The CDC's new guidance for masks concedes that one size does not fit all

Last update: Tuesday 3/1/22 

This first part of a two-part blog note celebrates the CDC's long overdue recognition that its guidance should vary from one community to another and from one individual in a community to another individual. To be specific, this note provides a brief overview of the mitigation guidance that the CDC issued on 2/25/22. The second part (coming soon) will discuss the rationale for the new guidance and will present a few critical assessments.

Why does the CDC hoard the data that supports its guidance?

Last update: Thursday 2/23/22 

Regular readers of this blog know that its editor does not believe that our mismanagement of the pandemic was caused by "bad guys". The primary source of our failure continues to be the incorrect and/or untimely guidance provided by the CDC. There are no "bad guys" at the CDC, just a bunch of well-intended, poorly organized experts in the bio sciences who have little or no training or prior experience managing human behavior in an unavoidably political context. To be sure, President Trump was an irresponsible "bad guy" who should have perceived the CDC's collective incompetence during the initial months of the pandemic; he should have reorganized it immediately from top to bottom. President Biden is not irresponsible, but he is becoming a "bad guy" by refusing to conduct the top-to-bottom reorganization that is more needed now than when his predecessor sat in the Oval Office. This blog note was triggered by a recent article in the NY Times that discussed one of the CDC's most pernicious habits: data hoarding.

Returning to more normal living, regardless of mandates

Last update: Thursday 2/17/22 

Masks have been controversial throughout the pandemic. After an infamous flip-flop, the CDC told all non-healthcare professionals in March 2020 to wear cloth masks. Cloth masks reduced the amount of virus pollution their wearers exhaled into the air around a cluster of people who were positioned closer than six feet from each other. This reduction in pollution density caused a reduction in the percentage of the people in the cluster who became infected. Given the wide variety of masks that people chose to wear, often incorrectly, there were no reliable estimates of "mask effectiveness" akin to estimates of "vaccine effectiveness". Had comparable data about masks been available, the controversy about masks would have been reduced, but not eliminated.

Maybe it's time to #DefundTheCDC

Last update: Wednesday 2/16/22

We don't propose to literally shut down all of the CDC's operations. Our intention is to impose a pause on the CDC's issuance of new guidance while Omicron's current surge subsides in most states. Ideally the CDC should be an agile developer of reliable public policy; but too often its guidance has been too early, then flip-flopped, or too late to have substantial impact. 

How many (booster) shots do older people really need under Omicron?

Last update: Tuesday 2/15/22 

We begin this note with a brief recap. When Delta became the dominant variant in the U.S. last summer, it was found to be more transmissible, more lethal, and produced more breakthrough infections than previous variants. Our vaccines lost much of their effectiveness in preventing new infections after five or six months, although they remained highly effective in preventing severe illness and death. Our vaccines elicited weaker immune responses among older people and people who had compromised immune systems. Taken together these factors encouraged the distribution of booster shots to people who were older, immunocompromised, or worked on "front-line" jobs that exposed them to greater contact with the disease. As if all of this weren't bad enough, along came Omicron and our winter of discontent.

Returning to normal living by leveraging the background immunity of local communities

Last update: Saturday 2/12/22 

Within the last few days, the governors of New Jersey, California, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon abandoned mandates that required masks in schools and/or other venues.  Mainstream media quickly flagged their decisions as political rebellions against the Biden administration's mask policies as articulated by CDC guidance, a rebellion that was all the more surprising because these states are among the most highly vaccinated in the nation. Nevertheless, this blog note will argue that Dr. Fauci's notion of "background immunity" suggests that their high vaccination rates may make these states the best role models for other state's striving to provide their residents with science based off-ramps from the pandemic to a new normal.

Why is the CDC incapable of producing timely guidance?

Last update: Saturday 2/5/22

The CDC recently released two reports that were late, as usual. One was about three months late; the other was at least a year overdue. Why? What does the CDC staff really do all day? Why hasn't the CDC reorganized its internal processes to produce timely guidance in our fast moving, very deadly pandemic? Operation Warp Speed produced highly effective vaccines in nine months, less than half the usual development time. So why can't the CDC cut its red tape to produce guidance when it's really needed?

Living with Omicron on campus from December 2021 through January 2022

Last update: Thursday 2/3/22

This note is the second in a series of blog entries that use word clouds to provide overviews of the impact of the coronavirus on the day-to-day operations of U.S. colleges and universities. The first entry covered the brief "Age of Delta" from August 2021 through November 2021. This one covers the "Rise of Omicron" from December 2021 through January 2022. Both are based on virus-related notes posted on the continuously updated "Live Update" page of Inside Higher Ed (IHE), one of the nation's leading academic news publications.