17 May 2021 | I Cannot Trust the CDC (or Others)

Why precisely would I trust the Centers for Disease Control? This is the same organization that allowed itself to become compromised under pressure from the criminal administration of President Biden’s predecessor to such a degree that I stopped listening to them early on in the pandemic, relying instead on their counterparts in Canada.

Now in a surprise move, the CDC says that people fully vaccinated can go without the masks just about everywhere. And what this latest whiplash move means is that people who ignored or mocked their guidelines up to this point are now going to appeal to this proclamation as their excuse for not wearing a mask. The CDC has excelled at generating confusion more than anything else.

Having over 150 million adults now vaccinated is a great thing, don’t get me wrong. But I cannot shake the feeling that the CDC’s sudden turn on mask wearing (at the least) is going to upend some of this progress. We Americans have proven to be very recalcitrant about the public good, and it’s not much of a leap to expect that what they hear from the CDC is that the pandemic is over and we can go back to normal. This is not precisely what they’re saying, but they have become such bad communicators that they’re not bothering with the follow-up or a public education campaign to clarify anything. So I ask again, why would I trust the CDC?

And don’t get me started on how I am supposed to trust my fellow Americans to be truthful about whether they’ve been vaccinated or not…