i think that's a lot of what the work of public health, public education, our levee system so much of the work we do is about making that opportunity as well too. >> you are accepted to 13 different medical schools who end up going to st. louis to washington university medical school we were at george washington after that, in addition to your age which you've always been very sensitive to what you just commented on, you're saying your greatest was your stutter in this i think will be surprising to people because we are also used to turning our televisions on or our radios on and hearing you talk so compellingly about covid-19 in particular. the world thanks of you as a public speaker but speaking for you very much so. when i was growing up in china i stuttered i also knew i could hide it i learned later this is called being a covid stutterer meaning there are some people that were in inward as in they are long plus passes there are blocks you can hear it in them there others are covid know for example i never asked understood english i knew p was a problem so i would not ask for a pe

it was an immense effort by public health and a lot of luck. the international health regulation was rewritten because of the chinese behavior. this is the first test of china's transparency, faced with a dramatic new outbreak and they totally failed the test. had they been more transparent from the beginning, we would have had a much better chance of stopping the spread of this contagion and at least mitigating it. >> the response is indicative of the -- of this. if that was the case, how does the world protect its public health going forward? lawrence: this is a real question. this is not just a health matter, it is a national security issue. we have to have compliance with the international health regulations. we have to examine the many demands by the united states to be allowed to have an actual investigation into the origin of this virus and total -- china totally shut that down. when australia made that request that the chinese sanctioned the australian government, just for making the request to send the investigators to china to find out

can you, can you help our audience understand how we ought to be framing, public health questions and where america is the scaffolding of that? well, let's be clear, the u. s. is a negative outlier. we spend way more than any other country in the world per capita on health care and compared to other high income countries. people live much shorter lives with much more disability. if we look at the best practices from around the world, you see strong public health systems getting more value for health care dollars saving lives. there was an article that just came out today in the new yorker describing by i to go on. they describing the costa rican health system. costa, ricans have a longer average life expectancy than americans, despite being a much poor country. and one of the things that works well, there is they have a real coalition between health and public health to address the health of entire communities. one thing we find in every country is that every community has strengths and weaknesses. and the challenge to stopping epidemics is identifying and enlisting the strengths and

fourteen public health branches. across the city to protect and promote health of everyone who works, lives, studies, playing in san francisco. we count on our stake holders as our clients and patients of the health network. we have the city wide responsibilities. we hold the state mandated functions of public health. environmental health and protection of water in restaurants. communicatable diseases which we've all become familiar with. i'm the acting director. you can see the 14 branches and officers here. you can see the fantastic leaders within them. we'll highlight a little of the work that they do in covid and out side of covid as well. we have had transitions in leadership at the director position. it's great to have these colleagues to work with through the pandemic and beyond together. to speak just a bit about covid. this division were really core to our response and to our thinking about covid from the beginning. for 20 months now, since january of 2020. dph staff helped the department alongside many other

fourteen public health branches. across the city to protect and promote health of everyone who works, lives, studies, playing in san francisco. we count on our stake holders as our clients and patients of the health network. we have the city wide responsibilities. we hold the state mandated functions of public health. environmental health and protection of water in restaurants. communicatable diseases which we've all become familiar with. i'm the acting director. you can see the 14 branches and officers here. you can see the fantastic leaders within them. we'll highlight a little of the work that they do in covid and out side of covid as well. we have had transitions in leadership at the director position. it's great to have these colleagues to work with through the pandemic and beyond together. to speak just a bit about covid. this division were really core to our response and to our thinking about covid from the beginning. for 20 months now, since january of 2020. dph staff helped the department alongside many other

c-span.org live to the atlantic festival with cdc director doctor rochelle discussing covid and public health. live coverage on c-span2. >> will be talking about making decisions about public guidance and messaging. thank you for being here today. >> thank you for having me, i am delighted to be here. >> diving. you've clearly inherited an incredibly difficult job challenging place in history. tell me about the toughest part of the job and what has surprised you the most next. >> i want had a wise mentor who said to me if you're not a little bit afraid if your next job perhaps the job isn't big enough so i took it out when i was here, i was a little afraid of the strap has been a daunting task in the middle of a pandemic. it's been hard, i inherited an agency both people's working tirelessly for the last 18 months to protect public health. it's all during their work remotely so getting to know the people doing that work has been hard diving in and recognizing so much of the public and public health and they hands of these agencies. i've taken on the task and feelings a great gift of inheritin

she's a former deputy minister of public health for afghanistan and in cairo. dr. richard brendan, he's a regional emergency director for the world health organization whose jurisdiction covers afghanistan. welcome, everybody, doctors are. i'd like to begin with you. you were the acting minister of public health before the transition from the us back government and cobbled to now taliban control. so i'm curious from you. what was the plan for ask in health care system by the us and by the government and cobble after the us announced that they were leaving thank you very much. the withdrawal and the transition happened just out of the there the way it was expected. it did not give the opportunity for health system specifically in the context where the last few months of the last regime was fully stay focused on fighting and ongoing conflict in 34 provinces. and i should say, i should say that even do endorse those days. the ministry of public health, the health sector was one of those sectors deprived of require inputs and resources needed in those at the phase of th

this townhall is hosted by the san francisco department of public health. this townhall will be in english. we're also hosting townhalls in spanish and cantonese this week. few housekeeping items. today's event is being recorded. today's event is being streamed live through sfgov tv on channel 78, youtube and facebook live. for audio and video we expect all participants to want a create at safe space. all parts will be muted and video disabled. to participate the q&a to select the q&a button at the bottom of the screen to enter your questions. >> welcome, i will be your moderator tonight. i am the covid-19 team lead for school as well as the acting liaison at the san francisco department of public health. we're glad to have you join us for a townhall specifically for sfusd families to provide information and answer questions about safely returning to school. a special thank you to superintendent vincent matthews and sfusd staff for joining us for q&a. they will help us answer questions from ucsf and d.t.h. this event is being streamed live through the sfgov

if you want to have that argument and if anyone wants to argue about that, look at the public health service act. it gives broad powers to the cdc, centers for disease control, to our health and human services to prevent the diseases. yeah, people may be unhappy about it. maybe argue about how you can execute the policy better and you could do a and b and c. we can have that argument. but with respect to a legal argument, i do believe he's firmly within legal realm. and again, i don't think it's a close constitutional question. >> there is going to be, though, a state versus federal clash of sorts. we've seen previously some republican governors already ban businesses in their states from mandating the vaccines. some have said they're going to fight this federal mandate in court. in fact, here the south dakota governor is speaking. >> in south dakota we're going to be free. and we're going to make sure that we don't overstep our authority. we will take action. my legal team is already working. >> her legal team is already working. how messy could this get? >> it could get messy. to be

and if you look at the slide and compare one against the other in public health tools, there's one thing there that sticks out so boldly. back then they had crude early bacterial vaccines that likely never would have gotten approved by the regulatory and public health authorities today, but they did not know what the agent was whereas today we have a highly specific, highly effective and very safe vaccine. they did things somewhat similar. they did closures, they did isolation, they did social distancing. but what we have is other things like sophisticated ventilation, he, a air flow. -- hepa air flow. they had the same print media, but now we have social media. they had some supportive care, but they didn't have icus, mechanic alp ventilation, they didn't have microbials, we do. they had the same problem with quack and unproven remedies that we have today. but the thing that really stands out in all of this was the issue of a safe and effective vaccine. next slide. and so if you look now, i've entitled this slide vaccinations in the united states. much accomplished but also much to do.

i was providing technical help support to the ministry of public health. i was working in close collaboration with dr. michael. now i remember working on increasing health needle ibp and i've got a spot in court at 91900 response and ensuring cross pictorial collaboration. in regards to this to important area, as of the last week there was the wheezing final class that government and their province were falling one after another. starting from new roles and being up in kandahar and all about the money that we were not even protecting bank. a there was a lot of flesh on bank bank. if we there was a weight of that gun. he lost the values in these are defined of collapse and then we were informed that tyler bond had reached to couple doors in there were signs of shooting. and that's how i managed to go to the airport and i was able to come to the last flight and but money people had a lot of trouble leaping. i've got a phone. i'm the only one left from my family and my family still in college. are you worried about them? yes, my sisters who are also healthcare

is that going to hiring new public health officials or school health officials, just for the testing issue alone? is that happening? guest: it is really hard to get a handle on who is doing this in schools because there's not a reporting system in place that gathers information on what schools are doing testing programs, whether they are doing rapid testing or what types of testing or screening programs, so without that information it is hard to understand what the landscape looks like. we are hearing concerns from schools about things like risk factors in terms of having food during testing, so there are a lot of questions at that level about how to do this will and had to make it effective if we want to keep kids in school. one of the pieces of information that we are listing is when schools are doing this, how are they doing it and if it is working and we need to work harder to gather that information and share it across the school systems and across public health. host: lori tremmel freeman taking your phone calls. you can call in on phone lines (202)748-8000 if you are in the ea

but a public health mandate has to be based on a public health emergency where it has shown to be better than vaccination. but in this case, we had -- and because of that, we need a metric, we need public health officials to be clear and say there is going to be in offramp. it will either be based on cdc metrics. they put it on moderate and low transmission in which you don't have to mask. or you can base it on the hospitalization rate in your region. but if you do not tell someone clearly when the mask mandate comes up, that is completely not the right way for public health to work. we have to be clear. kristen: most of the bay area counties have numbers comparable to santa cruz or perhaps even better. but they have not removed the indoor masking mandate and we do not know when. but some other countries have spelled it out more clearly than the u.s. monica: they say when we get to this point, this happens. kristen: what you are saying now and what you wrote in the wall street journal in an op-ed today, my take away is you believe -- and tell me if i am wrong -- that the pandemic phase i

you can also that he's a public health expert, i believe it through a political point of view. it does make a lot of sense because the polls are 2 things. one, yes, the public are increasingly blaming the on vaccinated for the continued restrictions, but they're also losing confidence in job biking was handling off the pandemic. i mean, it was very biden in june, who proclaimed this summer free of coverage. i had a july 4th policy to prove that justice the delta vary was really taking hold and that he took that booster shots a few weeks ago, even though they hadn't been, hadn't been given regulatory approval. there real questions about biden's handling off the pandemic. but this was him, say, look, this isn't my fault, but whether then, this sort of tack them off trying to stoke those tension them between his base people who despise, despise, feeling, vaccinated in order to take the deflect the blame from himself. well then lead to a better public health outcome is, is, is questionable, but certainly the very least there, he's able them to, to foot refocuses. they stoke up his

reinvigorating public health is crucial to avoid future outbreaks from vaccine preventable diseases. the immunization infrastructure modernization act seeks to modernize data on public immunizations. it will enhance our response to outbreaks in future pandemics. second, many organizations partnered to educate the public on covid-19 vaccines. education must extend to other vaccines and outreach to at-risk populations can increase immunization rates. congress should pass the bills for these goals. we realize the different barriers to access, especially for people of color, seniors, and those in rural areas. many face financial and logistical impediments. congress acted early to make sure the covid vaccines were covered at accessible. -- and accessible. please do the same for the full comment of cdc recommended vaccines for adults bypassing the protecting seniors through immunization act. these bills will reduce financial barriers by sharing costs. cost sharing is essential because of their immense benefits. vaccines not only prevent a person from being sick but others as well, and they

mr review and to give us a new public health act?— review and to give us a new public health act?r, we keep all rules under review _ health act? mr speaker, we keep all rules under review at _ health act? mr speaker, we keep all rules under review at all _ health act? mr speaker, we keep all rules under review at all times. - health act? mr speaker, we keep all rules under review at all times. he l rules under review at all times. he will rules under review at all times. he: will know from the discussions he describes with international colleagues that while travelling the rest of europe has recovered to 60% of pre—covert levels, it is a fraction of that here, so when will he scrap the outdated, unnecessary and hugely expensive travel testing regime, save what is left of an industry, and end of the situation where foreign travel has once again become the preserve of the rich? mr speaker, i say two things to the right honourable gentleman, first of all that it is important that we have a system of surveillance, especially around variants across the world. there are different ways t

once you realize that, you realize the endless talk about public health is about public health, if itut public health the employees would make the vaccine available to anybody who wanted it and call it a victory which it would be. but that's not what it's about. it's about power. these demands are so obviously irrational that it's forcing you to accept them without complaint is the whole point of the exercise. it's a form of sadomasochism, dominance and submission. it's about power. if they can make you take medicine you don't want or need to come a day your they are his. you belong to them. they want and enough to destroy the health care system in order to do it. the irony in the speech the moment that joe biden accuse the unvaccinated of wrecking the hospital system, they'll plug the system. at that moment actual hospitals around the country were beginning to deny critical services to patients because too many nurses had quit. why did the nurses quick? because the vaccine mandate. they left their jobs rather than get the covid vaccine. yesterday is one example hospital in new york s

and they made the determination that the public health of the migrants themselves, our personnel, local communities, and the american public require it. and that is why we are exercising that authority, to serve the public health. over 600,000 americans have died. more than 40 u.s. customs and border protection personnel have died. many migrants have gotten sick. we are doing this out of a public health need. it is not an immigration policy. it is not an immigration policy that we would embrace. >> last one. reporter: secretary, thank you. congregating. you just mentioned covid. what is the situation there? i know the crowd has been dispersed. do we know if people have gotten sick anytime since this group of people of 15,000, you said? secretary mayorkas: we did not test that population of individuals. we do not know -- i do not know -- if i may be perfectly accurate -- i don't know whether anyone was sick with covid. we certainly had some individuals get sick. not specifically with covid, to my knowledge. and we addressed their illnesses. in fact, we set up medical tents that had a cer

remember, that is a public health authority. it is not an immigration policy. it is exercised as the cdc, the centers for disease control, has ordered, in light of the arc of the pandemic. the public has to remember that we are in the midst of a pandemic. the delta variant caused a setback. more than 600,000 americans have died, more than 40 u.s. customs and border protection front line personnel have lost their lives. this is a public health imperative to protect migrants themselves, local communities, our personnel and the american public. >> right. it's called title 42. top democrats in congress want the biden administration to stop invoking it and stop using it. would you be open to that? >> well, it is a public health authority that is determined to be an imperative for the public health reasons that i just expressed. we made one important exception at the very outset, and that was to not apply it to unaccompanied children. there are exceptions to the application of that public health authority, the convention against torture, if someone makes a legitimate

hard, i inherited an agency both people's working tirelessly for the last 18 months to protect public health. it's all during their work remotely so getting to know the people doing that work has been hard diving in and recognizing so much of the public and public health and they hands of these -- this agency. i've taken on the task with that work in hand and a feeling of great gift of inheriting incredible people working every day and night, literally to make sure the public is safe. katherine: definitely. i'd love to talk about your decision-making process which had to be incredibly fast-paced and not always clear cut in every single direction. you and your team have repeatedly ben tasked with collecting and analyzing endless flows of data is often imperfect and collected in real time and and making high-stakes decisions for the public good. how are you balancing timeliness of these recommendations with sticking to scientific rigor? you know, during a pandemic, all is enough enough to make a big sweeping recommendation especially when data might conflict experts disagree with each other? d

owing to recommendations of public health experts. health officials say children in the city schools have been protected by a layered approach, including masking proper ventilation and the city's overall high vaccination rate. certainly san francisco's extremely high vaccination rate among eligible persons is really contributing. so 81% of those 12 and up have gotten fully vaccinated and that is really outstanding in all. the department of public health reports that as of september 8th. there were 227 cases. of covid among the districts, 52,000 students and 10,000 staff members, the city's department of health saying children make up just 11.5% of covid cases in san francisco and are bucking the national trend where juvenile cases are surging, making up close to 27% of cases nationwide due to the fast spreading delta variant, and that's in contrast for that percentage has been higher in the rest of the country, where masks for instance, or not in schools where vaccination rates are lower. so it really shows the power of all of these le

diving right in and recognizing so much of the future of the public and public health rising in the hands of this agency. and you know, i have taken on the task with work in hand with incredible people day and night, literally, to make sure the public is safe. >> definitely. i'd like to talk about your decision making process that had to be fast paced and not always clear-cut. you and your team have been tasked with an endless flow of data, that's often imperfect and collected in real time and high stakes decisions for the public good. how are you balancing timeliness of these recommendations with sticking to scientific rigor during a pandemic. what is enough for a sweeping recommendation especially when data might conflict and many of the experts disagree with each other? >> that's an important point and one of the things we've done since i've been here is to understand and try and anticipate what are the questions that people are going to be asking a month from now, two months from now and what are the data that we need to be collecting now to inform those decisions? >> sometimes the da

the cdc doesn't have those connections, they just interface with public health labs. they never were going to be the right organization to mount this kind of response. we need to have an organization with more capability. we realized that when it came to developing a vaccine. what you saw the administration ultimately do was create operation warp speed which was a marriage between scientists and regulators and dod and fema. you saw the synergy between the fda and an organization with the lift capacity like the dod. the same thing needed to happen at the outset in terms of national response and it didn't just why we got so inundated with the virus early on and we couldn't keep up the crisis. >> fast forward to today. were trying to convince a good chunk of the public to get the vaccine. in your opinion, what is the best way to reach some of these holdouts? dr. gottlieb: continue to chip away at it. focus efforts to get people who haven't been vaccinated vaccinated. some people, it's still difficult for them it's not convenient. we have to go into community axing sites

state it will in the long run be worse for public health, just not worth it.you both tonight. a particularly disappointing address, president bush chose to commemorate 9/11 not by unifying the country but in the process smearing millions of his fellow americans. and moments my angle takes on his words and explains how this should crystallize the views of the current gop. >> we won't be fooled again,n, e folks of tonight's angle. there was a lot of speculation among media types why president biden didn't deliver a live address at one of the 9/11 memorial sites. conservatives snicker it was because they didn't want to embarrass themselves and liberals blame it on the possibility that president biden might be. while speaking. another theory that is just as plausible. why would president biden need to speak at all when george w. bush would do it for him. >> we've seen growing evidence the dangers to our country are not only across borders but violence that gathers with him. there is little cultural overlap between find history masks abroad and violent extremists a

consult with your public health officials. so that you can identify whether you're in a place that a booster is right for you. katherine: yeah. i think a couple followup questions to that. there was a lot of data sort of breaking down vaccine effectiveness against the sort of tiers of protection. you know, we have more severe, disease hospitalization and , death, all symptomatic. any infection whatsoever. it's been clear from the beginning the public health priority is to certainly focus on the absolute worst outcomes knowing that's where vaccines will hold out the longest. what are you thinking at this point in terms of what boosters are going to do for the populations they have been greenlight for? are you most worried about infections, some symptoms? where can we see the biggest bang for our buck? dr. walensky: i think this is exactly where the scientific deliberation was during the f.d.a. and c.d.c. vaccine advisory meetings. you know, our clinical trials were evaluating symptomatic disease, so it didn't create, you have t

yeah, i think it sends a really important public health message. right and so a lot of our discussion yesterday and you know berkeley's really lucky because we have a local public health department and so what's really important for us is that we continue to work closely with our public health department to make sure that at the youth level where educating other young people that are not vaccinated yet about the importance of the vaccine mandate, i think it sends a strong public health message. um you know, i think there's a lot of great things that we're doing in berkeley because we have that close relationship with our public health department. and i think that you know, a mandate is about sending that strong message that we're going to do everything possible to keep our students safe as we returned to in person learning. well, today we got an update from california health and human services secretary dr marc galle. on this very issue, he said the state is actually considering the requirement during his morning briefing, let's go ahead now and ta

. >> it's the public health professionals, dr.ctors tell us that we should take it, i will be the first in line to take it, absolutely. but if donald trump tells us we should take it, i'm not taking it. >> laura: her part and continues her nefarious anti-vax campaign to this day tweeting last night that we need to take more action to protect the vaccinated. but if the vaccinated aren't even protected from covid by getting vaccinated, many on the sidelines are going to ask what the heck is the point? incredibly confusing to most people. your enemy now, professor of medicine at sanford and professor of epidemiology at yale school of public health. okay, i am continually stunned by this messaging from the white house and now we will get to the booster thing in a moment but your reaction to the suite last night? >> it is absolutely shocking to me to hear essentially an anti-vax message come out of the mouth of the vice president. the vaccine is incredibly effective at protecting people lick and severe disease but if you are vaccinated

>> i think we need to look at public health affairs and national security and if we are thinking of publicthrough the orientation, start to thinkh about how you place different capacities in response to a crisis of this magnitude and we didn't have this. there's a perception the city's he had to amount a national scale response to a crisis of this magnitude but it's not the work in the highside organization with scientific analyses of outbreaks but retrospective mindset to analyze information. they don't provide personal information and help make decisionsge and you don't have n operational capacity that mounts a national response. this was the most obvious around testing, cdc didn't have the capacity to develop at the scale on infrastructure ort resources for the contacting of manufacturers to scale that response and develop an of testing wouldn't have enough test early on and we didn't have the connections to that community beyond their relationship to the public health representative to deploy the. they had to go into labs and get them set up and they had to have manufacturers on top of

title 42 is a public health authority and not an immigration policy. it is important to note that title 42 is applicable and has been applicable to all irregular migration during this pandemic. it is not specific to haitian nationals or the current situation. some more data. to date, d.h.s. has conducted 17 expulsion flights to haiti with approximately 2,000 individuals. those who are not expelled under title 42 are placed in immigration removal proceedings. let me take a step back and explain the process. there are two exceptions to the applicability of title 42, the public health authority. number one is if an individual has an acute vulnerability such as an urgent medical care, and two, if, in fact, our operational capacity is such that we are not able to execute the title 42 authority that rests with the centers for disease control. i should also say that there is a convention against torture exception, if someone claims torture, which is a distint legal standard. - distinct legal standard. individuals as i mentioned with acute vulnerability can be

if we're going to make us more resistant to these public health crises, we need to address knows inequitiesties it becomes more manifest in a crisis like this where the technologies are available, they're not readily accessible, but the well connected and the wealthy have the capability to find their way towards these opportunities. those who aren't well connected and wealthy don't. we'll have to address it that's a big part of the book, i talk about that. if we want to make ourselves more resilient, it's not just a matter of improving our technology and information collection and shoring up the cdc but also grappling with these structural issues in our society that leave too many people behind when it comes to public health and health care. >> scott, first of all, i want to thank you for being on with us so frequently since this whole thing started. for a while you were with us five days a week, now probably three days a week, but what you've been telling us the whole way along has been right if anybody wonders why, it's laid out in the book today it's called "uncontrolled spread." scott w

if we think of public health and public health preparedness through that orientation, you start to think about how you put in place different kinds of catastrophes to us -- to respond to a crisis of this magnitude. there is a perception that cdc had this and could mount a full-scale response to a crisis of this magnitude but it's not the kind of organization they are. they do exquisite scientific analysis of outbreaks. it's a very retrospective mindset as far as how they gather information. they don't provide partial information. they don't have an operational capacity to actually mount a national response. i think this is where it was obvious was around testing. the cdc cannot deploy scale with the resources to turn to contract manufacturers to scale that response and scale the development of testing so we didn't have enough tests developed early on and they didn't have the connections to the lab community beyond their relationship to the public health labs to deploy tests. they had to be able to go into academic labs and get them stood up and turned to contract manufacturers that would

and the good news is we know how to beat this pandemic, vaccines, public health measures and collective action. during the first eight months of my presidency, we have worked aggressively to get americans and the world vaccinated. as president of the united states. my first responsibility is to protect the american people, and i'm proud that we've gone from 2 million americans being fully vaccinated when i took office on january 20, 182 million and to counting today in america. but we also know that to beat the pandemic care, we need to beat it everywhere. and i made, and i'm keeping the promise that america will become the arsenal of vaccines as we're the arsenal for democracy during world war ii. we've already shipped nearly 160 million doses to 100 countries, more than every other country has donated combined. america's donations of a half a billion pfizer vaccines through covax that i've announced before the g7 summit in june have already begun to ship. today, i'm announcing another historic commitment. the united states is buying another half billion doses of pfizer to donate to lo

know something about public health. is living in the bay area where a big chunk of my friends died of hiv. >> there are so many things and what you just said. some people watching will be surprised. surprised to hear, you are doing this very pragmatic, obvious thing. what was the resistance that you saw early on? what did you see initially? >> some of the lines where you are company inc. drug use. you are making drug use easier to which, you know, okay, i guess some people do like needles, but most people are trying to get high. [laughter] i don't even need drugs anymore. [laughter] that is what people would say. there was that line out there. the anthropologist as you came up with it, if they are still alive, they really should be getting slapped. intrinsic to the drug use culture. things are scarce. people share. if we do not have enough food and we are decent human beings, we will split up the food. as opposed to saying something, that drug users do because, i don't know, drugs make you really sherry. a lot of myths

, national public health crisis.have to change their culture and mindset and be a much more forward leaning prospectively focused agency. the cdc has a retrospective mindset, they collect data from bespoke data feeds, but they take months to reach conclusions and publish those conclusions in a weekly report. what you need in the setting of a fast-moving crisis is an agency able to surface realtime information, do realtime analytics to inform current policy making. cdc wasn't up to that task. before we even have this discussion we will have to have a more fundamental discussion about the role of public health officials in the setting of a public health crisis. i think to properly have the right orientation going forward for how we grapple with these kinds of crises you will need to empower public health officials and public health agencies in a way that they perhaps weren't even empowered in this crisis. i think there's a lot of people this isn't just a right versus left debate, reap/democrat, i think there's a lot of