Reporters at ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal and Science have written in-depth accounts of CDC's faded role, damaged reputation and White House interference.
The CDC is the subject of three in-depth news reports that paint a portrait of the agency’s mistakes, diminished role in the federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and interference by the White House.
ProPublica’s story, titled “Inside the Fall of the CDC,” is a closely reported, chronological account that starts on December 31st when Anne Schuchat, a CDC career scientists who was played by Kate Winslet in the movie “Contagion,” emails colleagues about an “unknown pneumonia” in Wuhan. The four-reporter team takes the reader through the bad and lack of information the CDC got from their Chinese health counterparts, the agency’s initial bungling of COVID-19 testing, and many episodes of White House interference.
“Senior CDC staff describe waging battles that are as much about protecting science from the White House as protecting the public from COVID-19. It is a war that they, more often than not, lost,” says the ProPublica piece.
The Wall Street Journal’s story is shorter but covers some of the same ground (both stories begin with accounts of the White House meddling with CDC guidelines for houses of worship). The headline on the Journal’s story is “A Demoralized CDC Grapples With White House Meddling and Its Own Mistake."
The third story, published in Science, the prestigious science journal, zeroes in on the relationship between Deborah Birx, M.D., the coordinator of White House coronavirus task force, and the CDC. The story, headlined “The Inside Story of How Trump’s COVID-19 Coordinator Undermined the World’s Top Health Agency,” describes Birx as sidelining the agency and goes into detail about her decision to depend on a private company, TeleTracking Technologies, to collect COVID-19 hospital data instead of the CDC’s system.
The ProPublica and Wall Street Journal stories were published within hours of each other earlier today. The Science article was published yesterday.
In this latest episode of Tuning In to the C-Suite podcast, Briana Contreras, an editor with MHE had the pleasure of meeting Loren McCaghy, director of consulting, health and consumer engagement and product insight at Accenture, to discuss the organization's latest report on U.S. consumers switching healthcare providers and insurance payers.
Listen
Group Purchasing Organizations of 'Big 3' PBMs Cloud Transparency, Says Critic | PBMI 2024
September 6th 2024Greg Baker, CEO of AffirmedRx, did not hold back in criticizing CVS Caremark, Optum Rx and Express Scripts and their group purchasing organizations today at the PBMI Annual National Conference.
Read More
In our latest "Meet the Board" podcast episode, Managed Healthcare Executive Editors caught up with editorial advisory board member, Eric Hunter, CEO of CareOregon, to discuss a number of topics, one including the merger that never closed with SCAN Health Plan due to local opposition from Oregonians.
Listen