{"id":1363681,"date":"2022-03-08T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1363681"},"modified":"2022-03-08T07:41:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T12:41:19","slug":"yes-the-half-the-country-the-cdc-director-despises-did-say-all-the-accurate-covid-things-she-insists-nobody-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/yes-the-half-the-country-the-cdc-director-despises-did-say-all-the-accurate-covid-things-she-insists-nobody-said\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, The \u2018Half The Country\u2019 The CDC Director Despises Did Say All The Accurate Covid Things She Insists \u2018Nobody Said\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">40<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fyes-the-half-the-country-the-cdc-director-despises-did-say-all-the-accurate-covid-things-she-insists-nobody-said%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1363681&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.54.52-PM.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should be eating crow these days but is instead deflecting from her agency\u2019s litany of Covid failures. In keeping with her track record of getting things wrong, she got them woefully wrong again \u2014 this time, not with regard to Covid but with regard to the people who disagree with her expert guidance.<\/p>\n<p>During a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=I_hYgIpxM4A&#038;ab_channel=WashingtonUniversitySchoolofMedicine\">visit<\/a> to the Washington University School of Medicine on Thursday, Walensky threw a one-two punch at her critics, but it didn\u2019t quite land. It instead only broadcast more elitist hubris and reinforced why federal health bureaucrats haven\u2019t retained a shred of credibility.<\/p>\n<p>Talking about the vaccine, she said the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>So many of us wanted to be hopeful. So many of us wanted to say, \u2018OK, this is our ticket out, right? Now we\u2019re done.\u2019 So I think we had perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done. Nobody said \u2018waning.\u2019 \u2026 You know, \u2018Oh, this vaccine\u2019s going to work.\u2019 [Nobody said,] \u2018Oh, maybe it\u2019ll wear off.\u2019 Nobody said \u2026 \u2018What if it\u2019s not as potent against the next variant?&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In response to a different question about risk-benefit assessments a few moments later, she said, chuckling snidely (or as she characterized it, \u201ca little bit tongue in cheek\u201d), \u201cI know I\u2019m going to be wrong for half the country, so now that I\u2019ve accepted that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The obvious implication of her remark, of course, is that no matter what she says, \u201chalf the country\u201d will disagree with her expert opinion. Throughout the pandemic, this half has included those who have resisted mask mandates for schoolchildren (which Walensky <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/02\/15\/cdc-admits-it-catered-to-teachers-unions-with-political-school-reopening-guidelines\/\">admitted<\/a> have not been dictated by science but by teachers union demands), those who have hesitated to get the Covid shot, those who have gathered with friends and family, and those unvaccinated with natural immunity who declined to wear a mask, just to name a few. <\/p>\n<p>But the irony is that this \u201chalf the country\u201d also included the people who said precisely the same things Walensky now insists \u201cnobody said.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Countless Americans have remained unvaccinated for now, and anyone who has ventured into Middle America to talk to people outside the Beltway and the halls of academia knows that they\u2019ve declined the shot for many reasons. Some haven\u2019t gotten it because <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/12\/07\/science-says-im-in-the-back-of-the-covid-vaccine-line-but-government-and-corporations-will-force-me-through-it\/\">they have never been <\/a>at a significant risk of severe illness or death. Others haven\u2019t gotten it for <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/24\/premier-childrens-hospital-fires-unvaxxed-nurses-after-questioning-and-rejecting-their-religious-beliefs\/\">religious reasons<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>But others wondered how long vaccine immunity would last and if natural immunity might be stronger \u2014 something the most rigorous studies have <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/08\/27\/israeli-study-natural-immunity-is-13x-stronger-than-pfizer-covid-shots\/\">supported<\/a>. Some non-vulnerable people wanted to see if the vaccines would really stop transmission or if they would only aid the individuals who got the shot. Others knew viral mutation was inevitable and wondered whether vaccinating against one variant would do them any good against the next wave, so they waited to find out.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Walensky doesn\u2019t know these things were being said because her friends in the Biden administration were <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/07\/15\/white-house-brags-about-colluding-with-tech-oligarchs-to-suppress-dissent\/\">working overtime<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/07\/19\/white-house-says-nothing-off-the-table-when-it-comes-to-using-big-tech-to-silence-dissent\/\">ensure<\/a> these unsavory opinions were slapped with a \u201cmisinformation\u201d label and nuked from the internet. Big Tech got trigger-happy with their bans, issuing <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/12\/13\/facebook-quietly-admits-its-third-party-fact-checks-are-opinions\/\">fake \u201cfact-checks\u201d<\/a> against contrary opinions to keep them from seeing the light of day.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, dissenters had their opinions shouted out of the public square. The vaccine hesitant had their <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/24\/premier-childrens-hospital-fires-unvaxxed-nurses-after-questioning-and-rejecting-their-religious-beliefs\/\">faith scrutinized<\/a> and their <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/10\/how-vaccine-mandates-caused-dangerous-hospital-care-shortages-in-wisconsin\/\">employment terminated<\/a>. And corrupt media churned out its daily dose of propaganda, which often featured disconnected pundits reinforcing the bureaucracy\u2019s narrative that the wrongthinkers are selfish rubes, without ever bothering to ask them about their questions and concerns. So maybe Walensky really thinks nobody ever said these things.<\/p>\n<p>It seems more likely, however, that Walensky knows full well that Americans have been saying these things since the beginning. Given the desperate scramble to improve poll numbers and recover their blown credibility, Walensky\u2019s remarks in context look more like a \u201cCYA\u201d attempt and a \u201climited hangout\u201d operation.<\/p>\n<p>How else are we to interpret her blameshifting to the \u201cpublic\u201d at large for believing The Science (TM) to be black and white? It\u2019s so incredibly irksome to hear Walensky now admit \u2014 after Dr. Anthony Fauci declared that he is \u201cthe science\u201d and Covid cultists chanted \u201cfollow the science\u201d \u2014 that the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/07\/its-far-too-late-for-the-experts-to-admit-that-science-is-gray\/\">science is gray<\/a>,\u201d as she did on Thursday. It\u2019s beyond annoying to listen to her say the pandemic could make masking a regular exercise because she hasn\u2019t had \u201ca cold in a really long time\u201d and \u201cwe don\u2019t miss those.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>None of it, however, is as infuriating as watching the director of our country\u2019s premier public health agency backhand the half of Americans who are rightly skeptical of her pronouncements and then pretend that nobody said nor could have foreseen the outcome of Covid vaccine mandates \u2014 after those same Americans did foresee and <em>did<\/em> say all of those things and were punished for it. Like elitist hubris, the gaslighting never stops.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts\/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kyleezempel\">@kyleezempel<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should be eating crow these days but is instead deflecting from her agency\u2019s litany of Covid failures. In<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}