From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the top U.S. public health agency has been criticized as too slow to collect and act on new information. Now, increasingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also being criticized for moving too fast. One year into Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s tenure as director, her bid to make the CDC more agile is being challenged by political pressures, vocal scientists and the changing virus itself. In its haste, some experts say, the agency has repeatedly stumbled — moving too quickly, before the science was clear, and then failing to communicate clearly with local health officials and the public. “I think they are absolutely trying to be more nimble — and that’s a good thing. I don’t criticize that,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “I criticize the fact that when you’re doing this quickly, in an evolving environment, you can’t just put it out there and think that people understand it.” Walensky has said that she came to the CDC thinking about ways to speed data collection and reporting. She once told The Associated Press that she didn’t want the agency to spend months gathering data that gets published after it’s useful. “Like, no one will care,” she said. Speaking to the AP last week, she said she was proud of what the agency had accomplished in the past year. Her examples included a torrent of CDC scientific reports, rapid identification of concerning vaccine side effects and quick research into new variants. Among her particular points of pride: Last spring, the CDC was quick to investigate and report on rare but concerning side effects in some vaccine recipients, including an unusual blood clot in young women who had received Johnson & Johnson shots. The identification of about 15 cases — out of more than 8 million people who had gotten the vaccine — led the government to pause the dispensing of J&J shots for 11 days. “Everyone has said that during a pandemic, CDC has to move faster,” she said. “I think we really did that.” Her efforts, though, have sometimes gone awry: — The agency’s decision late last month to shorten isolation and quarantine caught many by surprise. Public confusion included questions such as whether the guidance applied to children and why people didn’t need to test negative before going back to their jobs. — The CDC briefly overstated the omicron variant’s penetration in the U.S. In mid-December, the agency estimated 73% of the previous week’s coronavirus infections were due to omicron. A week later, the CDC shaved it to 23%, based on additional data. (The CDC turned out to be a week early: Omicron now reigns.) — Last spring, Walensky said fully vaccinated people could stop wearing masks in many settings, only to reverse course as the then-new delta variant spread. Walensky has many defenders. They say that in most cases, core decisions made sense at the time they were made. The real problem, they say, was with how they were rolled out and communicated. ‘WE NEED TO DO AN OVERHAUL’ The CDC has long been considered the crown jewel of U.S. public health, with great minds working to investigate illness and coordinate national efforts to prevent it. But it also has been repeatedly […]

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