Can Trust In Public Health Be Saved?

Before the pandemic, most people believed that public health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) reached conclusions based on actual data.

This segment of What’s Ahead discusses why that faith has been shattered, which could have dangerous consequences in future emergencies.

The behavior of these government bodies has too often been wrong or guided by politics. For instance, the CDC—bureaucratic to the core—botched its initial pandemic response by insisting that it create its own testing kit, which was flawed. Hospitals were initially barred from using their own tests, so unnecessary death resulted.

Very damaging lockdowns were repeatedly imposed, even when it became clear that, at best, they delayed the spread of the disease but didn’t eradicate it.

Teachers’ unions insisted on keeping schools closed when there was no justification for doing so. The damage this did to children and their families was immense—economically, emotionally and educationally. Shockingly, the unions got the CDC to go along.

The list of horrors goes on. Even today the bad behavior by public officials continues.