‘The technology was old, the data poor, the bureaucracy slow, the guidance confusing, the administration not in agreement... The coronavirus shook the world‘s premier health agency, creating a loss of confidence and hampering the US response to the crisis...
‘The CDC.’s most fabled experts are the disease detectives of its Epidemic Intelligence Service, rapid responders who investigate outbreaks. But more broadly, according to current and former employees and others who worked closely with the agency, the CDC is risk-averse, perfectionist and ill suited to improvising in a quickly evolving crisis — particularly one that shuts down the country and paralyzes the economy.
“It’s not our culture to intervene,” said Dr George Schmid, who worked at the agency off and on for nearly four decades. He described it as increasingly bureaucratic, weighed down by “indescribable, burdensome hierarchy.”
Read here (New York Times, June 3, 2020)
