How the Trump admin devastated the CDC—and continues to cripple it

Enlarge / CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield. (credit: Getty | Alex Edelman)

The CDC has been neutered, shamed, and blamed amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and global crisis. From internal missteps that bungled the country's rollout of diagnostic testing to blatant political interference and strong-arming on critical public health guidance, the CDC has gone from the world's premier public health agency to a silenced, overridden, distrusted afterthought in the US response-an agency stripped of its ability to collect even basic health data from hospitals during a raging pandemic.

The heavy blows to the agency's reputation and role have been well documented throughout the pandemic. President Trump and his administration have openly undermined the agency and, behind the scenes, attacked it while overriding expert public health advice on testing, school reopening, and the handling of outbreaks on cruise ships, among other things.

But while the broad strokes of the agency's undoing were noted in real time, a set of new investigations and reports offer new details. In a sweeping investigative report by ProPublica, three journalists retraced a number of events, digging up emails, heated exchanges, and alarm within the agency. For instance, it provides fresh insight into how a single CDC researcher valiantly worked to develop diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus, only to fumble, producing tests contaminated with genetic sequences of the virus. That contamination produced false positive results in public health labs around the country, rendering the tests useless and losing precious time to get ahead of the disease's spread.

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