Rochelle Walensky's Theatre of Doom
Rochelle Walensky is unserious.
Yesterday, the CDC Director grew emotional while giving the White House Covid update via video. Her words, carefully crafted, were a sort of “Okay this time I really mean it” appeal to Americans far and wide.
“Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth and hope that you will listen,” she implored us.
Are there times when she doesn’t share the truth?
“I’m going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” she continued, her eyes following along the yet-to-be-lost script she was carefully reading.
Why are we hearing about her emotional state? “I’m having recurring feelings of impending doom” is something you’d tell a shrink and he’d take such a thing seriously.
But she wasn’t done.
“Right now I’m scared.”
Not something that instills confidence in the leader of the institution whose very existence is to combat the plague. She is supposed to be a uniquely proficient individual, so equipped with knowledge and expertise that her clinical coolness could rise to any challenge.
As Gerry Callahan of the Callahan Podcast said, “She’s a doctor. Imagine having an appointment with her? You ask, ‘How do my scans look, Doc?’ and she starts weeping? I mean you’d run out of there.”
If she is scared what are we supposed to be?
There was more script to work through and Dr. Walensky did so, in earnest.
“So I’m speaking today, not necessarily as your CDC Director and not only as your CDC director but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.”
This is a particularly clever bit of phrasing for two reasons: First, it’s a callback to Jen Psaki’s claims that Walensky’s comments about teacher vaccinations not being a prerequisite for school reopenings were spoken merely in her “personal capacity” and not as the Director of the CDC.
Second, it highlights the underlying assumption as Director of the CDC she has a diminished credibility due to the agency’s mixed messaging on everything from masks to political demonstrations. Thus, Americans are given a handful of alternative, more credible incarnations of Rochelle Walensky. Maybe you don’t buy what bureaucrat Walensky says, but you might believe Rochelle from next door?
Unfortunately it was CDC Director Walensky who then stated the following:
“I’m asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends.”
Is that a guarantee? It seems irresponsible and manipulative to tell Americans that if they comply with the rigid CDC distancing and mask guidelines, Uncle Ned will live and if they do not, well, congrats you’re a murderer.
Walensky undergirded that point with another generality which also places the burden of combatting COVID-19 directly on the American people:
“We are not powerless. We can change this trajectory of the pandemic,” she said.
It is remarkable that the people of the United States are assigned massive culpability for the deadly disease. Why do none of the front line, highly-paid public health bureaucrats in lab coats bear any responsibility?
Obviously yesterday’s performance was all theatre. When a reporter asked Walensky to expand on her chilling “impending doom” comment, she said simply that she did not want to see a spike, as we are seeing in Europe – a very reasonable concern.
Why then, did she use shocking imagery and talk of impending doom while growing emotional and telling us that she was scared?
Because that cunningly crafted script was written to flood headlines everywhere and lurch the national media’s attention from covering the crisis on the border.
It’s that cynical.
This is not about scientific concerns over a coronavirus surge. If it were, Dr. Walensky would not have tweeted this a few days ago:
“We can and must do more to address health equity! #COVID19 is causing disproportionate harm to communities of color – higher rates of chronic diseases, stress, mental health challenges and disparities and disruptions in access to care and services.”
To weave equity initiatives into this battle for survival is like prioritizing the installation of “Hate Has No Home Here” yard signs on the beaches at D-Day. It is not relevant to the mission and only impedes progress.
It is a bad time to have the CDC used as a vessel through which to launder the administration’s political messaging.
As Joe Biden said about the likelihood of Barack Obama facing a crisis during his nascent presidency, “gird your loins.”