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On Monday, July 26, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tell the Americans to “get vaccinated as soon as possible so that you can take back the things you love”.
For at least a year, it has been the promise: once vaccinated, you can resume a normal life. This was the message that consistently led President Trump to make Operation Warp Speed a success, and it is one that President Biden has repeated for most of his presidency – until now.
A day after that tweet, the CDC abruptly changed course, issuing puzzling new guidelines that vaccinated Americans should hide across much of the country, regardless of their vaccination status. It’s a full 180 degrees from just 60 days ago. It’s yet another broken promise from President Biden, who said in May that “[i]If you are fully immunized and can remove your mask, you have earned the right to do something Americans are known the world over: greet others with a smile. If any Americans are smiling at the new CDC guidelines, it’s impossible to tell behind their masks.
I have said it before and I will say it again: everyone should be vaccinated. We can and must continue to provide information, demystify misinformation and provide access to vaccinations. However, what can we do when the main agency in charge of our country’s public health response is the one that sows confusion and fear?
Despite all the campaign promises to “follow the science”, the CDC’s new guidelines do not appear to do so. Instead of providing clear, verifiable data on why this sweeping change was supposed to be necessary, the CDC is once again telling Americans to limit their freedoms just because they said so. The COVID-19 vaccine is an unprecedented achievement that has repeatedly proven its effectiveness, as evidenced by the exceptionally low prevalence of severe outcomes in vaccinees. Any mandate that undermines that fact without clear scientific reasoning further undermines Americans’ already fragile confidence in the CDC.
In addition, several studies have shown that children under the age of 12 have an incredibly low risk of COVID-19. Despite this fact, the CDC says warrants are the key to getting kids back to class. This argument would be more compelling if – just a day later – the top president of the National Teachers Union did not use this advice to justify questioning whether or not schools would reopen in the fall. After a devastating year in which students were left stranded at home, suicide rates rose dramatically and opioid overdoses rose, students in our country deserve more than half-hearted trials and tenures – they deserve a quality in-person education and the opportunity to excel.
On Wednesday morning, one day after the publication of the new guidelines, CDC director Rochelle Walensky insisted: “[o]Our vaccines work exactly as we expected with the Delta variant, to avoid hospitalizations and death. ” She’s right! The CDC announced that as of July 19, of 161 million fully vaccinated Americans, only 6,000 had been hospitalized due to “revolutionary cases.”
Why then, if the vaccines work as intended, should vaccinated Americans now be required to wear masks? No one expected the vaccine to completely eliminate the risk of infection. The vaccines were supposed to protect us “against hospitalizations and severe COVID-related deaths,” which is exactly what Walensky admits to having done. Recent studies have shown that 99% of people currently hospitalized with the virus are not vaccinated.
And for those who refuse to get the shot, the CDC’s new anti-science guidelines will simply discourage them further. Why would a college girl get vaccinated if she has a very low risk of infection and still has to wear a mask in class? Or why would you get vaccinated if you think your government has lied to you about getting your life back to normal? Why would you get vaccinated if the government suggests that the vaccine does not actually work?
The truth is, these vaccines work and Americans should get vaccinated. But for them to do that, they have to trust their government. The CDC’s complete lack of transparency or consistency here demands careful consideration. This is why I introduced the Restore the law on the trust of public health establishments, legislation that would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review CDC decision-making and messages and provide recommendations. A GAO review would inject transparency into an entirely opaque, deeply confusing, and often contradictory process that has major ramifications for the lives of Americans.
Americans have made extraordinary sacrifices over the past 18 months, including hysterical measures like closing schools. What kept Americans going, despite everything, was the promise that through their sacrifice we could get back to normal in the end.
The Biden CDC just broke that promise, and the American people deserve to know why. If the Biden administration believes the CDC has followed the science, it will welcome the opportunity to rebuild the faith. If the CDC has acted out of political expediency, then reforms are desperately needed. Either way, it’s time for America’s public health czars to open the books and play straight with the American people for once.
Marco Rubio is a United States Senator from Florida.
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