U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) made it clear this week that he’s not thrilled with the new Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
“[T]he new boss is the same as the old boss,” Palmer said on X. “They continue their refusal to answer basic questions and ignore the facts to push their agenda. That is not how you rebuild trust, but that doesn’t seem to be their goal.”
Over at @CDCgov, the new boss is the same as the old boss. They continue their refusal to answer basic questions and ignore the facts to push their agenda. That is not how you rebuild trust, but that doesn't seem to be their goal. pic.twitter.com/kGSHGVZHc6
— Gary Palmer (@USRepGaryPalmer) November 30, 2023
Palmer question CDC Director Mandy Cohen during a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on Thursday about the policy of closing schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Had you been in charge, would you have shut down the schools? Palmer asked. “If this were to happen again, if we had another major respiratory outbreak would you shut down the schools?”
“Well the good news is we’re in a different place than we were before,” Cohen responded. “We both have different tools and different mechanisms to respond. So I can’t really address a hypothetical.”
Palmer expressed frustration at what he believes was not an answer to his questions.
“You’d be great in the sales department,” Palmer told Cohen. “But I’m trying to get to policy and that’s one of the key things that troubles us about the CDC, is that we have to address policy.”
The congressman said he hopes the CDC can learn from its mistakes during the pandemic.
“There’s a saying that if you’re explaining you’re losing,” he said. “So we need to get down to policy. We need to talk about the things that went wrong and what we need to do.”
Palmer used masking policies as an example of where the CDC got it wrong.
“The CDC insisted on masking kids as young as two years old,” he said, “and made the argument that there was no disagreement. I think the word is equipoise. I have a study here that clearly shows that there was widespread disagreement in Europe, even here. Yet the CDC insisted on masking kids as young as two years old.”
He concluded that the CDC is not doing what it needs to do in order to rebuild trust with the American people.
“[T]here’s a lot of people, I mean a lot of people, that felt like this was more about power than it was medicine,” he argued. “And if you’re going to continue to try and do a sales job. If you want to continue and explain positions, it’s going to be difficult to get us on board with the CDC because people don’t trust you anymore. And there’s been enormous damage done in science and medicine by the policy of the CDC and the National Institutes for Health and others.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
