’s not that her science is wrong, but that she has no understanding of how to communicate to the general public — or that, as is the habit of public health bureaucracies, her only concern is that something awful will happen without her having covered her butt in advance.

This pandemic is over; loose talk about remote possibilities is the last thing the public needs as it strives to get back to work, to school and to normal socializing.

The last time Dr Walensky took such a high media profile was last March, when she said, verging on tears,

I'm going to lose the script, and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared.

The basic problem, I'm beginning to conclude, is that Dr Walensky is a ditz. We basically have a ditz feeding policy advice to a guy who's not all there. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out.