CDC Director, Citing Botched Pandemic Response, Calls for CDC Reorganization

Sharon LaFraniere, reporting for The New York Times:

“For 75 years, C.D.C. and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Dr. Walensky said in a startling acknowledgment of the agency’s failings. “My goal is a new, public health, action-oriented culture at C.D.C. that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication and timeliness.”

The CDC’s response was certainly hurt by the Trump Administration’s operational ineptitude, but we still had many government agencies that still accomplished their basic functions between 2017 and 2021. A central theme in The Premonition was the CDC’s failure to take a wartime footing.

The best time to fix the CDC is 75 years ago. The second best time is today.

This Universe and an Alternative One

The first image released from the Webb telescope offered the deepest view humans have had yet into the universe, showing light that is 4.6 billion years old.

There’s a alternate universe where religion has a long and rich history of respect for scientific inquiry since science allows us to see the grand order of the natural world, glimpse the true awesomeness of the universe and know humanity’s fundamental inability to comprehend it all.

A Post-Roe World

My wife and I were in our mid-30s, financially secure with good careers and a safety net, and parents of a happy, healthy 9-year-old when we first considered abortion.

We did not want a bigger family and, despite being stable and secure, were scared and uncertain.

So on a weekend, we sent our kid to their grandparents to spend the night, took a pregnancy test and got rip roaring drunk in the wash of relief that followed its coming back negative.

I booked a vasectomy following a simple conversation with my doctor and a referral to a urologist. The hardest part was figuring out paying a bill through some third-party system since my primary provider was affiliated with the Catholic Church. (You know.)

Today, we are now in the shocking-but-not-surprising place that our world is officially a post-Roe world. It hurts. It’s infuriating. It’s a lot of other things I don’t have words for.

Whatever emotional pain I feel pales in comparison to physical and emotional hurt, and entirely predictable disfigurement and death, that will come with abortion bans in Republican states across the nation.

There will still be abortions. These abortions will be more dangerous for those who cannot travel to states where the medical procedure remains legal, and our neighbors and loved ones and friends will feel less safe, less in control and less cared for, no mater their station.

Fuck these illegitimate, undemocratic, lying justices.