President Biden plans to appoint North Carolina’s former health secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen—known for pushing aggressive COVID-19 restrictions—as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cohen will replace Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who announced a June 30 departure amid dismal public trust. If appointed, Cohen’s task would be to restore the demoralized agency to prepare it for future pandemics.
The CDC has become infamous for its poor performance during COVID-19 and for overstepping its authority. Yet, it seems like Cohen held the same concerning views and parroted the same misinformation as the CDC.
After reports of Cohen’s nomination surfaced, social media posts showed her bragging about imposing COVID-19 lockdowns, inconsistently following her own mitigation recommendations, and forcing public schools to mask their students indoors regardless of vaccination status.
Cohen also promoted bad information from the CDC that has since been repeatedly debunked, including false claims that COVID vaccines prevented breakthrough cases and virus transmission.
Cohen was “nuts for masks” despite no evidence they achieved anything other than bad breath and acne.
Barbara Rimer, dean of UNC School of public health until 2022, sat in on early pandemic calls with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cohen, legislators, and other academics and commended Cohen’s approach.
Rimer claims Cohen was an outstanding communicator during pandemic press conferences with Cooper.
“Science took the lead,” even “in a highly political environment,” Rimer said. “I think that will stand her in really good stead as she takes over CDC.”
“Someone in the confirmation hearing should ask the new @cdcgov director nominee about how she got the science so consequentially wrong. Lots of bad answers possible,” Stanford School of Medicine Professor Jay Bhattacharya said on Twitter Friday.
“A good response [would be] ‘I’ll surround myself with scientists with a diverse set of views so it doesn’t happen again.’”
The CDC, White House, and Cohen have not commented on the nomination.
According to Politico, the CDC is in the “midst of strategic overhaul” initiated by Walensky to better prepare the agency for the next public health emergency.
“Biden officials involved in the search came away from discussions with Cohen impressed by her broad range of health experience at the federal and state levels, two of the people said, and convinced she had the ability to manage the nearly 11,000-person agency and the broader political dynamics of an administration gearing up for Biden’s re-election run.“
To make matters worse, Biden recently selected Monica Bertagnolli, with deep ties to Big Pharma, to lead the National Institutes of Health.
One thing is abundantly clear, U.S. health officials stepping away from their top agency positions over failed COVID-19 policies and increased scrutiny are merely being replaced with the same . . . individuals who parroted bad pandemic policies, failed to question and consider the science, and have deep ties to pharmaceutical companies.
