It will be a long time before Americans forget the Centers for Disease Control’s failure to control the COVID pandemic. While president-elect, Trump summed it up well: “Americans have lost trust in the CDC and our Federal Health Authorities, because of censorship, data manipulation and misinformation.”

The lack of trust in the nation’s primary public health agency is a tragedy of the CDC’s own doing. The agency’s constantly changing advice on masking, social distancing and hand washing all proved pointless during the pandemic. And, by failing to do appropriate clinical trials and describe the potential dangers of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC added millions to the ranks of anti-vaxxers.

The CDC’s incoming head, former Congressman Dave Weldon, a physician, has been commissioned by Trump to “focus on the prevention of disease.” In the eight decades since its creation, the CDC has become an emblem of governmental mission creep.

Its mismanagement of COVID reflects how the agency has expanded its remit to many complex social problems including gun violence, homelessness, obesity and loneliness, that have been erroneously cast as “epidemics.”

The gauge of real epidemics is whether they respond to the canonical interventions of public health — detecting a new communicable threat, tracking and informing those infected before they are symptomatic and infective, quarantining and developing a vaccine.

Weldon might immediately get Elon Musk and........

© The Hill