[Goose]

The CDC is now saying it will not change its guidelines in response to Trump.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/...39155c55cd

CDC Director Robert Redfield pushed back in a Good Morning America interview Thursday saying that “our guidelines are our guidelines,” and that the CDC will provide additional reference documents for schools but that “it’s not a revision of the guidelines.”

Redfield emphasized that the CDC produces guidelines, not requirements, to help local jurisdictions and that the agency is working with the jurisdictions to “take the portfolio of guidance that we have given to make them practical for their schools to reopen.”

Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but this is more along the lines of what I was advocating.

BC

Anyone who believes that the positions taken by the CDC over the years are not profoundly influenced by politics lives in a dream world. Trump and his administration are just particularly inept on how they do it. Previous administrations appointed leaders who were on board with the President's agenda and who knew where the lines were that couldn't be crossed. Trump is so erratic and so unable to get quality people that we see the heavy hand of his political agenda (subject to change without notice) dumped on the CDC. You can't honor a constantly moving agenda even if you want to do so. With other presidents, it was there, just behind the curtain.

If you don't believe that, then you must also believe that nobody at the CDC had any idea at all that the USA was not prepared for a major epidemic. We have seen that the CDC did have publications calling attention to the inadequacies of the testing capabilities a decade before this current mess. Yet, did any head of the CDC or HHS go on national TV and sound an alarm? NO. Why? Because their boss didn't want them to do so. It wasn't politically expedient.

The military is much better at dealing with this kind of political restraint. A few more set-asides for HHS might have saved us a lot of pain, but that wasn't politically acceptable. That said, even the military gets ground down by repeated presidential appointments that follow the president's agenda. It is also true that the president eventually gets an intelligence community that reports what he wants to hear. It usually takes at least 6 years to do this however.

[Goose]

The CDC is now saying it will not change its guidelines in response to Trump.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/...39155c55cd

CDC Director Robert Redfield pushed back in a Good Morning America interview Thursday saying that “our guidelines are our guidelines,” and that the CDC will provide additional reference documents for schools but that “it’s not a revision of the guidelines.”

Redfield emphasized that the CDC produces guidelines, not requirements, to help local jurisdictions and that the agency is working with the jurisdictions to “take the portfolio of guidance that we have given to make them practical for their schools to reopen.”

Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but this is more along the lines of what I was advocating.

BC

Anyone who believes that the positions taken by the CDC over the years are not profoundly influenced by politics lives in a dream world. Trump and his administration are just particularly inept on how they do it. Previous administrations appointed leaders who were on board with the President's agenda and who knew where the lines were that couldn't be crossed. Trump is so erratic and so unable to get quality people that we see the heavy hand of his political agenda (subject to change without notice) dumped on the CDC. You can't honor a constantly moving agenda even if you want to do so. With other presidents, it was there, just behind the curtain.

If you don't believe that, then you must also believe that nobody at the CDC had any idea at all that the USA was not prepared for a major epidemic. We have seen that the CDC did have publications calling attention to the inadequacies of the testing capabilities a decade before this current mess. Yet, did any head of the CDC or HHS go on national TV and sound an alarm? NO. Why? Because their boss didn't want them to do so. It wasn't politically expedient.

The military is much better at dealing with this kind of political restraint. A few more set-asides for HHS might have saved us a lot of pain, but that wasn't politically acceptable. That said, even the military gets ground down by repeated presidential appointments that follow the president's agenda. It is also true that the president eventually gets an intelligence community that reports what he wants to hear. It usually takes at least 6 years to do this however.