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| Michael Jackson invented moonwalking, but the White House perfected it. |
These days, the White House strategy is to attack, spur an uproar, and then, after public pushback, to wobble backward in shock, shock, saying its intentions were misunderstood.
That's what appeared to happen this week after Health and Human Services muscled the Centers for Disease Control from being first in line for COVID-19 reporting from U.S. hospitals.
A Politico.com article says the ham-handed move wasn't what it seemed. The administration got tired of waiting on CDC results, which require three weeks to process.
To get a firmer grip on the disease's progress, Deborah Birx, the admin's doyenne of COVID and silk scarves, chose a different and faster analysis program that she's used before (and which is produced by Trump supporter Peter Thiel).
When the CDC data dashboard vanished from its site this week, public blame quickly fell on Washington, but it was the CDC who took the information down (and then restored it a day later.) “All it did was feed into this narrative that we were cutting off the CDC when that’s not what happened at all,” an unnamed White House official said.
Talk about ham-handed moves. Politico.com implies that the CDC was having a hissy fit.
The CDC's problem is itself, writes Nicholas Florko in Statnews.com, an online magazine on the medical industry. The agency is full of deep-thinking science wonks with negligible political skills.
The agency is further hamstrung by its location in Atlanta, where its first task, it seems, was investigating mosquito breeding habits in the 1940s. The agency has next to no institutional presence in Washington. Toddling around D.C. like an innocent, the CDC is an easy target for political thugs.
In the meantime, the White House is blocking CDC officials from testifying next week at a hearing on reopening schools. Along with trade honcho Peter Navarro's blazing broadsword of an op-ed this week, which took a swipe at Dr. Anthony Fauci, it's just more evidence that the attack on professional health scientists continues.
The administration's forward progress only stumbles when there's bad press.
Photo courtesy of PNGWING.com
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