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In early March 2020, as the nation succumbed to a pandemic, a group of young scientists walked out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They left quietly, one or two at a time, through the building’s front doors, flashing their badges at guards, instead of through side exits where their departures would be recorded.
Gathering in a small park across the street, they stood with their coffees in hand and agonized over some shocking developments.
All through February 2020, agency scientists had been gathering evidence that the new coronavirus was being spread by people without symptoms. In early March, the C.D.C. said that any employee who had been deployed elsewhere to track Covid-19 must isolate at home for 14 days, whether or not he or she had symptoms.
To the scientists gathered outside, trainees in the agency’s vaunted Epidemic Intelligence Service, the implication was clear: C.D.C. leaders realized that the virus was being spread not just by people who were coughing and sneezing, but also by people who were not visibly ill. But the agency had not yet warned the public.
“All of us knew tens of thousands were going to die, and we were helpless to stop it,” said Dr. Daniel Wozniczka, one of the trainees. “It was really heartbreaking and difficult on a psychological level not to be able to do anything.”
It is generally known that morale at the C.D.C. plummeted as Trump administration officials sought to squelch dissent among career scientists who disagreed with the White House’s handling of the pandemic. But few employees have described the despair inside the beleaguered agency as hospitals overflowed with patients and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues.
Interviews with 11 current and former agency employees, including trainees at the E.I.S., as well as a review of text messages and other documents obtained by The New York Times, portray an agency under intense pressure from the country’s political leaders. Some younger staff members wrestled with guilt, anger and a rising sense of powerlessness as administration officials meddled with or simply disregarded important scientific research.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved. Powered by Vanilla
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