CDC’s Walensky Rejects Responsibility For COVID-19 Failures

Outgoing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday before skeptical lawmakers on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. 

Facing GOP skeptics, she defended her agency’s actions in the middle of a torrent of controversy. Everything from First Amendment issues and mask effectiveness to teachers unions and social media collusion was aired, though precious little was resolved.

On the Mount Rushmore of disgraced COVID pandemic players next to Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Joe Biden is a place reserved for Walensky. 

House Republicans took her to task for a long list of concerns, including whether vaccines had any success in preventing the transmission of COVID-19. They also asked Walensky how much influence teachers unions had on protocols for schools.

Protocols that generally started and ended with closing the doors.  

Walensky asserted that she did not accept all recommendations from Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. She did confirm that the union head had both her office and personal phone numbers and that they exchanged texts. 

Predictably, Walensky sidestepped most questions, especially the most contentious ones. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) quizzed her on the collusion between Washington and social media platforms that was uncovered in the Twitter Files revelations.

This suppression of dissenting information covered everything from sweeping lockdowns to mask and vaccination mandates. Of course, Walsensky had no clear answers. 

She merely said that the issue was currently in court and she could not make a public comment. Walensky also declined to provide a direct answer to the question of First Amendment violations committed while the CDC purportedly battled “misinformation.”

She further deflected inquiries from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on the explosive issue of gain of function research. Walensky responded that the inquiries would be better directed toward the National Institutes of Health.

Walensky is expected to leave the CDC by the end of this month, making her Congressional testimony likely her last. Her replacement, who was chosen by President Joe Biden, has already proven controversial.

Mandy Cohen is North Carolina’s former health secretary and is well known for aggressively pushing COVID restrictions during the pandemic. There are multiple reports that she only loosely followed her own guidelines and boasted about her state’s sweeping lockdowns.