CNN’s Brian Stelter Mocks The CDC: ‘It Is So Sad But It’s True. The CDC Has Turned Into A Punch Line’

Daily Wire NewsJanuary 9, 2022

CNN media reporter Brian Stelter slammed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during his broadcast of “Reliable Sources” on Sunday, saying that the organization has turned into a “punch line” over its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stelter specifically made the comments in reference to an interview that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky had recently with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie.

“All of this mixed messages or new messages has led to a meme on social media poking fun at the CDC’s advice, tweets like, CDC now recommends eating straight off the floor at Waffle House. The CDC now says it’s in fact okay to eat Tide Pods. The CDC says go ahead and get bangs,” Guthrie said. “You know, it’s amusing, people letting off steam, of course. But is there a larger credibility problem with your agency right now?”

“It is so sad but it’s true. The CDC has turned into a punch line,” Stelter said. “There’s a huge credibility crisis for the CDC … it just causes people, if they hear all these mixed messages and all this confusion, it’s all too complicated, they just move on and ignore it.”

BRIAN STELTER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Now to the media and mental health. Pollsters in Suffolk University have found something that crosses all of America’s partisan lines. And that something is mental health stress.

Ninety-one percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans agree that there is a mental health crisis in the United States. Researcher David Paleologos says this new poll, quote, tells a story of despair felt by Americans who just don’t know when the madness of COVID will end. The madness of COVID.

Now, there’s a segment of Americans who tuned out the pandemic a while ago. They dropped the masks, they moved on, despite entreaties from public health officials. Some of them are unvaccinated and at high risk right now due to Omicron.

But I want to focus on the other segment of Americans, those who are vaccinated, who are paying attention to the pandemic, and are hearing about Omicron and school closures and testing troubles and all the rest. This moment in the pandemic is really complicated because a mostly mild variant is still bringing hospitals to the brink of capacity and care. And a lot of people are confused about what to do and about what to believe.

Now, many doctors are doing an amazing juggling act, given these circumstances. And yet, I think we’re also potentially seeing and hearing from doomsday doctors who push people toward even more fear, anxiety, and depression.

I’m not trying to call out anybody in particular. I think this is obviously really nuanced. But is there an undue amount of fear being spread, especially in those Twitter threads and Facebook posts, and in corners of cable TV where it feels like COVID zero is the only goal?

COVID zero, of course, the idea that you can completely eliminate COVID from the environment, which is an impossibility.

My next guest is a practicing internist in Washington. She’s been calling out other medical pros who potentially are fear-mongering. Her name is Dr. Lucy McBride, and she’s with me now.

Also here, CNN’s Oliver Darcy.

Thank you both for coming in.

Dr. McBride, doomsday doctors is an inflammatory term, I want to be careful about it. But I want to know what you’re seeing firsthand. You treat patients, they come in, they ask you about COVID.

What are you hearing? What are seeing personally?

DR. LUCY MCBRIDE, PRACTICING INTERNIST & HEALTH CARE EDUCATOR: So, as you just opened with, Brian, this is a parallel pandemic of mental health [in] crisis. You know, we are bathing in fear. People have been worried and panicked necessarily because of the threat of COVID-19, which is absolutely real and present.

That said, those of us in the medical profession, particularly those of us who are patient-facing, who help people every day understand their unique vulnerabilities for disease, whether it’s from COVID or cancer. We have an obligation to help people frame risk, to deliver fact-based nuanced information. Fear does harm. It only makes people afraid. It doesn’t affect people’s decisions.

So, when I’m on Twitter or right now with you, I’m trying to help people understand that, look, your risk for COVID is as different as someone else’s. And revving the emotional engines of people’s anxiety only does harm.

STELTER: What’s a specific example of that kind of fear, that panic porn that you’ve seen recently?

MCBRIDE: Well, there are a lot of doctors who are talking about, you know, what if your child ends up in the ICU, and then you die from the same COVID infection, and then you’re parentless?

That’s just, in my opinion, not helpful. Now, let me just say this — I don’t ascribe ill intent to these doctors. I think most physicians went into medicine to help people. I