In September, William Foege, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), wrote to the current CDC director, Robert Redfield, asking that Redfield go public to explain the failures of the CDC in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. Foege pleaded with Redford to expose the role of Trump and his political appointees in preventing and perverting actions by the CDC to put the appropriate public health policies in place.
A former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health titan who led the eradication of smallpox asked the embattled, current CDC leader to expose the failed U.S. response to the coronavirus, calling on him to orchestrate his own firing to protest White House interference.
Foege, who has not been a vocal critic of the agency's handling of the novel coronavirus, called on Redfield to openly address the White House’s meddling in the agency’s efforts to manage the COVID-19 crisis, then accept the political sacrifice that would follow. He recommended that Redfield commit to writing the administration's failures – and his own – so there would be a record that could not be dismissed.
“You could upfront, acknowledge the tragedy of responding poorly, apologize for what has happened and your role in acquiescing,” Foege wrote to Redfield. He said simply resigning without coming clean would be insufficient. “Don’t shy away from the fact this has been an unacceptable toll on our country. It is a slaughter and not just a political dispute.”
“This will go down as a colossal failure of the public health system of this country,” Foege wrote. “The biggest challenge in a century and we let the country down. The public health texts of the future will use this as a lesson on how not to handle an infectious disease pandemic.”
Trump's response to the pandemic has been criminal negligence and when people like Redfield remain silent they are complicit in that criminal behavior.
