Four former heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday implicitly rebuked President Donald Trump, arguing the "extraordinary" efforts by him and other administration officials to diminish the public health agency's guidance were contributing to a resurgence of coronavirus cases across the United States.
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, former CDC Directors Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan and David Satcher, as well as former acting CDC Director Richard Besser, fiercely criticized "political leaders and others attempting to undermine" the agency as it works to issue recommendations for schools seeking to reopen their doors for the fall semester.
"As the debate last week around reopening schools more safely showed, these repeated efforts to subvert sound public health guidelines introduce chaos and uncertainty while unnecessarily putting lives at risk," the op-ed's authors wrote, adding that while "[i]t is not unusual for CDC guidelines to be changed or amended" during a multi-agency clearance process, "it is extraordinary for guidelines to be undermined after their release."
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