COVID Chronicles: How to Make a Pandemic Worse – The Horrible Power of No
We continue our COVID Chronicles series. In this episode I take a look at how incompetence and ineptitude made a bad situation much worse.
Furthering the historical review, we’re at the point where hundreds on cruise ships in the Far East were stranded because they were effectively quarantined on-board. Hundreds of foreign nationals living and working in China were allowed to leave the country by a Communist leadership which, by that time, may well have seen the pandemic-level spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as a case of “stick it to the man” as they sat back and laughed.
Good Intentions
Regardless of their true intentions (which may never be known), thousands of people originally “stranded” somewhere with a horrible contagion, were suddenly back home and being quarantined for two weeks to make sure they didn’t have “the disease”, then released back into their home areas.
It’s at this same time when something should have happened at the CDC. Director Robert Redfield, MD, was requested by the president’s task force to seal the US borders.
A point of information here, since I’ve seen some people on social media claiming that the CDC Director doesn’t have the authority to do that. The Public Health Service Act of 1944, and US codes based off of this Act, specifically grant primary statutory authority to the Director of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) to order all US borders to be sealed in the event of a health emergency. This authority was granted to the CDC Director because he (presumably) would be an experienced medical officer who would know when to order borders sealed to protect the health of US citizens.
Saying No
But a funny thing happened. Redfield said NO. At the same time his counterparts in other countries were sealing their borders (or had already done so), Redfield claimed that he believed sealing the borders was unnecessary. When this was reported in the media, it was played up by a media deep in the quagmire of yellow journalism and Democrat leaders, as a cheap attempt by Trump to seal the Mexican border and found a convenient way to do it.
The problem with this is argument is that it wasn’t Redfield’s rationale for not complying with the order. He refused to comply, according to CDC insiders with direct knowledge of Redfield’s internal statements, because he personally didn’t think the virus would be a serious issue in the US, according to sources close to Redfield who heard such statements. Some reports claimed that a few CDC staffers convinced Redfield that closing borders wouldn’t make a difference in pandemic severity in the US.
Vice-President Pence had reportedly asked multiple times for Redfield to do his duty under the law, but he repeatedly refused, and Pence finally had to give the order. Redfield’s refusals were arguably the start of the worsening of the pandemic in the US.
Journalistic Obfuscation
The media’s attempt to paint a legitimate “seal the borders” order as just attempting to seal the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants who may or may not have contracted COVID-19, is honestly a stupid argument. The whole point of the emergency powers that Pence tried to have Redfield order under the CDC Director’s authority to do so, was to seal ALL the borders from anyone from any nation coming into our country by land, sea, or air without due diligence in testing (which we didn’t have effective means of mass testing back then).
Epidemiologists I know personally, are universally concluded that if the borders were sealed very early on, and people were not permitted into the country from anywhere by any means without proper testing, quarantine, and treatment, we may have been able to stem the tide of the pandemic, but this is certainly no guarantee.
But in the midst of what would be a hotly contested re-election campaign, Trump certainly wanted to have the CDC’s blessing to order a nationwide lockdown, knowing that any such order would have immediately earned the loud-mouthed ire of Democrats who certainly would have claimed he was “seizing power” unless the CDC Director stated publicly that a lockdown was essential.
That’s not the worst of it, however.
Not Doing The Job
Not only did Redfield refuse to do his job under the Public Health Service Act, he absolutely refused to provide the authorization for the CDC to take national control of what, even in February 2020, was looking to be a serious public health issue. Commonly termed a “charter”, CDC insiders revealed that Redfield compounded his error in not sealing the US borders, with the refusal to grant the “charter”, which effectively allows the CDC to override the authority of state governments and health departments, and direct all operations pertinent to containing a contagion.
By contrast, in 2009 during the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic, then-CDC Director Tom Frieden did a relatively great job of directing the pandemic efforts. Thus, the US death toll was relatively light compared with other countries in the world at that time.
Wear the Mask!
Instead, he personally began an informational “cloth mask” campaign, stating online and in interviews, that a “cloth mask will protect you.” Specifically he repeatedly stated of regular cloth masks, “my mask protects you, and your mask protects me.” For many weeks, he wouldn’t be deterred from this message. He insisted that all people needed to do was wear a cloth mask everywhere, and the virus could be contained.
At the time, he didn’t even place much emphasis on staying at home – it was the World Health Organization who directed countries to stress the importance of quarantining and self-isolation, and it’s the WHO, not the CDC, who came up with the 2-week quarantine/isolation concept.
But where did all the lock-downs and mandatory mask requirements, and people yelling at non-masked people in stores, and Democrats blaming Trump for killing people, come from?
For that, you’ll have to stay tuned.
Author's note: this post was updated after publication to add a link to a more summarized version of a news story.
