The Highwire with Del Bigtree - NEW CDC DIRECTOR: LEADER OR FOLLOWER?

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

President Joe Biden’s new pick for CDC director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, has an interesting track record as lead health director of North Carolina’s pandemic response. Find out the scientific methods she used to create policy and guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

We have now a new CDC director that Biden has chosen. Her name is Mandy Cohen. Biden picks Mandy Cohen, the architect of North Carolina's COVID-19 response as CDC director. And you hear that. You hear architect. Well, this must be something very important she did there in North Carolina. And so this is, let's take a little background of her. So any public health official, especially someone going into that high position, should be judged by how they handle themselves during the pandemic. This is one of the most defining moments in public health history of the century. And so what is their report card on this? So let's look at Mandy Cohen in June of 2021.

So remember now, E-Mails, FOIA emails have just come out showing that Rochelle Winski was discussing vaccine breakthrough infections as early as January 30th, 2021. So fast forward to June of 2021. We know there's breakthrough infections. We know you can transmit this virus if you get the vaccine. Let's listen to what Mandy Cohen does and says in the public. Okay. What we heard from the CDC last week was even better news than we had heard before, right?

We had heard that vaccines protect you from getting COVID. I think the new piece of information for us was now we really have more definitive data to show that it also prevents you from giving COVID to others. And that's really when the masks come in, right? is a mask we're about protecting you from giving COVID to others, even if you don't know you have it. And the fact that the CDC was so confident to say, now we know that these vaccines not only protect you as an individual, it protects you from giving it to others. I think that's why we were able to move forward more quickly. I love that all these people are on camera saying this over and over again. And what a disastrous failure of judgment that has ended up, you know, being. And anybody, including us, which we did, can look at the trial

Pfizer trials, they weren't even tested to see if they stopped transmission. Right. And so there's the CDC data. Now we know that she was wrong. Cleveland Clinic study recently has shown that. This is it. Over 51,000 employees looking at the effectiveness of the bi-valent vaccine, and they concluded this, the risk of COVID-19, increased with time since the most recent prior

COVID-19 episode and with the number of vaccine doses previously received. So we're talking negative efficacy, essentially there. More vaccines you get, the more at risk you are for. being infected, hardly what we think of when we think of the definition of the vaccine. And so let's let's talk about schools, school closures, masking. How does she do on those? Because those are obviously huge, huge points of contention again here during that COVID pandemic response. In September of 2021, the Union Country School Board, that's in North Carolina, voted eight to one to immediately end staff responsibility for contact tracing, tracing quarantine

operations for asymptomatic students and staff. What did Mandy Cohen do? Here's the headline from that time. She sent them a legal action may be required to protect the public's health states penn's letter to Union County Public Schools to follow COVID-19 toolkit. That was Mandy Cohen signing her name on that letter. She basically threatened legal action. And what they did was they actually backed down the school, reverse that 8 to 1 vote and

said, sorry, we don't want a legal battle with our state health department. So we had to stop. that. Now, let's look at- So bullying schools that were just trying to get their kids in education, unbelievable. It appears so. And so, you know, as we sit here, we're still waiting to hear about all of those benefits of masking

kindergartners and kids during the pandemic for extended periods of time. We know the harms. The harms are showing up with their development. But how did North Carolina handle this? Well, here's the headline from that time. North Carolina recommends districts require masks for

all students and teachers in K-through- schools, unvaccinated high school students and teachers as well. And you start to go in this article and you read, the guidance cuts off at eighth grade because there's a mix of children who are eligible in middle school, Cohen says. She's hoping the incentive to take off masks will encourage high schoolers to get vaccinated. So it's not science. It's an incentive. And it goes on to say this. Cohen says high schools may still require universal masking at the high school. For example, if they think their current vaccination rate is too low. So here's your health department. had given the hat tip to high school saying, you know what? If you're not happy with your vaccination

rate, mask those kids up until they comply, because that is what I'm telling you to do. And so we have some more video of Cohen. She was recently at kind of a Q&A session in North Carolina on a college campus. And she was really candid about some of the ways that the COVID restrictions were being thought about, were being talked about behind closed doors. Kind of gives you a window more of who she is, take a look. Probably the person I called most was the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Massachusetts. She worked for a Republican governor just to, but, you know, when she was like, are you, are you going to let them have professional football?

And I was like, nope. And she's like, okay, neither are we, neither are we. So, you know, it was like conversations like that. So, or I'd be like, so when are you going to think about lightening up a mess? So you're like next Monday. I'm like, okay, next Monday. Because it's science. Wow.

Amazing. And so, you know, looking at all this, I think the public, you know, the public has watched the flip-flop of Fauci, of Walensky, all of these years. And we're hoping, all right, at least we're not going to have somebody that is cut from the same cloth as Fauci, you know, this double-talking bureaucrat that's been in office for And unfortunately, then I start looking on the internet and I see a picture that looks like this. And this is going with a Faucied facet. And so there you have it.

I guess we're going to be reporting, though, at every step of the way because she has some big shoes to fill. And there's a lot of people watching how the CDC is going to game back the trust of Americans. And we've had media like never before looking at this agency. So we'll see how they baked cookies in public this time. Well, maybe if she just sticks to calling friends and rolling dice to make decisions for the CDC, you know, we'll sort of bring that trust right back to where it used to be.