[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
OVERSIGHT OF CDC POLICIES AND
DECISIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE
CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 13, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-42
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov, oversight.house.gov or docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
52-638 WASHINGTON : 2026
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
Jim Jordan, Ohio Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking
Mike Turner, Ohio Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Gary Palmer, Alabama Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Pete Sessions, Texas Ro Khanna, California
Andy Biggs, Arizona Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Jake LaTurner, Kansas Katie Porter, California
Pat Fallon, Texas Cori Bush, Missouri
Byron Donalds, Florida Jimmy Gomez, California
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota Shontel Brown, Ohio
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
William Timmons, South Carolina Robert Garcia, California
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Maxwell Frost, Florida
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Becca Balint, Vermont
Lisa McClain, Michigan Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Greg Casar, Texas
Russell Fry, South Carolina Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Dan Goldman, New York
Chuck Edwards, North Carolina Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Nick Langworthy, New York
Eric Burlison, Missouri
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Mark Marin, Staff Director
Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director
Marie Policastro, Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5074
Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director
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Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman
Nicole Malliotakis, New York Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa Minority Member
Debbie Lesko, Arizona Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Michael Cloud, Texas Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
John Joyce, Pennsylvania Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Robert Garcia, California
Ronny Jackson, Texas Ami Bera, California
Rich Mccormick, Georgia Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Brad Wenstrup, U.S. Representative, Chairman................ 1
Hon. Raul Ruiz, U.S. Representative, Ranking Member.............. 3
WITNESS
Ms. Rochelle Walensky, M.D., M.P.H., Director, U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention
Oral Statement................................................... 5
Written opening statements and the written statements of the
witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives
Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
Documents entered into the record during this hearing are listed
below.
* Report, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Commission; submitted by Rep. Bera.
* Staff Report, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis;
submitted by Rep. Raskin.
* Letter, June 6, 2023, to Rep. Miller-Meeks from American
Federation of Teachers (AFT), submitted by Rep. Miller-Meeks.
* Report, Jama Network Open; submitted by Rep. Miller-Meeks.
ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS
* Questions for the Record: to Dr. Walensky; submitted by Rep.
Miller-Meeks.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
OVERSIGHT OF CDC POLICIES AND
DECISIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
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TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 2023
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
Washington, D.C.
The Select Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10
a.m., in room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad
Wenstrup [Chairman of the Select Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Comer, Wenstrup, Miller-Meeks,
Lesko, Joyce, Greene, Jackson, McCormick, Raskin, Ruiz,
Dingell, Mfume, Ross, Garcia, Bera, and Tokuda.
Also present: Representative Jordan.
Dr. Wenstrup. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus
Pandemic will come to order. I want to welcome everyone here
today.
Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any
time.
Pursuant to Rule 7(d) of the Committee on Oversight and
Accountability, and at the discretion of Chairman Comer, Mr.
Jordan, a Member of the full Committee, may participate in
today's hearing for the purposes of questions.
I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN BRAD WENSTRUP
REPRESENTATIVE FROM OHIO
Today the Select Subcommittee is holding a hearing to
examine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
policies and decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The
pandemic sent shockwaves through all aspects of American life:
school, work, family, sports, and faith. This was a novel
virus. There was much we did not know, and we did not know how
to react. Educated guesses were the best we could do in some
cases, especially early on.
But throughout, I maintained hope on what should have and
could have united our country but did not, instead drove
division, unfortunately. I was hopeful that the pandemic could
be a unifying force for our country and for the world. After
all, a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.
Unfortunately, in many ways, our public health leadership did
not always rise to the occasion. Instead of being a calm and
trusted voice of science and reason, the American people often
felt let down, often deceived, and left damaged.
Director Walensky, given how difficult it was to get you
here today, with the HHS often negotiating on your behalf, it
appears that maybe this Administration did not want you to
speak regarding these topics. In case you are unaware, nearly
ten weeks ago, on April 5, the Select Subcommittee requested
that the CDC make you available to testify today. On May 22,
the Select Subcommittee officially invited you to testify.
Through the negotiation process, the Biden Administration said
there was insufficient time for you to prepare. Now this may
even astonish you, considering the Select Subcommittee provided
nearly ten weeks' notice. The Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) then rejected two other later dates and provided
more seemingly illogical excuses.
Again, in case you are unaware, it took the threat of a
subpoena for the Administration to finally allow you to attend
this hearing. We think that maybe you were willing the whole
time, so I want to thank you personally for being here today.
It is, however, curious that the Administration tried so hard
to hide you from the American people. I suppose that some would
rather the American people simply move on, but without review
of processes and decisionmaking, it is difficult to plan for
the future, and there will be a problem again in the future.
It is the duty of this Select Subcommittee to ensure that
we address failings so we are not doomed to repeat them. As
well, let us affirm the positives. These are our duties and our
obligations.
Throughout the pandemic, CDC published confusing guidance
and made divisive and confusing statements, and we must talk
about these things. Director Walensky, you made several of
these statements yourself, some that even contradicted CDC's
official guidance. We have many questions about some of the
statements made by several people, and directives made, and
facts that may be contradictory.
Beginning with on February 3, 2021, you said, ``There is
increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen, and
that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be
vaccinated.'' The next day, then White House press secretary,
Jen Psaki, said, ``Dr. Walensky spoke to this in her personal
capacity.'' That is interesting. You were speaking at a White
House press briefing when you made the statement. The official
CDC logo was behind you, and the transcript is on the White
House website. Does not sound like personal capacity to me.
Seems like the Biden Administration just disagreed with what
you were saying, and we will ask you about that today.
On March 29, 2021, Director Walensky, you also stated,
``Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people
do not carry the virus, do not get sick.'' Three days later, a
CDC spokesman walked this back and said that you were speaking
broadly, and that some people who are fully vaccinated might
indeed catch COVID-19. So this raises the question of whether
the science supported what you were publicly saying or not.
The lack of scientific awareness of the Biden
Administration became clear when on July 2021, President Biden
made the unequivocal statement, if you are vaccinated, you are
not going to be hospitalized, you are not going to be in the
intensive care unit, and you are not going to die. We will ask
you about that and are interested in hearing if the data CDC
had at the time supported that statement or if it was made for
political or other purposes.
At times, CDC seemingly accepted guidance from political
organizations instead of relying on the real time scientific
data. In our hearing in April with the American Federation of
Teachers President, Randi Weingarten, we examined its
interactions with the CDC. Dr. Henry Walke, a scientist at the
CDC, described AFT's level of access as uncommon. Ms.
Weingarten testified to having your direct phone number and
provided the CDC with line-by-line edits and received an
advanced copy of the full internal draft guidance, and some of
her edits were even accepted. This level of access is uncommon.
The AFT even suggested adding a closure trigger to
automatically shut schools down. Even though this specific edit
was not accepted, the others that were have had some severe
consequences. And I believe it is appropriate for the AFT to
seek CDC guidance, but not to give you or the CDC medical and
scientific advice.
Drug use, violence, mental health issues, and suicide among
our Nation's children have skyrocketed, while test scores have
severely fallen. Some will attempt to undermine the Select
Subcommittee's efforts by saying that hindsight is 20/20 or
that we are playing Monday morning quarterback, but our role is
to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic. This requires looking
back in order to plan ahead. It requires asking questions to
evaluate how decisions were made and how they were implemented,
and once that is done, we may put forth solutions based on
facts, not suppositions.
So I look forward to a strong, respectful, and on-topic
discussion. Honesty is non-negotiable. Again, I thank you for
being here today, voluntarily, and I look forward to your
testimony. And with that, I yield to the Ranking Member, Dr.
Ruiz, for any opening statement he would like to make.
OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER RAUL RUIZ
REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Director
Walensky, for being here today.
As Ranking Member of this Select Subcommittee, I have often
said how important it is that we focus on forward-looking
policy solutions that will leave us better prepared in the
event of another deadly novel airborne virus. At the forefront
of this work is the Nation's Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, which under Director Walensky's direction, helped
guide us out of the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her
steadfast leadership mobilized the most successful vaccination
campaign in our Nation's history, leading to more than 600
million shots in arms, prevented 18.5 million hospitalizations,
and saved 3.2 million lives from COVID-19.
Under her leadership, 95 percent of America schools that
were forced to close during the previous administration's
failed pandemic response safely reopened for in-person learning
within just one year. And because of her tireless efforts, our
Nation's public health workforce was fortified, and the CDC
made critical strides to ensure that the American people
received accurate data-informed public health guidance that
reflected what we knew about an evolving, ever-changing
pandemic at crucial points in time.
I say all this to not only thank Dr. Walensky for her
service to the Nation, but also to stress where we were and
where we are today because of her leadership. You see, when Dr.
Walensky began her tenure at the CDC, she inherited a
beleaguered Agency during the pandemic's deadliest two months
stretch on record in the United States. In fact, every day,
more than 3,000 people in the United States died from COVID-19.
What is more, Dr. Walensky ascended to the role as director not
only as the Agency was in the midst of battling a deadly novel
virus, but also as it was suffering from the severe setbacks
and damaged morale that resulted from months of political
interference by the former President and his administration.
Throughout the early months of the pandemic, our Nation's
scientists were sidelined by White House officials and the
President's political allies who meddled in CDC's
communications, public health guidance, and scientific reports.
That is in addition to the President's own downplaying of the
coronavirus, which hampered our Nation's pandemic response
during one of the deadliest periods in America's history. This
political interference and harmful messaging by the former
President also manufactured a deep distrust in our Nation's
public health institutions, fundamentally undermining our
ability to respond to future threats. That, coupled with the
ongoing vilification of public health experts with the purpose
of advancing a partisan narrative, and now we are seeing the
real and dangerous consequence.
In fact, a February 2022 Pew Research Center report found
that fewer than three in ten adults in the United States now
have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in
the public's interests. As a physician and public health
expert, this is deeply concerning to me, and it should be to us
all. Our ability to prevent harm and save lives in the event of
another pandemic is intrinsically tied to a strong relationship
between our Nation's public health experts and the American
people. So where do we go from here? How do we move forward?
Now that we are on the other side of this pandemic, thanks
to Director Walensky and the Biden Administration's leadership
in delivering vaccines and safely reopening workplaces,
schools, and our economy, we have the opportunity to rebuild
the trust that has been eroded. We have the chance to right the
wrongs of the previous administration by identifying and
implementing real solutions that leave us better prepared in
the event of another deadly virus, solutions like empowering
the CDC to promote comprehensive and timely data collection and
reporting, equipping the CDC with tools and resources necessary
to continue rapidly disseminating accurate information and
guidance to the American public without political interference,
and investing in the CDC so that it can continue to support its
states and local partners in the face of future public health
threats.
It is now that we should work to reinspire confidence in
our Nation's public health officials, not continue to vilify
falsified motives and breed distrust in them. It is now that we
should continue to assemble a strong public health workforce
and see through Director Walensky's vision for the CDC to
identify, prevent, and respond to novel viruses and threats
more nimbly. And it is now that we should build on the Biden
Administration's progress to bolster whole-of-government
pandemic preparedness so that we can more rapidly respond in a
future public health crisis.
So today I hope we can make progress on advancing these
objectives because if we do, we can and will ensure the Nation
is better prepared in a future public health crisis. And that
means future harm will be prevented and more lives will be
saved. Thank you, and I yield back.
Mrs. Lesko. [Presiding.] Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. Our witness
today is Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Dr. Walensky currently serves
as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. She was previously the Chief of Division of
Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a
professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Walensky
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Washington University in
St. Louis, received a Doctor of Medicine from John Hopkins
School of Medicine, and a Master of Public Health from the
Harvard School of Public Health. Thank you for being here
today.
Pursuant to Committee on Oversight and Accountability Rule
9(g), the witness will please stand and raise her right hand.
Thank you.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth so help you God?
Dr. Walensky. I do.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. Let the record show that the witness
answered in the affirmative.
The Select Subcommittee certainly appreciates you being
here today, and we look forward to your testimony.
Let me remind the witness that we have read your written
statement, and it will appear in full in the hearing record.
Please limit your oral statement to 5 minutes. As a reminder,
please press the button on the microphone in front of you so
that it is on and the members can hear you. When you begin to
speak, the light in front of you will turn green. After 4
minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red light comes
on, your 5 minutes has expired, and we would ask that you
please wrap up.
I now recognize Dr. Walensky to give an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF ROCHELLE WALENSKY, M.D., M.P.H.
DIRECTOR
U.S. CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
Dr. Walensky. Thank you. Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member
Ruiz, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, it is an
honor to be here with you today.
I came to CDC in January 2021 as a practicing infectious
disease doctor and researcher who had been on the front lines
of the pandemic, treating patients with COVID-19. I leave later
this month with a great sense of accomplishment that the public
health emergency has ended, and with an unwavering respect and
admiration for the dedicated people across CDC working every
day to protect the health of Americans.
When I started, CDC faced enormous challenges. For example,
the sharing of data was too slow and often relied on fax
machines, which greatly hindered Federal, state, and local
leaders from having timely access to critical public health
data. As a Nation, we have mourned the loss of more than 1.1
million family members, neighbors, colleagues, and friends from
COVID-19. And we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are
still losing people to this disease every single day, but
thankfully, we are in a much different place today. The end of
the public health emergency last month marked a tremendous
transition for our country and for public health. Now we have
the tools we need to protect people in our communities from
severe infection and death. Thanks to the work of CDC, our
partners in state and local government, the private sector, and
frontline healthcare workers, more than 676 million doses of
vaccines have been administered across the United States,
saving millions of lives. These vaccines built a wall of
protection which dramatically decrease the risk of severe
disease and death from COVID-19.
When I started at CDC, just one-third of school districts
were offering daily in-person instruction. With my three boys
at home with me, getting schools open was a top priority for
me. I, like many of you, recognized the critical role that
schools play in supporting social, physical, behavioral,
emotional, and mental well-being of our children. In fact, one
of the first guidance documents released by CDC, just 23 days
after I started, was the operational strategy for K-12 schools
through phased mitigation on February 12, 2021. This roadmap to
reopen schools and help them remain open was the result of
countless work hours by CDC staff, along with feedback from
over 50 organizations and implementing partners, organizations,
and individuals whose engagement we needed, whose participation
was essential if school opening was actually going to happen,
and it worked. By the fall of 2021, nearly every school
district in the United States offered daily in-person
instruction.
Throughout my tenure as CDC director, I used the best
available and often emerging data to inform real-time policy
decisions. Rarely did we see new scientific findings that were
immediately and unanimously clear and consistent, but at CDC,
we have a strong commitment to acting quickly with transparency
when new science gives us better ways to protect the public
health needs of our most vulnerable.
For example, when two studies were released in March 2021
showing that we could reduce physical distancing in schools
from six feet to three feet, we acted to release new updated
school guidance just four weeks after our initial effort.
Fortunately, today we know so much more about this virus than
we did when it first emerged, and in 2023, we believe the
darkest days of this pandemic are now part of our history.
Despite important accomplishments and improvements to our
public health lab capacities, expanded ability to collect and
share high quality public health data, and bolster public
health infrastructure, CDC still has more work to do, and I am
deeply motivated to make improvements based on what I have
seen. I launched an all-Agency review, CDC Moving Forward, in
April 2022, to address the lessons learned from COVID-19,
increase accountability, and improve how we deliver information
to Americans. As CDC continues this internal work, we need
partnership with Congress to better position CDC for success.
In closing, the rate of infectious disease threats that I
have seen as CDC director should be a warning to us all. As a
Nation, we failed to heed the lessons from previous disease
outbreaks. We are once again faced with opportunity.
Collectively, we should focus our work on moving the Agency and
public health forward. Our response to the next infectious
threat relies on how we come together and have productive
conversations about supporting a more prepared America. I
commit to further this goal in my last weeks at CDC and beyond.
It is too important, and too many lives are at stake. I hope
you will continue to work with me and CDC to support
sustainable public health investments and updated authorities
that will protect the security of Americans by being better
prepared for tomorrow's health threats.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Dr. Walensky. I now recognize the
Chairman of the full Committee, Mr. Comer from Kentucky, for 5
minutes of questions.
Chairman Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair. The CDC frequently
communicated with Big Tech and social media companies to
coordinate the censorship of posts that expressed skepticism or
criticism of the COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Walensky, is there a
difference between medical opinions and misinformation?
Dr. Walensky. There are things that are scientifically
proven over and over again in the literature, and those
eventually become fact, but I think that there are ways to
interpret that that----
Chairman Comer. Exactly. Reasonable people disagree on a
medical path forward, correct? I mean that----
Dr. Walensky. Yes, but I would also say that when there is
increasing science, that leads to the fact that more and more
people then generally agree.
Chairman Comer. I mean, patients often are advised to get a
second opinion on medical advice. CDC records, however, show
that CDC officials sometimes flag social media posts which they
deem to be misinformation. My question is, did the CDC work
with private companies to influence a censorship of dissent
about vaccines?
Dr. Walensky. You know, that topic is one that is under
litigation in the courts, so I will not be speaking to that.
Chairman Comer. Recently, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said
that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the establishment kind of
waffled a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be
censored that in retrospect ended up being more debatable or
true. Did the CDC work with Meta, or I like to call it Facebook
still, to censor or otherwise alter any posts?
Dr. Walensky. Here is what I can tell you. The most
important thing that has gotten us out of this pandemic, I
think, is our vaccine and how well they work and how safe they
are.
Chairman Comer. I understand that.
Dr. Walensky. And it was really important that the American
people understand how well they worked and how safe they are.
Chairman Comer. I understand it. Did----
Dr. Walensky. But in terms of the communications, that is
again something that I am not going to speak to because it is
currently under court litigation.
Chairman Comer. So you are not going to answer the
question?
Dr. Walensky. It is currently under court litigation.
Chairman Comer. I hear that so much on everything we do,
``it is currently under investigation.'' Did the President take
a bribe? Dr. Jackson, it is currently under investigation. Did
the CDC ever worked with Facebook to craft internal policies on
censoring posts regarding the COVID pandemic? Cannot answer
that?
Dr. Walensky. Again, this is something that is under court
litigation. What I will say, though, it is so very important to
get correct factual information out to people to understand the
overwhelming benefit of these vaccines over the very minimal
risks.
Chairman Comer. What about Twitter? Can you answer that?
Dr. Walensky. Again, under court litigation.
Chairman Comer. So you refuse to answer the question?
Dr. Walensky. No. What I am saying is it is under court
litigation, and I will say that the most important thing that
we were working toward at CDC is to get facts out to people so
they understood in plain language what was important----
Chairman Comer. I am going to reclaim my time. Facebook's
policy on coronavirus misinformation dated February 8, 2021
said that it would purge ``false claims,'' including the notion
that COVID-19 is manmade or manufactured. Director, did the CDC
ever recommend that Facebook or other companies censor posts
promoting the lab leak theory?
Dr. Walensky. We are speaking to the same thing. These are
all situations that are under court litigation. I will not be
speaking to those.
Chairman Comer. Did the CDC ever recommend that Facebook or
other companies censor posts suggesting that vaccines did not
prevent the infection or spread of COVID-19? Can----
Dr. Walensky. What was most important to CDC was to get
information about how well the vaccines were working and how
safe they are, and, you know, all of the questions that you are
asking are along the same lines. They are currently under
litigation in the courts.
Chairman Comer. In one email, a CDC official tells a
Twitter employee that, ``CDC is working on a project with
Census to leverage their infrastructure to identify and monitor
social media for vaccine misinformation'', and that they would
``like the opportunity to work with Twitter's trust team on a
regular basis to discuss what they are seeing.'' So, Director,
did the CDC work on a regular basis with Twitter, other
companies to monitor or censor vaccine misinformation? Can you
answer that?
Dr. Walensky. Congressman, my answer is the same. It is the
same line of questioning. We wanted to get important
information out to the people so that they would favor vaccines
because they were working. They were preventing severe disease
and death.
Chairman Comer. I understand, but it turns out that some of
the perspectives that the government censored, like the lab
leak theory, and some questions about the vaccine were correct
all along, but the government censored that. A lab leak is
possible. I would go even further to say the lab leak is
probable. Even some in the government have admitted that. The
vaccine did not stop spread or infection. I am not saying it
was completely bad, but it did not stop the spread or
infection.
Dr. Walensky. I think if I could actually just correct that
point, and that is initially it did. For the Wuhan strain and
for the Alpha strain, all of the early data and the literature
published in the New England Journal demonstrated that for
those who worked, if you did not get infected, that you were
not transmitting it to other people, and it had very high
efficacy early on up to 96 percent.
Chairman Comer. And that is part of what----
Dr. Walensky. So it did change over time----
Chairman Comer. I understand. I hate to interrupt, but my
time has expired, but that is something that this Committee is
going to continue to investigate. But with respect to
censorship, censoring dissenting opinions is unacceptable, and
that is something else that this select committee needs to
investigate. We do not need to see that ever happen again, and
I look forward to trying to present the truth to the American
people about what role the government played in censoring
dissenting medical opinions, which may well prove to be true.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. I now recognize the Ranking Member,
Dr. Ruiz, from California for 5 minutes of questions.
Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Walensky, when you took the helm at CDC, our
Nation was in the darkest days of the pandemic. More than 3,000
people were dying of COVID-19 each day, and the Federal
Government was stumbling in the race to get as many shots in
arms as the coronavirus surged through our communities. Our
Nation's healthcare and public health workforces had endured
months of unparalleled strain. And America's faith in our
public health institution was battered by the previous
administration's reckless mishandling and politicization of the
pandemic response and these narratives that somehow it was
American-funded bioweapon made from China and purposely
released from a lab in order to harm the world.
But you hit the ground running. You brought fresh energy
and a renewed commitment to the CDCs mission of leading with
science to protect our Nation's health. As a result of your
leadership, speak for themselves those results. Within weeks of
you stepping into your new role, the CDC issued comprehensive
guidance that meticulously laid out the steps schools and
communities could take to safely and swiftly return kids to the
classrooms. Just one year into your tenure, the number of
students who returned to full-time in-person learning more than
doubled with 95 percent of kids back in classrooms by January
2022. What role did CDC's guidance play in paving the way for
the safe resumption of in person learning across the United
States?
Dr. Walensky. Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. It was instrumental. I
mean, so much of what we did in getting this guidance out. And
let me just emphasize, the most important thing you can see, by
the fact that we released it 23 days after I started, was
getting our children back to school. I had three of my own kids
at home with me. I wanted our children back at school, safely.
The whole point was to get the schools open and to have them
safely remain reopened, and we did that through layered
mitigation. Remember, at the time, vaccines were not available
for children. You know, we were rolling out vaccines across the
country, and it was essential, this layered mitigation. What
was also essential was getting feedback from our partners. We
did a lot of engagement, a lot of listening, a lot of
understanding.
Dr. Ruiz. But, you know, a lot of the recommendations and
policymakers either fail or succeed in the field due to
implementation problems. So it is only prudent for the
implementers to be consulted with to ensure that any
recommendation will be followed and will actually work.
During your tenure as CDC Director, you also worked closely
with your colleagues at various levels of government to execute
the most sweeping vaccination campaign in America's history.
Over the more than two years that you spent at CDC, the Federal
Government facilitated getting more than 600 million COVID-19
shots in arms. This historic campaign protected tens of
millions of Americans from the threat of severe COVID-19 and
death. During your tenure, how did CDC work with government and
community partners to right the ship on the COVID-19 vaccine
rollout and turn the tide on the pandemic, and what were the
biggest top two lessons learned?
Dr. Walensky. Well, first, we did not have an
infrastructure to support vaccine rollout, and we still do not
have an active infrastructure. That is something I would really
request from Congress is that we have a vaccine for adults
program so that we can roll out vaccines again in the future.
But we worked across all of government, private sector, private
partners. We had a Federal retail pharmacy program that was
able to reach people where they were. We worked on equity
initiatives. The biggest divide was across rural and urban
divides that we were not reaching as well urban people, so we
had to do that. We worked with community-based organizations,
faith-based organizations. This was an all-hands-on deck
approach.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. Dr. Walensky, your departure from the
CDC comes at a time of transition for a Nation. Under the Biden
Administration's leadership, we have emerged from the darkest
days of the pandemic and are now tasked with the critical
mission of preventing and preparing for future threats to our
public health. This is not the time to let up on the gas pedal.
Instead, it is our time to recommit to the mission of
empowering and investing in America's public health
institutions, which work on the frontlines of emerging threats
to keep us safe.
As we look to the future, what are the two actions Congress
should take to have the greatest impact in ensuring that the
CDC is equipped to get ahead of the next potential pandemic?
Dr. Walensky. The two biggest ones would be, in my mind, to
focus on data. Our data highways, whether our data systems are
coming in, we do need resources for our data highways and to
have data authorities so that we can see the data that are
coming and we can act nimbly in real time. That would be one.
The second in my mind would be expanded workforce authorities
so that if we are expected to be a response-based Agency, we
have the authorities of other response-based agencies, direct
hire authorities, overtime authority, danger pay, those sorts
of things.
Dr. Ruiz. You know, I think these are the critical things
that we should work toward building and let the theories and
the accusations without evidence that are oftentimes made out
of context go so that we can actually work on the important
priority things that will save lives. With that I want to thank
you, Director Walensky, for the tireless dedication you have
shown to America's public health during your tenure and for
your time today.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you so much.
Dr. Ruiz. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. [Presiding.] I now recognize myself for
questions. Actually and again, Dr. Walensky, I want to thank
you for being here. And I feel certain that there is much we
can learn going forward based on many of your experiences and
your predecessors' experiences that we can come forward with
better plans in the future.
So on March 28, the Select Subcommittee sent you a document
request regarding the drafting of the CDC's February 2021
school reopening guidance, particularly whether any outside
groups exerted uncommon influence over the process. On April
26, the Select Subcommittee held a hearing with the president
of the American Federation of Teachers, Mrs. Randi Weingarten,
and then on June 1, after two months of the CDC failing to
produce a single document, we had to follow up on our March 28
letter. So this investigation is a priority to the Select
Subcommittee, as you can imagine, and today all we expect is
honesty. And do you commit as the Director of the CDC and
speaking for the CDC to fully cooperate with the document
request?
Dr. Walensky. I certainly commit. I know we have been
working with you, and I commit to working with HHS and to
working with you to act in good faith and get to the documents
that we can.
Dr. Wenstrup. I appreciate that. We do need to see them.
And do you commit as director of the CDC and speaking for the
CDC to make employees available for transcribed interviews?
Dr. Walensky. Again, this is something I commit to working
with CDC in good-faith efforts to do our best to get you the
information and talk to people that you request.
Dr. Wenstrup. Okay. It was really important.
Dr. Walensky. I recognize that.
Dr. Wenstrup. It is important to talk to people that were
in the trenches and to understand what was going on, good, bad
or indifferent. So a large part of this investigation is
whether the teachers' unions or other political groups received
preferential treatment from the CDC or the Biden
Administration, and if these groups advocated for measures that
would unscientifically keep schools shuttered. That is a
concern, so I am going to ask a series of questions. And I know
that it is sometimes challenging to just answer something
``yes'' or ``no,'' but I am going to ask you to do that, if you
would.
Director Walensky, did the American Federation of Teachers
provide suggested edits to the CDC's February 2021 school
opening guidance, including a trigger to automatically close
schools that if implemented, would have kept more schools
closed and kids out of the classroom?
Dr. Walensky. The AFT was interested in having closure
triggers. That is my understanding, yes.
Dr. Wenstrup. So your answer is yes?
Dr. Walensky. Yes, but they were not accepted, of course.
Dr. Wenstrup. I understand.
Dr. Walensky. Our full goal was getting the schools open. I
mean, if you recognize in our guidance, we had layered
mitigation strategies to keep our schools open. This was all
about keeping schools open, and this was not about triggers to
close them.
Dr. Wenstrup. I appreciate that. Did the AFT's suggested
closure trigger run contrary to the prevailing science and data
at that time?
Dr. Walensky. Again, this was something where we had
layered mitigation strategies in the operational guidance to
keep our schools open. Again, it was all very locally based,
you know, depending on local community, transmission, et
cetera. But again, our goal was not to talk about school
closure triggers. Our goal in this guidance was to keep them
open.
Dr. Wenstrup. And I appreciate what you just said about
what is going on locally because I think that is one of the
real lessons learned here, because in medicine in particular,
you had counties with no cases whatsoever, and people were
being denied their medical care. So there were a lot of things
to consider there. And I appreciate that you did not accept one
of the things because, in my mind, the science and the data was
contrary to some of those, that trigger, if you would. And to
be clear, though, the CDC did not implement a closure trigger
that the AFT advocated for, correct?
Dr. Walensky. Correct.
Dr. Wenstrup. Alright. Thank you very much, because it was
unwarranted, correct?
Dr. Walensky. Because that was not the goal of the
guidance. The goal of the guidance was to get schools open and
to keep them up, and that was not what we were looking. Just to
keep in mind, this was January 2021. Many of the schools were
closed. This is what I inherited, what I stepped into. My kids
were home with me. The whole point was safe reopening of
schools.
Dr. Wenstrup. No, I am with you, and I remember January
2021 quite well. And I have children also, grade school
children, so I get it. But I want to shift to the statement you
made on February 3, 2021. You stated, ``There is increasing
data to suggest that schools can safely reopen, and that safe
reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated.
Vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely
reopening schools.'' The same day, the White House stated that
you were speaking in your personal capacity, ``on personal
capacity.'' So again, just yes or no, were you speaking in your
personal capacity when you made that statement?
Dr. Wenstrup. Whenever I have been speaking to Congress, to
the media, at press conferences during my tenure at CDC, I have
been speaking in my professional capacity.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Was that your position based off
the available science and your own knowledge and experience?
Dr. Walensky. Just to be clear, there were limited amounts
of vaccine doses at the time. There was a prioritization and
ultimately several weeks later for teachers to get vaccinated.
But I did not think teacher vaccination if we had all of the
other five layers of mitigation strategies available, that that
was not the only thing that needed to keep schools closed. The
schools could open without teachers being vaccinated, and there
were data and literature, people in healthcare were working
already.
Dr. Wenstrup. Many people were working.
Dr. Walensky. Yes, many people were working.
Dr. Wenstrup. Why do you think the White House contradicted
you then or tried to change it from professional to personal?
Dr. Walensky. That is something I cannot speculate to. I
think you will have to ask them.
Dr. Wenstrup. That is fair. On June 21, 2021, President
Biden stated, ``If you are vaccinated, you are not going to be
hospitalized. You are not going to be in the intensive care
unit. You are not going to die.'' Again, simply yes or no. By
that date, were there vaccinated Americans that were
hospitalized?
Dr. Walensky. What I can tell you is at the time, CDC was
releasing increasing data showing the immense protection of
vaccines against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
Dr. Wenstrup. But by that date, were there vaccinated
Americans that were hospitalized?
Dr. Walensky. You know, maybe I will say this. We still to
this day do not have data on people who are coming into the
hospitals who are vaccinated. That is a data point that we have
lacked.
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, I appreciate you saying that because
that is another thing that we need to look into very closely
and to do better going forward.
Dr. Walensky. On our data systems.
Dr. Wenstrup. But I will say this, you know. Believe me, as
a physician, I was watching when we were first looking out to
try and see, how do we treat this thing. You know, what is
going on? What bloodwork can we do? IL-6, you know, your
inflammatory markers, CT of the lungs, there were no tests, and
we were trying to find this, but we did pay very close
attention to the trials of Operation Warp Speed. And it was
fascinating to, you know, be a part of that in some way. We
would meet with Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, et cetera, but we knew
from the trials that people who got vaccinated still got COVID.
In general, they did not get as sick, and they were less likely
to be hospitalized, and, therefore, less likely to die, but it
was still happening.
So I will ask you the question. To the best of your
knowledge, you know, had any passed away when he made that
statement in June 2021?
Dr. Walensky. If I might, Dr. Wenstrup, let me just also
thank you for your work in promoting vaccination, many videos
of you doing vaccine clinics yourself, so I want to thank you
for your efforts there. You know, what I will say is my
understanding of the initial clinical trials that were released
in November, December, before I became CDC director was 96
percent protection against symptomatic disease. In medicine, we
never say never, but----
Dr. Wenstrup. Exactly. Exactly. So thank you. And that is
the problem I have with this statement from the leader of the
free world is to say something so definitive, ``You are not
going to be hospitalized.'' Even in the trials, people were
hospitalized. ``You are not going to the ICU'' as a definitive
statement. That was misinformation. That was divisive. That was
dangerous, and it puts you in a very hard spot. It put you in a
very hard spot as you are to be the leading voice for America.
And I applaud so many of the things that you have done and did
do, but this is a problem, and that is the point I am trying to
make that we cannot let this happen. We have to let science be
the science, and in my opinion, we should have been hearing
from the doctors who treated COVID patients, not politicians,
and not someone in the lab. So one more question. Just to be
honest, we know the vaccination saves lives. We know it is not
perfect. There were breakthrough cases and there were deaths,
and we have to do better going forward.
I now recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee,
Mr. Raskin, from Maryland for 5 minutes of questions.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Walensky, you are
a graduate of Churchill High School in beautiful Montgomery
County, Maryland. And the people of the 8th District are very
proud of your devotion and your commitment to the public health
and public education.
In October 2022, the Select Subcommittee on the
Coronavirus, led by Chairman Clyburn, which I served on,
uncovered a deliberate campaign by the then leader of the free
world, former President Trump, and his associates to distort
and politicize the CDC's COVID-19 public health response before
the 2020 Presidential election. This disinformation strategy is
best described by Trump's own political appointees, President
Trump's COVID-19 coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, who has
famously told America that the Trump Administration could have
prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID had it
acted effectively to address the epidemic, stated that Dr.
Scott Atlas, another Trump appointee, ``was overtly mixing
public health with politics by advocating the idea that case
identification is bad for the President's reelection.''
Dr. Paul Alexander, a Trump appointee, former senior policy
adviser in CDC's Office of Public Affairs, said this: ``Here is
the issue. If the communication is left with just the statement
that minority groups [sic] are at higher risk than on its face,
this is very accurate. However, in this election cycle, that is
the kind of statement coming from CDC that the media and
Democrat antagonists will use against the President. Each time
we talk about these deaths, we need to tell the Nation why
these deaths happened. This was due to decades of Democrat
neglect.'' President Trump and his allies not only spread
medical disinformation about quack medical cures, like
hydroxychloroquine and injecting yourself with bleach, but they
lied to the American people very explicitly for their own
political benefit.
In discussing the importance of getting accurate scientific
information about COVID out to the people from CDC, Dr. Martin
Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and
Quarantine, told the Select Subcommittee during a transcribed
interview, ``There are people no longer with us that would have
benefited from that kind of very clear messaging.'' Now, Dr.
Walensky, do you agree that accurate science-based public
health guidance would have saved lives that we lost during the
COVID-19 epidemic?
Dr. Walensky. That has been my goal. Thank you. First of
all, go Bulldogs. But that has been my goal since I got here is
to provide the most up-to-date information that we have, tell
people what we know, tell people what we do not know, tell
people that things may change if we have a new variant, for
example. Again----
Mr. Raskin. But why is that being your goal? Why is it so
important to get accurate, scientifically based information out
to the people?
Dr. Walensky. Because that is how they make their own risk-
based decisions. They are making their own decisions, and they
are doing it based on what they hear from scientific experts
from leaders in the field. And that is how they should be
making those----
Mr. Raskin. Right, but presumably, you want them to make
scientifically based decisions----
Dr. Walensky. Of course.
Mr. Raskin [continuing]. Because that will protect their
own health----
Dr. Walensky. Of course.
Mr. Raskin [continuing]. And safety. So if the government
is involved in putting out distorted information or propaganda
or disinformation, it is going to undermine the public health.
Dr. Walensky. And that was actually among the challenges as
I came in and, in fact, among the challenges that have been
discussed here this morning.
Mr. Raskin. Well, tell us about that. What kind of
challenges in terms of staff morale and public trust did you
inherit when you became the CDC director?
Dr. Walensky. Look, I am gifted to have an Agency that
works 24/7 to protect Americans. We have people who were
rappelling out of helicopters to drop test kits onto the
Diamond Princess. We have people who have gone door to door in
Ohio during the Ohio train derailment for hours on end, we have
people working in Ebola treatment centers, doing infection
control, and they are now seeing the vitriol splashed across
the pages of the work that they are doing. Their job is to work
24/7 to protect the Nation and protect health, and we do that
through all of those activities and through releasing science.
And when they are undermined, you see risks to their lives.
You see people leaving. I think there is an estimate that about
half of public health workers across this country have left the
field because they have been threatened. That does not help
public health in this country.
Mr. Raskin. Well, and I want to thank you for your devotion
to getting scientific facts out to the people in pursuit of the
public health. And if Donald Trump's apologists are really
worried about plummeting confidence in government and in public
health, they should look at the lies and the serial
manipulation of the facts that were engineered by Donald Trump
and his Administration in their spectacularly failed response
to COVID-19.
I would like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record an October 2022 report, titled, ``It was Compromised:
The Trump Administration's Unprecedented Campaign to Control
CDC and Politicize Public Health During the Coronavirus
Crisis,'' that was authored in the last Congress, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
Mr. Raskin. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. The gentleman yields. And I now recognize Dr.
Miller-Meeks from Iowa for 5 minutes of questions.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and, Dr. Walensky,
it is nice to see you again, and thank you for testifying
before the Committee today. And let me just be the diplomat in
the room and say that both administrations failed the United
States' public in its response to the pandemic, and that, in
fact, is why we are having this hearing. And thank you, Chair
Wenstrup for conducting it and for the questions that you have
asked and have posed for us to ask so that our next response to
the next pandemic, which we know is coming, is better and that
we are better prepared for it.
As you know, this Select Subcommittee held a hearing in
April on the consequences of school closures in which Randi
Weingarten testified as the only witness. She vehemently denied
coordination between the American Federation for Teachers and
supported the scientific expertise that her union offered on
COVID transmission rates among children. Mind you, her experts
did not consider the American Journal of Pediatrics findings
that showed children were poor transmitters of the coronavirus,
or the data from Sweden that showed zero COVID deaths amongst
children aged 1 to 15, despite keeping schools and daycares
open for all of the spring in 2020, or the fact that schools
were open in Europe, or the fact that there were schools,
private schools and public schools, that were open here in the
United States. My state in Iowa had reopened schools in August
2020. And let us not forget the American Federation for
Teachers is not a scientific body.
The data show that not only are children poor transmitters
of the virus, but they are also, unless they are at high risk,
at very low risk for hospitalization and death. The CDC is
supposed to be the Nation's leading science-based communicable
diseases Agency, not preventable medical diseases or climate
change, although those things are very important, with public
health being the number one goal, especially as related to
communicable diseases. At multiple points throughout the
pandemic, the CDC issued not only confusing guidance that was
seemingly not based on real-world data or evidence, but
blatantly false information that fundamentally and permanently
damaged people's lives and led to loss of trust.
And I, having been a former director of state of public
health, I admire your commitment to your Agency and your staff.
I had the same to my Agency and my staff, and I also know how
extraordinarily difficult the job is that we do, bringing
science into the real world and making decisions and
recommendations for individuals to follow. And our response to
the pandemic in response to lockdowns and shutdowns occurred in
the form of mental health decline, learning loss, economic
instability, and a loss of trust in some of our premier
institutions, and among one of the CDC's pandemic failures was
its guidance on school closures. And I understand what you are
saying here today was that there were certain things that you
declined to act upon with triggers, but there were other things
where recommendations were seemingly followed at the CDCs
guidance.
On February 12, 2021, CDC issued updated guidance on school
operational capacity, which effectively condoned the continued
closure of schools, whether it was tacit condonement or
implied. Again, this was despite clear data that showed
children, especially within elementary schools, were not super
spreaders, and that teachers were no more susceptible to
infection or death than those in any other profession at which
people who were working. You also said that you looked and that
you wanted to have the most up-to-date data, and that it was
locally based. And so we wonder, did you use real world
evidence, and was this brought into the bear on what your
recommendations were?
After the April hearing with Ms. Weingarten, I received a
letter from her lawyer at AFT, which, amongst other things,
said that I belittled the scientific expertise that was
available to the AFT. He supported his claim by linking an
article that discussed COVID-19 transmissions and households,
not schools, and suggested that I keep an open mind and show
some humility. Those things have not been previously described
to me. However, I would like to enter these both into
testimony. The article by which they are submitting on COVID-19
transmissions and household is from June of this year so would
not have been available as scientific data.
So, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter this
letter and the accompanying article in the record.
Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Dr. Walensky, can you explain to this
Committee what data the CDC reviewed when developing a school
reopening guidance, whether the CDC considered the American
Journal of Pediatric study or data from Sweden or Iceland? And
did you consider data and information from school systems that
were already open in developing the guidance? And additionally,
will you admit that COVID transmission in schools, especially
elementary schools, was low enough to not justify school
closures?
Dr. Walensky. Thank you so much for that question, Dr.
Miller-Meeks. As part of our scientific brief, and just to be
clear, it was not a document to close schools. Many of the
schools were already closed. This was operational guidance to
get schools open and keep them open. But in the scientific
brief that went along with that operational guidance, we had
reviewed publications from the U.K., Israel, Switzerland,
Norway, Germany, Italy, and more.
I can tell you that there was not a lot of published data
from Sweden. There was a study subsequently from Sweden that
demonstrated that Swedish schools that had in-person learning,
their teachers had twice the infection rate as those that had
closed. And I can also tell you, by late spring, that Sweden
actually had overwhelmed hospitals and ultimately decided to
close the schools for people who were over the age of 13. So we
did absolutely look at data from other countries as we were
doing this.
Again, part of the operational guidance, and you speak to
what happened in Iowa, but part of the operational guidance was
to look at your local community transmission, and to say, if
your local community transmission is low, we really encourage
our kids to get back to school. That was entirely the point, as
has been noted before.
I also want to highlight that the American Academy of
Pediatrics at the time supported our guidance when it was
released. So we had support from not only public health workers
throughout CDC--we had done a lot of engagement with our
partners and implementing partners--but we had support from the
American Academy of Pediatrics. Thank you.
Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume, from Maryland for
5 minutes of questions.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you and the Ranking Member for calling this hearing.
Director Walensky, thank you very much for being here with us.
Just a couple of things and some thoughts and maybe one or two
questions.
We seem to always think about the pandemic as if it were
some great big novel that had chapters, that, as we read it, we
knew what to expect. We did not know what to expect with this.
We were operating in real time. And I have said that at
beginning of each one of these hearings, it is so easy to go
back and to be a Monday morning quarterback or to claim to be
doing the kind of investigative work, that we are sure about
the outcomes were. This was real. And the fact that healthcare
workers have left in droves because we have bastardized what
they have done, we have made them feel bad, we have deemed
their efforts not worthy of what they should have done in our
opinion. We have questioned their tenacity.
We keep always making this reference to European countries
without doing all of the proper research. I mean, the
transmission rates in European countries were not apples to
apples when compared with the United States. It is important
for us to say that, and I know it is novel and interesting and
quick to be able to say, well, they did this in Germany,
France, Sweden, et cetera. But just the fact that even in
Sweden, as we just heard, infection rates for teachers were
some of the highest rates that were being recorded. So it is
oftentimes good to pump the brakes and to recognize that we
were all fortunate enough to get through a very debilitating
crisis as a Nation and that what we probably should be doing is
looking to the future, not back at the past, because we have
examined that 100 times to figure out if perhaps next year
something like this happens again, what do we do and how do we
do it.
Director Walensky, I am glad that you are here. I hope you
use this as an opportunity to be able to express yourself in a
way that you may have been constrained previously. We want to
congratulate you on your work that you have taken part in and
that you have led so many others in. Thank you for your
accomplishments.
I want to correct and affirm the record whenever I can. In
your time as Director of the Centers for Disease Control, you
got safe school openings of 100,000 schools and distributed the
vaccine to 200 million Americans. And you have increased the
aggregate number of COVID tests to almost a billion, funded
medical research by directing your own budget internally to be
able to do the things that were very, very important, and put
in place an organizational structure that is much nimbler with
a greater response time. So we really should be saying
congratulations from this Committee. None of us had that task.
We know we are all here now with the microscope, but when you
are in it, and you are in the ring, and you have got to figure
out what to do, and you are being measured every day, it is a
very tough, tough job.
I am particularly interested in your work to address the
disparate health outcomes and to advance health equity. We have
seen among affected populations just all sorts of things that
cry out for greater attention. And in your tenure as director,
you established the updated Office of Health Equity. Is that
correct?
Dr. Walensky. That is correct.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you for that. And you led the development
of CDC's new equity-centered data system. Thank you for that.
And for the first time in CDC's history, you account now for
social factors that have a impact on health, such as where
people live, and what is their income, what is their race,
their age, their access to healthcare. Thank you again for
that.
Painfully, we have learned that during a public health
crisis, we have got to be able to identify as well as care for
the most vulnerable among us. And collecting and organizing
that data will be critical, I believe, toward identifying
vulnerable populations and to have resources and to thrive.
I would ask you, though, if you could just take a moment in
your own words and tell us what you think, quite frankly, are
some of the things that we should be looking at as a
legislative body, and what legislation and legislative ideas
would you suggest to this Committee, on the record, that we
perhaps could and should look at to begin the process of
modernizing the country's data reporting system and how this
change might, in fact, improve health outcomes for vulnerable
populations.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you so much for that. So, so much of
what we are doing in CDC moving forward in our Office of Health
Equity has been work that we can do internally, but we really
do need your support. So, for example, and I spoke a little bit
earlier about our data systems. Data does not come to us
necessarily with race and ethnicity data, or rural/urban data,
zip code data. If we cannot see where there are deficiencies,
lack of access, lack of vaccinations that are happening, then
we do not actually know where to tailor our efforts.
There are two things that need to happen in that regard.
One is we have to stop using fax machines to get data to CDC.
We need resources for data highways, and many of those
resources are going out to jurisdictions, 3,000 jurisdictions
reporting data to us. If those data highways are flowing, then
we can actually receive the data and give it back so that
County A knows what is happening next door in County B.
It is also the case that we act voluntarily, receive data
voluntarily. That means it comes in a non-standardized
fashions. It does not come in with all the information that we
want. The example on the Mpox outbreak is we did not know the
race and ethnicity of people who are getting Mpox or people who
have might have gotten the vaccine, were we actually matching
the vaccine with where the cases were happening. So we need
some data authority so that we can act nimbly and so that we
can actually intentionally put resources where they are needed.
The other is our workforce authorities. We have talked a
lot about the attrition in public health workforce and
healthcare workforce, tax exempt loan repayment, for example,
direct hire authorities, fellowship hire authorities, danger
pay. The fact that we have people in Ebola-stricken nations
working but not receiving danger pay, these are all some of the
authorities that a nimble response-based Agency should have.
Mr. Mfume. Thank you. My time has expired. Thank you for
your work.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Lesko from Arizona for 5
minutes of questions.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Dr. Walensky. In an April 26 hearing
with American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten, we
learned that she has your direct phone number. This is
particularly interesting because of some of the nearly verbatim
language and editions to the CDC school guidance that you took
from the American Federation of Teachers. Dr. Walensky, do you
maintain an official government and personal cell phone?
Dr. Walensky. I do, but may I also comment that----
Mrs. Lesko. Yes. I have several questions. Does Ms.
Weingarten have your official or personal cell phone numbers or
both?
Dr. Walensky. I believe she has both.
Mrs. Lesko. Have you ever exchanged text messages with Ms.
Weingarten?
Dr. Walensky. I have.
Mrs. Lesko. Were these texts on your official or personal
phones or both?
Dr. Walensky. I would have to go back and check. It may be
both. I would also say that I recognize that as part of the
record retention requirements, yes.
Mrs. Lesko. Ma'am, I have several questions. I am sorry.
Then if we have time, we can expand. Were these texts in
furtherance of official business or about the business of the
CDC?
Dr. Walensky. I would have to go back and look.
Mrs. Lesko. The Select Subcommittee is in possession of
about five text messages between yourself and Ms. Weingarten.
Are there more?
Dr. Walensky. There are hundreds of FOIA requests. So I am
not privy to all the details of all the ones that you have, but
I will say that----
Mrs. Lesko. Excuse me. Have you ever deleted any text
messages to or from Ms. Weingarten?
Dr. Walensky. I am aware of the requirements for retention
of these records, and I am----
Mrs. Lesko. Have you ever deleted any?
Dr. Walensky. No.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you.
Dr. Walensky. As part of the records retention----
Mrs. Lesko. My next question, you had said earlier that the
CDC's goals is to get out the most accurate information, the
most recent data, or something to that effect. I just looked at
the CDC's website. It is titled, ``Use Masks to Slow the Spread
of COVID-19.'' It specifically says, ``Masking is a critical
public health tool, and it is important to remember that any
mask is better than no mask. Wear the most protective mask you
can that fits well and that you will wear consistently. Wearing
a high-quality mask, along with vaccination, self-testing, and
physical distancing, helps protect you and others by reducing
the chance of spreading COVID-19.'' Dr. Walensky, why aren't
you and your staff wearing masks?
Dr. Walensky. Because we also have guidance on our website
that says that mask wearing can be related to our
hospitalization levels, our local hospitalization levels. And
right now, over 99 percent of counties thankfully have low
hospitalization----
Mrs. Lesko. But, Dr. Walensky, that does not say that on
your own masking website on the CDC.
Dr. Walensky. Well, there is a link from our
hospitalization levels to say when you should think about
wearing masks. We also have in there that people can and should
wear a mask whenever it is that they please. There are people
in this room wearing masks, and it gives guidance to the people
in this room.
Mrs. Lesko. But your own website, you have said you give
out the most recent information data. Your own website has this
that says you should wear a mask in addition to vaccination,
yet you and your staff are not wearing masks. I do not
understand.
Dr. Walensky. Our website has context in it, right? Of
course, there is a link to our community hospitalization
levels, and those hospitalization levels give recommendations
on wear the mask. They also have----
Mrs. Lesko. But that is not on this simple page that the
public sees, so may I suggest that you update your own CDC
website about masks? Thank you, and I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Ross from North Carolina
for 5 minutes for questions.
Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Walensky,
I really appreciate you being here today, and throughout the
hearing, including just recently, we have heard some
accusations about your stewardship at the CDC during the
pandemic, and even since the pandemic officially ended last
month. Before I get to my questions, I would like to give you a
moment to respond to anything that you would like to get on the
record, if you would like to take a minute to share anything.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you. What I will say is our goal has
always been to give the most accurate data, to be science
based, to get our kids back to school, to do so in a safe
manner, to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of our
vaccines, and to promote vaccination, which has been
instrumental in getting us out of this pandemic. Thank you.
Ms. Ross. Thank you. I am particularly grateful for your
efforts to take the lessons that we have learned during the
COVID-19 pandemic and use them to inform forward-looking
policies that will make our country better prepared for the
next pandemic that we know is coming. This includes
spearheading the reorganization of the CDC, to transform the
Agency into a more streamlined, nimble organization that is
poised to tackle public health threats as soon as they arise.
For example, under your leadership, the CDC has stood up
the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics to forecast
infectious disease outbreaks and inform policymakers in real
time. We have already seen the success of this initiative in
combating outbreaks, such as Mpox last year. Could you speak
for a word about the Center and what it is doing to monitor and
respond to emerging threats, including novel virus outbreaks
with pandemic potential?
Dr. Walensky. Thank you so much for the opportunity,
Congressman. I am particularly proud of the Center for
Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, not only because of the
work that they do and the way that they are growing, but
because they are getting the best of the best in academia and
the private sector to do this work. This is a place people want
to come.
There are three core missions. They are looking at predict,
inform, and innovate, how do we do and how can we get that
information out locally. Among the successes that we have seen
already, we talked about, are modeling the potential spread and
severity of disease. We saw early publication, one of the first
in the world, on the severity of Omicron. We saw four or five
technical reports on Mpox and the severity of Mpox, the
outbreak of Mpox. We were applauded around the world for the
work in that.
And then we are looking at what we are doing locally with
public health officials. This is going to be a shining star. It
already is a shining star among the great stars that we have at
CDC in terms of our centers. And I am really looking forward to
their continued growth, and I am grateful for the support to do
so. Thank you.
Ms. Ross. Thank you. I would also like to briefly discuss,
and you touched on this, CDC Moving Forward, which is focused
on creating more agile, streamlined Agency that can more
effectively respond to a future public health threat. You
launched this initiative, first, with a programmatic review of
the Agency and its systems. Why is it important to you to
conduct this review, and how did its results inform your plan
to modernize the CDC?
Dr. Walensky. This was critically important. It was April
2022, we were just coming out of a massive Omicron wave, and we
had learned a lot. We had never, in CDC 76-year history, had a
once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic. And so the question was, how
do we take the lessons, immediately learn, and apply them so
that we can be the public health agency of the future, and we
learned a lot.
We needed to move our science faster, and I am proud to say
that since I have been at CDC, our science is getting out 50
percent faster than it used to, that we needed to have
implementable on-the-ground guidance, and we needed to work
with our partners in order to do so, and we continue to do
that, that we need to have a response-based Agency. We are
expected to be a science-based Agency. We also need to be a
response-based Agency.
And we need to communicate well to the American people. We
were really used to having our audience be public health
workers and healthcare workers, but now all of a sudden, people
were coming to CDC website themselves. They knew who we were,
and so we really needed to have communication strategies to the
American people. To that end, among the things that we are
doing is, we have 200,000 web pages on the CDC website. We are
streamlining them down in a project called Operation Clean
Slate so that we have the most important tailored information
to the American people and our public health partners.
Ms. Ross. Thank you very much.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you.
Ms. Ross. And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Joyce from Pennsylvania
for 5 minutes of questions.
Dr. Joyce. Thank you, Chairman Wenstrup and Ranking Member
Ruiz, for convening the Select Subcommittee today, and thank
you, Dr. Walensky, for appearing before us here today.
As Members of this Select Subcommittee, it is incumbent
upon us to uncover the truth behind the destructive COVID-19
pandemic and the flawed policies implemented by our Nation's
public health officials. Millions of lives were lost, families
were destroyed, businesses and livelihoods across our country
were crushed, all while the uncertainty of the panic ensued. In
these moments of uncertainty, those who swore oaths to protect
often look to their elected officials, to their community
leaders, and public health organizations for guidance. However,
misguiding, erroneous, and often confusing policies were
implemented.
Contradictory statements were habitually made by the same
officials charged with guiding the public through this
widespread health emergency. This virus and related government
policies led to vaccine mandates, lost jobs, supply chain
problems, and the isolation of our Nation's young people. In
order to protect our constituents and the American public from
future pandemics, we are working to understand the truth behind
the coronavirus pandemic, and we have waited a long time for
the answers.
On March 29, 2021, you appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show,
and you said, ``Our data from the CDC today suggests that
vaccinated people do not carry the virus, do not get sick, and
it is just not in the clinical trials, but it is also in real-
world data.'' Yet three days later, on April 1, 2021, a CDC
spokesperson had to walk back your own words, and officially
told The New York Times that ``Dr. Walensky spoke broadly
during this interview. It is possible that some people who are
fully vaccinated could get COVID-19. The evidence is not clear
whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing
to evaluate the evidence.''
Dr. Walensky, simply yes or no. Does a spokesperson from
the CDC going on record and correcting the statements that you
made undermine and fracture the confidence in CDC leadership?
Dr. Walensky. Dr. Joyce, I know you know that I was
speaking in generalities, that we saw data and evidence that
was over 90 percent that the vaccines were effective in
preventing severe disease and death and in fact, in preventing
symptomatic disease. And that once people had been vaccinated,
even if they were to get infected, they were not getting sick
and they were not able to transmit to others, so that was the
information.
Dr. Joyce. But, Dr. Walensky, you stated that vaccinated
people ``do not carry the virus.'' This fractures and
undermines the confidence in your leadership. The CDC is the
Nation's leading science-based, data-driven service
organization, that its mission is to protect public health. Yet
during the pandemic, there was continuously a country-wide
perception of the shift about the nature and the risks of
COVID. This is underscored by those inconsistencies in
messaging and, unfortunately, in your messaging, including a
CDC spokesperson who had to walk back comments that you
yourself made on television.
In fact, it could be said that these inconsistencies led to
the findings of a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center,
where ``57 percent of U.S. adults say false and misleading
information about the coronavirus and vaccines has contributed
to the problems that the country has faced dealing with the
corona outbreak.'' Dr. Walensky, do you feel that any
accountability regarding the public perception and the lack of
widespread confidence in the CDC and its public officials? Do
you feel that that rests on the shoulders of leadership?
Dr. Walensky. I think we dispute the framing of that
question. I think that there is increasing confidence in the
CDC and that there has been an undermining scientific
information----
Dr. Joyce. We have polling from the Pew Research Center
that says more than half of American adults felt that there was
misleading and false information. Dr. Walensky, is the CDC not
capable of accurately reporting to the country that
generalities in a public health situation specifically during
the COVID pandemic?
Dr. Walensky. Actually, we can get back to the generalities
that you speak to, and that is the quote of the Rachel Maddow
Show where I said they cannot carry the virus, meaning they
cannot transmit it to others. That was true for the Alpha
variant at the time that I said it. Even those who might have
had a positive test, who might have had asymptomatic infection,
breakthrough asymptomatic infection, were not transmitting that
virus to----
Dr. Joyce. But your leadership has fractured the American
public's confidence in the CDC. We are trying to work together
as a bipartisan Committee to work forward to understand how
this misinformation and how these comments are made and yet
walked back just in a matter of a few days by a spokesperson
from your own CDC. This Committee wants to understand this
further. I think that we are coming to a conclusions as we work
to shine a light on these problems, and I again thank you for
coming here today. My time has expired, and I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Bera from California for
5 minutes of questions.
Dr. Bera. Thank you, Dr. Walensky, for your service and
certainly your work as CDC Director. Mr. Chairman, I have the
privilege of sitting on the CSIS Commission on Strengthening
America's Health Security. And one of the task forces or a
subgroup put together a report, ``Building the CDC the Country
Needs,'' comprehensive. It included former CDC members,
nonpartisan health experts. Mr. Chairman, I would love to enter
that to the record.
Dr. Wenstrup. Without objection.
Dr. Bera. Great. Thank you. Dr. Walensky, one of the
recommendations out of that report was looking at a
reorganization plan, and I know you undertook the
reorganization plan. I would love to get a sense of major
findings and the status of that reorganization.
Dr. Walensky. So among the things that we learned is that
there were layers of bureaucracy that were happening within the
Agency, that things that were really essential, our public
health infrastructure-related things, our Office of Readiness
and Response, our laboratory systems, our data systems were
buried in layers of bureaucracy and not within, like, the
immediate Office of the Director's line of sight.
So among the things that was so critically important in
this reorganization that was completed, I believe in the end of
February, and we are actively acting under that new reorganized
structure, was to have those layers, those really important
public health infrastructure components--science, data,
laboratory, readiness--report immediately into the Office of
the Director, full line of sight, and to get rid of those
bureaucracies.
Dr. Bera. Great. One of the other recommendations, and you
touched on this, was on the communications front and how we
translate the science into guidance. I watch my wife, who is
also a physician and runs a large system of community health
centers, going to the CDC website on a daily basis during the
pandemic, using that information to provide guidance to her
healthcare professionals. But also, how do you translate that
science knowing that lay members of the public were now going
to the CDC website? You touched on it a little bit, but could
you expand on some of the efforts there?
Dr. Walensky. Yes. I think you hit the nail right on the
head. As a consumer, before coming to the CDC, you put ``C'' in
my Google bar, and it came up with ``CDC,'' right? We were on
the guidance all the time, and most people had not heard of the
CDC. So it was the people, the healthcare workers, public
health workers, who were in the trenches, who needed to know
and understand. The language was for them. All of a sudden, CDC
was splashed across the pages. It was in the news. People were
going to CDC guidance themselves. It was never really intended
for the average American consumer to consume our webpages.
And we now need to recognize that that is who our audience
is, and we need to be able to have an audience for our public
health workers, or healthcare workers, or healthcare providers.
But we also, I should say, and we also need to have webpages
that are consumer ready for the American people so that they
can say in lay language that they understand.
Dr. Bera. Great. And you touched on this, the workforce
issues in building a public health system that we deserve. The
pandemic really did expose under-resourced, fragmented public
health system where data was not shared readily or quickly,
where we were not doing disease surveillance, wastewater
surveillance, and a lot of deficiencies in our public health
system. It would be a shame for us in Congress not to take the
resources and put those resources into a public health system
that we all deserve.
One of the areas that I really worry about is some of the
rhetoric coming out of the pandemic really does erode trust in
what should be the most trusted public health organization in
the world, the CDC, which historically has, but it is multiple
other areas. And that we are discouraging that young generation
of folks, who really did grow up in the midst of a pandemic,
this should be a time where they are stepping up to come work
for us. Maybe in the short period of time that I have, if you
could just reiterate the things that we should be thinking
about in Congress to help build that workforce.
Dr. Walensky. Maybe I will just emphasize. Thank you for
that opportunity. This Nation has an estimated 80,000 public
health workers in deficit, and that is a report outside of CDC,
to perform the standardized public health duties of this
country. We need public health workers. In order to do that,
certainly tax-exempt loan repayments so people are encouraged
to go in. People leave medical school with $200,000 in debt, so
they are encouraged to go into this field. It is an incredible
field, and yet during this pandemic, we have some health
departments that report 50 percent of people leaving. We need
those public health workers if we are going to be primed and
ready for any threat that comes next.
Dr. Bera. Great. Thank you. I have used my time, so I will
yield back. Thank you again for your work.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. McCormick from Georgia
for 5 minutes of questions.
Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Director Walensky, it
is good to have you here today. Thank you for being with us. It
was funny. I was just talking to Dr. Howey today, who was my
old attending at Grady and Emory when I was a resident. I will
say also thank you for your service during the pandemic. I,
too, was on the frontlines of this pandemic from the very
beginning, all the way through December of this last year, so
watched the entire evolution of this disease process with
dismay at times that we politicized it so much.
As a matter of fact, I would make the case that probably
the biggest mistake--and I am going to ask your opinion on this
in a second--the biggest mistake maybe we made of all the
different things, the different guidances and everything like
that. That is all fine. I think we did our best. But the
biggest problem is, and a lot of people point this out all the
time, is we let this become political rather than medical,
rather than a healthcare question. Instead of letting doctors
talk to their patients about this, we had politicians talking
to prompters. You had people who had access to you to try to
give you input, try to do whatever, it does not really matter,
rather than doctors. I know Jerry Williams, a doctor who is an
urgent care physician who treated thousands and thousands of
patients with great success, wanted to have access but could
not get access, but a teachers union gets to have your personal
cellphone number. I think that is egregious because it became
political. I think you are a scientist. I think you are a
person who understands an infectious disease process.
I think the biggest problem, and I am going to ask you if
you think this is the biggest problem. The biggest problem with
all the misinformation with all the facts that we had, black
liberals and white conservatives, both mistrusting this
disease, probably not doing the right thing, a lot of times not
following the science, because both sides were politicized so
bad that nobody could figure out what the truth was anymore.
Because it was politicized, we could not get to the truth.
Would you agree that was one of the biggest problems we have
with this disease?
Dr. Walensky. Yes. First, I want to say that many
scientists and state health officers, I have given every one of
our state health officers my direct cellphone at some point in
time over the last two-and-a-half years so that they had access
to me, too, so that they could see what was happening on the
ground. So that was a frequent event that people would have
access to me.
I do think that when politics have become involved in what
should be framed as a medical health measure, we get mis- and
disinformation. We get vitriol splashed across the pages of
public health workers doing the hard work of public health. We
get threats to our public health workers that limit what they
are able to do and have them have fear in terms of doing their
job and doing it properly. Poor press. I think all of this is
politicized and frames a really difficult situation to try and
do our best in health and public health.
Dr. McCormick. One of the things that was interesting is I,
too, was threatened with my license. I did get censored as a
physician, who treated thousands of COVID patients, by people
on the internet, by people in government, telling me I could
not express my professional opinion as a doctor and as a
scientist. Ironically, it goes full circle, and it came once
again from the politicization of this where people thought they
were experts based on I am powerful rather than I actually know
what I am talking about. And ironically, the things they
censored me on, I turned out to be correct on. They would not
even allow a dialog of medical professionals to actually debate
the science on a national scene rather than just one-size-fits-
all. We are going to let the government decide what is truth,
and this is the problem I had with this.
During the opening statements, actually during the open
question, you said that we did not get information on
vaccinated hospitalizations, which surprised me. I thought we
did have some of that. I imagine it also carried over to ICU
visits and probably deaths, too, because we do not have that.
Dr. Walensky. Just to be clear, we do not have that at a
national level. We at CDC collect data and cohorts so that we
can follow that for vaccine effectiveness studies. But at a
national level, we get hospitalization data, we get
hospitalization for COVID data. But on a national level, we
have never been able to get hospitalization vaccination and
COVID.
Dr. McCormick. Yes, so that worries me because it seems to
skew the data. And I see you nod your head, yes, I agree.
Dr. Walensky. Well, I think it just speaks to the real
challenges in our data flows and our ability to give data back
to the American people when we do not have full line of sight
of all the data that people are interested.
Dr. McCormick. I could not agree with you more. I spent so
much time every time I admitted a patient, every time anybody
was tested, I filled out an egregious amount of Electronic
Health Record (EHR) paperwork in order to answer every question
before I did any treatment or any admission. And yet, we never
collected data on one of the most important statistics of all,
which is vaccinated patients and the effectiveness of
hospitalizations versus Intensive Care Unit (ICU)s versus
deaths. There was not a fair conversation. It seems like that
was avoided. Were you asking for that information, or was that
just something that they did not want to collect?
Dr. Walensky. So, Dr. McCormick, let me just be clear. We
were looking at that in our vaccine effectiveness cohorts, in
our vision and IV cohorts so that we could report that out on
vaccine effectiveness data. We were looking at that because we
knew that that was critically important, but I do want to
emphasize that we did not get data in aggregate. Again, just to
be clear, we are not looking for Personally Identifiable
Information (PII) here. We did not get data in aggregate on
vaccination and hospitalizations. All that data that you are
filling out in the EHR does not translate into public health
data. And that is really why I have said our data highways are
so clearly important if we are going to report on the outcomes
that people are asking for. And our data authorities are so
clearly important so we can present those data in aggregate.
Dr. McCormick. And what is interesting is how much money we
spend on that Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or EHR every
single year, tens and tens or maybe hundreds of billions of
dollars collecting information that you cannot get ahold of it.
Dr. Walensky. And maybe if I could just say it again,
hundreds of billions of dollars. We have gotten less than $1
billion for our data highways across the country, 3,000 health
departments for our data modernization initiatives.
Dr. McCormick. Alright, are you aware of the must-admit
orders that some states, including New York, were using to send
COVID-positive patients to nursing homes early on in this
disease process?
Dr. Walensky. You would have to say more. I am not sure.
Dr. McCormick. So remember when we this pandemic started,
we did not really know a whole lot. We just knew it was
contagious, upper respiratory, an infectious disease, but it
was not in a capacity of a CDC director. This is a capacity of
an infectious disease doctor, and we are talking doctor-to-
doctor science here. They had originally the must-admit orders
that some states were using in order to push patients who were
positive for COVID back to the nursing homes. Are you familiar
with that?
Dr. Walensky. I am not familiar with that.
Dr. McCormick. Okay. Would you say it was a good idea to
send infected COVID patients back to the most vulnerable
community of all, which is nursing homes?
Dr. Walensky. I cannot speak to that. I was not aware of
that. What was the counterfactual? What was the alternative of
them going there? What were the mitigation strategies there?
Did they have a singular room? So I think that there are a lot
of parameters that would affect my answer to that question.
Dr. McCormick. I think you might be a better politician
than me right now, but I would say that if you were to be a
scientist----
Dr. Walensky. I am a scientist.
[Laughter.]
Dr. McCormick [continuing]. And to be a doctor who is
talking about putting an infected COVID. And I know how much
time we spent and after we spent separating our patients at the
hospital, the COVID patients from the people who were not
positive. I will just make the statement for you. It is a bad
doggone idea to send infected COVID patients, one of the most
deadly diseases, as you have stated, back to the most
vulnerable populations of all, by direction of the state, by
their legislative actions. And with that, I yield.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Jordan from Ohio for 5
minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doctor, why did you
and the Biden Administration mislead the American people?
Dr. Walensky. You would have to say more. I am not clear--
--
Mr. Jordan. March 29, 2021, vaccinated people do not carry
the virus. Vaccinated people do not get sick. We got that
information from clinical trials but also real-world data. It
seems to me there are a number of statements you make in there
that are not accurate. Do vaccinated people carry the virus?
Dr. Walensky. In March 2021, the vast majority of data
demonstrated that the vast majority of people were not getting
infected if they were vaccinated.
Mr. Jordan. That is not what you said. You did not say the
vast majority of people. You said vaccinated people do not
carry the virus. Was that accurate?
Dr. Walensky. It was generally accurate.
Mr. Jordan. Generally accurate. Why not just be accurate?
Why not just tell the American people the truth? Why don't you
say to the American people just what you said to me? We are big
boys and girls. We pay your salary. The government is supposed
to be of the people, by the people, for the people. Why don't
you just tell us the truth?
Dr. Walensky. I was speaking----
Mr. Jordan. Six weeks later, when you said if you were to
get infected during post vaccination, you cannot give it to
anyone else, was that accurate?
Dr. Walensky. What was the date of that?
Mr. Jordan. May 19, 2021.
Dr. Walensky. At the time, we had the Wuhan strain and then
the Alpha strain. It was the Alpha strain that was circulating.
That was generally true, yes.
Mr. Jordan. Generally true again? Again, why not tell the
American people this is generally true?
Dr. Walensky. I could not tell you the exact data on the
vaccine effectiveness of symptomatic disease and severe disease
at the time. What I can tell you is that we generally saw that
if you were to get infected after you had been vaccinated, that
you were not carrying the virus by transmitting it to somebody
else. You could not transmit it to others.
Mr. Jordan. But we know that is not accurate.
Dr. Walensky. It was at the time. Now, what happened----
Mr. Jordan. Really?
Dr. Walensky. Yes. In May 2021, that was true for the Alpha
variant. What happened----
Mr. Jordan. Let me ask you about all the general statements
that were made to the American people, not general statements,
the way you guys said it. Were our tax dollars used in the lab
in China?
Dr. Walensky. That is something that you would have to
speak to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about.
Mr. Jordan. Our tax dollars were used. It sure looks like
it was gain-of-function research. It sure looks like it
actually came from the lab, and we have had several agencies,
Federal agencies say that is, in fact, where the virus
originated. The Biden Administration told us that the
vaccinated could not get it. We know that is not accurate. The
Biden administrators told us the vaccinated could not transmit
it. They told us masks worked, and they told us there was no
such thing as natural immunity. That seems to me to be, what,
seven different statements that turned out not to be true that
we got from this administration. Again, why not just tell the
American people the truth?
Dr. Walensky. So I would dispute some of what you just
said. In October 2021, CDC released a scientific brief
highlighting all of the science that was out there on
infection-induced immunity. And I do not remember all the long
list, but there are numerous areas where we have provided
science and the science review to provide data to the American
people as soon as we had it.
Mr. Jordan. I actually think what happened is you actually
tried to be honest with the American people, and the Biden
Administration shot you down. You remember when you said this,
in February, this is before you made these statements, which I
think are not being square with the American people. You said
vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely
reopening schools. Did you make that statement?
Dr. Walensky. Something to that effect. I cannot exactly
say the quote, but yes.
Mr. Jordan. Vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite
for safely reopening schools. I think you made that statement
on February 3rd. Do you stand by that statement?
Dr. Walensky. At the time, yes. A week later or ten days
later, we had an operational guidance that demonstrated layered
mitigation strategies and that you could safely----
Mr. Jordan. Were you speaking as Dr. Walensky or were you
speaking as Dr. Walensky, head of the CDC?
Dr. Walensky. I have said that while I have been in front
of Congress, and the media, and press conferences, during my
tenure as CDC director, I have been speaking as the CDC
director.
Mr. Jordan. But that is not what the White House said,
right? Jen Psaki said, ``Dr. Walensky spoke to this in her
personal capacity.'' Do you remember that statement?
Dr. Walensky. I do.
Mr. Jordan. Who is right, Jen Psaki or you?
Dr. Walensky. Well, I will tell you that I was speaking in
my role as the CDC Director----
Mr. Jordan. Looks to me like what happened is, in February,
you said, I am going to be honest with the American people. I
am going to give it to them straight. Vaccination of teachers
is not a prerequisite for safely opening schools, and the Biden
ministration hung you out to dry. They said, nope, she ain't
talking for us. She ain't talking as a head of the CDC. She is
talking as Dr. Walensky. And then a month later, you said,
well, you know what? I had better not be totally honest with
the American people, so I am going to say vaccinated people do
not carry the virus and they do not get sick. And everyone
understood like, wow, I know someone who has been vaccinated
and they have gotten sick afterwards.
I think what happened is you tried to be honest, and they
said, no, and then you said, well, I am going to have to hedge
a little bit. I am going to have to give the American people
misleading statements from the head of the CDC. You were
speaking as head of the CDC in both situations, right?
Dr. Walensky. I have said I have been speaking as the head
of the CDC.
Mr. Jordan. All the time. Yes. Well, it would be nice if
you have just been honest and straightforward with the American
people every single time throughout this virus. With that, I
yield back.
Dr. Walensky. I have stood by my commitment to tell the
American people what I know, when I know it. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Garcia from California
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Dr.
Walensky, thank you for being here today. I greatly admire and
appreciate the work of the CDC and just the talented personnel
and civil servants, and particularly in what was and has been
the single largest health crisis that we have had here in the
modern era, costing 1.3 million plus American lives, 1,300
lives within my own city of Long Beach where I was the mayor
during this entire time. And so I know the hard work that you
and your team have gone through.
And I also want to note that it has just been interesting
to hear this hearing and seeing so many of our House Republican
colleagues in the majority all of a sudden just have such
interest in exactly what happened and medical expertise
considering that they are and have been completely whitewashed
the Trump Administration's role early on in the pandemic, and
the political interference, clear political interference, in
actually what happened, and trying to consistently insert
themselves into the CDC response and in the CDC communication
to the American public.
We want to remind us that President Trump repeatedly tried
to undermine the CDC's work and advance his own reelection
campaign. We have heard a lot about President Biden, the
current President's name being brought up, but it was President
Trump, as we should remind ourselves, that actually led the
initial response and time and time again tried to interfere
with the CDC's work that at the time was very, very difficult
and continues to be.
I also want to note, there is nothing that suggests that
teachers somehow played some outsized role in CDC policymaking,
and there is certainly nothing to suggest that they somehow got
health experts to make dangerous concessions or changes. There
is no evidence of that. It is a political talking point by the
House majority. They love to continue and go on and on about
it, but there is no evidence of that. We also know that House
Republicans actually sat back and did nothing when President
Trump and his allies interfered in their work to cover up his
own incompetence. Now, Americans died because of the political
action, in my opinion, of the former President, and some people
here cheered on the President's former dereliction of duty and
interference in these actions.
I want to be clear and remind us of a few things. Last
year's Select Subcommittee report found that the Trump
Administration conducted this systemic campaign to compromise
the integrity of the CDC's pandemic response in advance of the
2020 election and to help former President Trump. On February
26, 2020, he and his allies mandated that all media requests
about COVID be first approved by the White House. CDC officials
have testified that because of this, there were extended
periods of time that his Administration completely refused to
approve critical COVID briefings to the American people. That
is shameful and should never have happened. And throughout that
year, as tens of thousands of people were dying, his staff
pressured health experts to soften language that might make the
President look bad. His allies attacked CDC scientists for
publicly sharing information that they believe contradicted the
President's message.
I want to give an example. In an email from May 8, 2020
that shows that Trump allies installed at the Department of
Health and Human Services, seeking to edit talking points on
the CDC report and saying, ``Any way to help you showcase your
work for this great President,'' that that would, of course, be
appreciated. A few weeks later, they even went as far to
suggest the CDC edit a statement on COVID deaths to make it
``more positive.'' So the Trump Administration pushed staff at
the FDA to authorize ineffective treatments, like
hydroxychloroquine, and we know some of the damage that that
caused as well. And the President even would tag health
officials on Twitter and accuse them of deliberately slowing
their work on vaccines until after his reelection. All
shameful, of course, and of no interest to the Republican
majority here in this Committee.
Dr. Walensky, can you clarify for us clearly that the
American Federation of Teachers, once and for all, watered down
or direct CDC policy on school reopenings?
Dr. Walensky. The American Federation of Teachers was one
group out of 50 that we engaged with that were essential
implementing partners if we wanted to get schools open. The
whole goal was to get schools open. We talked to teachers, we
talked to superintendents, we talked to school nurses, we
talked to parents, we talked to the immunocompromised community
to get our schools open.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, and I think that is what we have
heard over and over again and from everyone involved, and I
want to thank you for that again. Now, I think we can all
agree, especially given what we learned from hearings in the
last Congress, that it is critically important to have a CDC
pandemic response guided by medical practices. In fact, when
asked in an interview last Congress whether allowing CDC to
convey accurate scientific information to the public would have
resulted in fewer Americans dying, the Agency's former
principal deputy director responded, ``Yes, I do,'' which
should be alarming to anyone. And so I think it is of note that
we have to remind ourselves that the Trump Administration time
and time again tried to interfere with the CDC's response and
all the great work that you would all do.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, as I wrap up, it is insulting
that House Republicans sit here today trying to score political
points around our pandemic response, even as they cheer on the
man who was willing to let Americans die to help his
reelection. With that I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize, Ms. Greene, from Georgia for
5 minutes of questions.
Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Walensky, you are
coming to the end of your tenure as the CDC director, which you
started in January 2021, and we heard you say today that the
COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. But what I would like
to talk to you today about is the 1.5 million Vaccine Adverse
Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports that also reported
35,000 deaths associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, and this
has been what many Americans feel like a largely ignored issue.
They feel like the CDC has completely ignored the reports. They
feel like you as the CDC director have completely ignored their
reports, and I would like to talk about that a little bit.
It was late 2020 when Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine was
approved. COVID-19 vaccines were the second highest reported.
That was over 10,000. But in 2021, when vaccines were
mandated--it was a Federal mandate in September 9 of 2021--90
percent of the 3.5 million people employed or contracted under
the Federal Government got at least one dose of the vaccine.
Vaccine cards were widely required in Democrat-run cities all
over the country basically to become a member of society. And
in 2021, COVID-19 reports skyrocketed to number one at 728,829
reports. Second was the Zoster shingles vaccine at just over
14,000. That is a massive number, and the numbers kept growing
and growing and growing on the VAERS reports.
I would also like to talk to you about how much money the
American taxpayers were forced to pay Pfizer and Moderna for
vaccines. The government paid Pfizer and Moderna in 2020, 2021
and 2022, Pfizer received $15.27 billion, Moderna received
$9.99 billion. And, boy, did they get a return on the American
taxpayers' investment because Pfizer, amazingly, in 2022, got a
23-percent increase, but in 2021, they doubled their income,
doubled their income at a 95-percent increase in revenue. That
is absolutely impressive, thanks to the American people.
But it was Moderna, whose numbers were astounding. Moderna
increased their revenue, in 2020 had a 1,238-percent increase
in revenue. In 2021, they got a 2,200-percent increase in
revenue, thanks to the American taxpayer, where money got
funded into these big pharmaceutical companies for these
vaccines. It is quite impressive, though, that Pfizer
worldwide--worldwide--went from $190 billion right there toward
the beginning of 2021 and skyrocketed at the end of 2021 to
$330 billion worldwide. That is quite impressive, thanks to the
American taxpayer and thanks to the CDC director, Dr. Walensky,
who said that vaccines were safe and effective.
I would also like to talk to you on behalf of all the
pregnant women, not people, as you call them. To quote you, on
August 11, 2021, ``CDC encourages all pregnant people''--it is
women, by the way--``who are thinking about becoming pregnant
and those breastfeeding to get vaccinated to protect themselves
from COVID-19.'' This has also been ignored, the amount of
miscarriages and stillbirths that increased drastically due to
your advice to get vaccinated, pregnant women again, not
people. And then we could go on and on about the tragic stories
of myocarditis and many other things.
But my question for you today, Dr. Walensky, is now that
you are going to be leaving the CDC pretty soon, what job are
you going to take? Are you going to be on the board of either
Pfizer or Moderna, because you have done one hell of a job in
making sure that they have made a lot of money. And I yield
back.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you for that question. Maybe first, I
will comment that CDC is not responsible for the purchase of
vaccines, so I cannot speak to all of the economics that you
spoke to. I do want to talk a minute about the Vaccine Adverse
Event Reporting System. So that system is intended for any
person who has gotten a vaccine if they have an untoward event
after that vaccine, whether or not is related to the vaccine,
they report. It is intended to have an over reporting. Not all,
most of the vaccines that were being given, I remember we gave
676 million doses of the vaccine, any adverse event, if you got
hit by a truck after you got your vaccine, that was reported to
the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. We at CDC have a
responsibility to comb through every single one of them to
review the medical charts and to see if they are related.
It is the case the vaccine does not prevent being hit by--
--
Ms. Greene. Ms. Walensky, I will reclaim my time. You did
nothing about that and continued to push vaccines. That is what
the American people care about.
Dr. Walensky. We review all of the things that come into
the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. I would be happy to
have our staff educate your staff on the----
Ms. Greene. I do not want my staff educated. You should
educate the American people about what you have done of 1.5
million reports because they feel like you have done nothing
and continue to say safe and effective.
Dr. Walensky. Maybe I will just close by saying I do not
have plans after I step down. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Tokuda from Hawaii for 5
minutes of questions.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here, Dr.
Walensky, and can I just say as a mother of two boys in our
public schools, thank you for your personal commitment to make
sure our children could go back to school safely.
Our students lost much. In the most tragic cases, we lost
children to COVID. In the most heartbreaking cases, our
students lost parents and loved ones. With you at the helm of
the CDC, you steered our Nation out of some of the darkest days
of the pandemic, a task that was not made any easier by the
chaos and mistrust sown by the previous Administration. And you
kept us safe in the face of COVID-19, its variants, and other
threats.
Under your careful stewardship, we have been able to stay
on top of COVID-19. Yet instead of handling your success in
turning the tide on the pandemic, my Republican colleagues have
sought to whitewash the gross incompetence of the Trump
Administration by misrepresenting the work and policies you
oversaw at the CDC. So I would like to take a moment to start
to correct the record on these items.
Let us start with masks. Despite the overwhelming body of
evidence that shows wearing masks effectively prevent COVID-19,
my Republican colleagues have drawn into question commonsense
guidance issued by the CDC regarding mask wearing in schools
and other congregate settings. We know for a fact that it was
not safe to send our kids or our teachers back into the
classroom without clear mitigation protocols in place,
including masking guidelines.
Dr. Walensky, could you please correct the
misrepresentations we have heard today at this hearing
regarding CDC's masking recommendations and the real science
and data guiding those recommendations?
Dr. Walensky. Sure. There are obviously many, many studies
looking at masks. The one I think that is most comprehensive is
one that looked at, a national sample of U.S. counties that had
kids back in school, and they compare kids with the mask
requirement versus those without mask requirement and
demonstrated that those without masks had 18.53 per 100,000
more cases of COVID than those with masks, as a nationally
representative sample. Time and time again, we were seeing that
if masks were worn than they were not.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. So masks prevented infection, and it
saved lives. You know, we have similarly heard today reckless
misrepresentations from the other side of the aisle about CDC's
COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. The bottom line is that
vaccines work. Booster shots work. The science and data show
that vaccines prime the immune system to recognize the virus if
infection occurs. The point is to reduce the risk of infection
and prevent severe illness and death, which the COVID-19
vaccines did exceptionally well. To discourage vaccine
confidence in our communities is gross negligence. It endangers
people's lives. And by the way, as a previously pregnant woman,
pregnant women are people, too.
Dr. Walensky, I want to give you a chance to correct the
suggestion from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle
that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective because they do not
prevent all infections.
Dr. Walensky. They are remarkably effective at preventing
severe disease and death and also actually symptomatic
infection. With Omicron, we have seen less effectiveness with
symptomatic infection but remain remarkably effective in
preventing hospitalizations, preventing ICU stays, severe
disease and death.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. You know, with the remaining time I
have, I do want to touch a little bit about something we have
talked about quite a bit--data, you know. And if we have
learned anything from this pandemic, it is that we need to have
in place a strong public health infrastructure, with access to
detailed, timely, accurate data as its backbone. State and
local health departments relied on data available through the
CDC to identify high-risk populations, and spot outbreaks, and
emerging variants in their communities and take action. Data
saved lives. We know this.
Now, Dr. Walensky, under your leadership, CDC has made
incredible strides to collect and share this public health
data. However, with the ending of the public health emergency,
CDC is no longer able to report on certain COVID-19 case and
transmission data because it no longer has the authorities to
collect it. CDC's lack of authority to require standard health
data reporting continues to inhibit, in my opinion, its ability
to make crucial timely policy recommendations and ensure a
coherent national response. If the CDC were able to have this
authority to acquire real-time comprehensive data reporting,
would we as a country be better positioned to protect public
health in a crisis situation like COVID and save lives?
Dr. Walensky. Without question, and I would say it is not
just CDC, but CDC with standardized data and standardized data
highways. Data can come into CDC fluidly. We can act nimbly,
see an outbreak before it blossoms and in fact, inform the
counties next door. The whole point is not just to have it at
CDC, but to inform what is happening locally. So I think that
is without question.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you very much. And again, as a mother and
a citizen, Mahalo for all of your service.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize, Dr. Jackson, from Texas for
5 minutes.
Dr. Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. Due
to the constant inconsistencies, the contradictions, and the
lack of transparency from the Biden Administration, CDC, the
FDA, and the White House as well, many Americans have lost
trust in our public health officials, and we have talked about
that at length in a variety of these hearings.
As I have mentioned before, regaining America's trust in
our public health officials should be among our top priorities
right now. But to do so, we do have to expose some of the
misinformation and misconceptions that were used and
unfortunately as an excuse to disrupt and control almost every
aspect of our life for quite some time.
Director Walensky, this is a tweet that you posted in
August 2020 before your tenure as CDC director in response to a
tweet from previous CDC director. He writes, ``Am I hopeful
that we will have a vaccine in the coming months? Yes. Do I
think this will get us back to pre-COVID reality? No. Vaccines
take a long time to get to people. They often have stumbles in
rollout, and they do not protect perfectly. It is very
important, but it will not end COVID.'' And you replied, ``Spot
on! Combating COVID-19 requires a comprehensive multi-pronged
approach, masks, tests, treatments, vaccines. Those holding out
for a vaccine alone are going to be sorely disappointed. Time
to beef up the dimensions we have on hand already.''
In this tweet, you clearly indicate that vaccines alone
will not be enough to combat COVID-19. However, as the CDC
director in July 2021, you coined what I believe to be a
divisive slogan, ``pandemic of the unvaccinated,'' suggesting
that unvaccinated are the reason the pandemic persists and, to
some extent, pitting the vaccinated against the unvaccinated,
which I do not think did any favors, but this appears to
directly contradict your 2020 tweet. What caused you to reverse
your opinion?
Dr. Walensky. I would not call it a reversal of opinion.
All of our guidance has demonstrated that we have layered
mitigation strategies, we have all of the things that I comment
on in the tweet. What I meant by the pandemic unvaccinated is
that the people who were dying were largely the unvaccinated,
and the whole point was to say, if you want to prevent severe
disease and death, you should get vaccinated. You can do all of
these other things, and all of them help. There was all this
layered mitigation that we were promoting at the time, and so I
would say that that tweet, and my actions as CDC director, and
that comment were actually all internally consistent.
Dr. Jackson. Did the White House or any other official in
the Biden Administration pressure you or suggest to you they
should make statements that painted the vaccine as the primary
solution for the pandemic?
Dr. Walensky. No, but it was very clear from our vaccine
effectiveness data that it was going to be one of the major
things that helped us get out of it. I mean, we were seeing
that at the CDC and all of our vaccine effectiveness data.
Dr. Jackson. But I think you said earlier, you said that
early on the vaccine was very effective, but later on it was
not as effective, and people that were unvaccinated or people
that were vaccinated were being hospitalized and were dying
because the vaccine was no longer as effective as it was
initially. Is that what you said?
Dr. Walensky. I do not think I said it exactly that way. I
think that over time, we saw a vaccine effectiveness wane, and
over time, we saw less effectiveness with the Omicron variants
and their subvariants. But still to this day, we see remarkable
effectiveness at preventing ICU stays and preventing death if
you have been vaccinated and boosted with the most up-to-date
booster.
Dr. Jackson. Honestly, I mean, I do not disagree with your
initial statement, the tweet that was sent out. What I disagree
with is the later statement that, you know, that only the
unvaccinated, you know, are dying from this. At the time this
was a year into it. This was July 2021 when you made the
statement about the pandemic of the unvaccinated. We knew at
that point that to be true what you stated earlier that the
vaccine was not as effective as it was before, and that even if
that applied initially, it no longer applied at that point that
far in. So what I would like to know is, did political pressure
ever impact your CDC guidance on your public statements about
the COVID-19? Did you ever feel like you were making statements
based on political pressure rather than the science it was
available?
Dr. Walensky. I run a science-based Agency. I am a
scientist, and the statements that I made are defended by the
science.
Dr. Jackson. And do you believe that any of the statements
or the seemingly contradictory statements that were out there,
do you think that contributed to the lack of trust in our
public health system that we have today?
Dr. Walensky. I would dispute the word ``contradictory.''
What happened over time is that vaccine effectiveness waned,
and we got a new subvariant and variant that behaved
differently in terms of how our vaccines worked, so it evolved
over time. Our science changed over time. We learned more over
time, and we had a new variant over time. And with that, it is
my responsibility as the CDC director to update the American
people with the newest science.
Dr. Jackson. Well, Dr. Walensky, I think that there are a
lot of things that went wrong during the pandemic, but I hope
that, you know, that you are going to reflect back on your
decisions as well and the statements that you made in the
course of this pandemic as a CDC director because I think they
drastically altered how the American public views our public
health officials. I think it is safe to say that your
resignation later this month is going to be an important step
in returning America's trust to an organization that you did
great damage to, in my opinion, during your tenure.
With that, I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell from Michigan
for questions.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Walensky, thank
you for your service, and I hope in this Committee we can keep
from those kinds of personal attacks. Thank you for being here
today and for the work that you have done to see America
through the dark days of COVID-19. We have heard a lot of
misleading statements and accusations here today, and I want to
set the record straight. Quite frankly, I am tired of having
the same conversations and hearing the same accusations over
and over and over again, so let us clear this up again.
There was no special access or collusion between the
teacher's union and the CDC to keep schools closed, and my
colleagues on the other side are grossly mischaracterizing the
situation, so let us go after the facts again. It is routine
practice and, I believe, common sense for the CDC or any group
to consult impacted groups on guidance that affects them. Dr.
Walensky, in short, can you tell us more about why it is
important for the CDC to engage with stakeholders on guidance
that impacts them?
Dr. Walensky. It was critically important to get the
schools open, and in order to do so we needed to make sure that
the day that we released our guidance, it would be
implementable on the ground. So we spoke to all the numerous
stakeholders, over 50, to make sure that our guidance would be
implementable on the ground. It would have been irresponsible
not to.
Mrs. Dingell. So I also understand that when developing
guidance to reopen all schools and help all schools stay open,
the CDC engaged a wide range of organizations with various
expertise. In fact, last week, HHS provided the select
committee with a list of the organizations CDC engaged with in
its developing the school reopening guidance, and it includes
organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the
National Governors Association--there were more Republicans
there than Dems, for the record--the American College Health
Association, the Association of Public Health Laboratories,
Autism Speaks, and the National Parent Teacher Association,
just to name a few. More than 50, and they are part of the
record.
Each of these organizations brought their perspective and
expertise to conversations on how we get our schools safely and
responsibly opened. And each of these organizations provided
reasonable feedback to CDC guidance, like accommodating immune-
compromised teachers when returning to in-person learning or
suggesting that if the new variant were to emerge and cause
high community transmission, the guidelines would need to be
revisited to keep schools open, not close them. These
organizations recognized that the CDC shared their goals to
safely reopen the schools.
So while my colleagues on the other side so carelessly
throw around outrageous accusations about collusion between the
teacher union and CDC, I want to make it clear that the
routine, practical way that CDC went about developing school
reopening policies was common sense. I want to make sure we are
giving the American people the full picture, that at a time the
American death toll from COVID-19 had just surpassed 400,000,
and that the first vaccines had only just been authorized for
emergency use a few weeks prior to this guidance, and that only
46 percent of U.S. schools had reopened for full-time, in-
person learning when you came on board, I want us to be clear
that CDC's guidance helped get kids safely back in the
classroom, along with the American Rescue Plan vaccine program.
We were able to get more than 95 percent of schools reopened
for full-time, in-person learning one year later.
Now, let us set the record straight on vaccines. We know
vaccines are the safest and most effective public health
measure that reduces hospitalizations and protects against
severe disease or death from COVID-19. According to a
Commonwealth Fund study published in December 2022, COVID-19
vaccines had already prevented 3.2 million deaths and 18.5
million additional hospitalizations. However, in early 2021,
our Nation did not have the infrastructure to swiftly
administer vaccines. Director Walensky, can you tell us more
about the CDC's efforts to support a safe and equitable vaccine
distribution?
Dr. Walensky. Yes, thank you for that. We, as you know, did
not have a vaccine infrastructure for vaccines for adults. That
is something that we are asking from for Congress to establish
that so we do not have to recreate one again. What I will say
is that we worked tirelessly with our Federal retail pharmacy
partners, with federally qualified healthcare centers, with
community and faith-based organizations, with our state and
local health departments across the country, with all sorts of
partners so that we could get vaccines, and we needed to bring
vaccines where they were. We did mass vaccination sites. We did
small vaccinations. We did vans. It was really an all-intensive
effort, but we need that infrastructure that was stood up for
COVID. We will continue what we can for COVID with the
resources that we have, but we do not have a large-scale
vaccine infrastructure for adults.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you. At this point, I want to also talk
to my Republican friends about there is probably nobody with
more vaccine hesitancy in this Committee than me. I got
Guillain-Barre from a flu shot in my 20s, and does that mean
nobody should ever have a flu shot again? I was scared to death
to get this COVID-19 vaccine. I think I even shared it with you
at the time, I did not trust doctors around here, to be
perfectly frank. I went to the University of Michigan and
talked to the infectious disease doctors, and they encouraged
me that this was the right thing to do. It was a different
chemistry.
But I remain seriously concerned about Americans getting
the wrong information from misinformation about the disease and
how it spreads, vaccines, and even treatments. Quite frankly, I
have a very close--I will not tell you who the family member is
because I might not be here if I did--but supports President
Trump. He took hydroxychloroquine and almost died, was in the
hospital for weeks. And they believe what they hear, so we need
to make sure.
And we know sometimes people are giving information that is
the best information that they have at the time, but
unfortunately, the world is experiencing the largest global
decline in decades in the number of children receiving basic
immunizations, and we are seeing a resurgence in previously
controlled diseases like polio and measles. Dr. Walensky, how
is vaccine misinformation affecting children's health?
Dr. Walensky. I think that you nailed it spot on. We, for
the first time, last year saw our first paralytic polio case in
this country in about ten years. We have seen numerous
outbreaks of measles. In my inbox, I, you know, not
infrequently will get an email saying there is a new measles
case that has been detected in the United States. It is
critically important. We have seen a downturn in our number of
incoming kindergarteners who are vaccinated for all the
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended
vaccines, and it is critically important that we maintain full
vaccination for the health and safety of our children.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you. Is there anything you want to add
as we close?
Dr. Walensky. Thank you for your support. I will say it is
critically important to get COVID-19 vaccine today, and, you
know, for the fall, whatever we may see in the fall, also the
flu vaccine for those who can tolerate it. But vaccines have
been a public health staple that have been critically important
for decades. We are, I think, have our victims or own
successes. We are so blessed that we are not seeing these
illnesses in our children because we have had vaccines for so
many decades. Once we start seeing those resurgence, that is
going to be really detrimental to our children.
Mrs. Dingell. Thank you for your service, and I yield back.
Dr. Walensky. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup. I would now like to yield to Ranking Member
Ruiz for a closing statement, if he would like one, and he has
asked that he could ask one more question.
Dr. Ruiz. Yes. First, I will start with a question because
I think this is very important. It has been said before, and
you were brilliantly answering the question, and I want to give
you more time to pursue the question of the difference between
medical opinion and misinformation because there is a debate as
to when does a person's personal opinion become misinformation
and when does it become disinformation, which is the
intentional misinformation. So can you elaborate more on myths
on medical opinion versus misinformation? And you were saying
about with increasing science, with accurate science, it
becomes fact, and when does it become just a fringe opinion?
Dr. Walensky. Yes, thank you for that. So, you know, I am
not an expert in mis- and disinformation. What I can tell you
is early on in scientific knowledge and scientific query, we
see, you know, things emerging in the literature,
groundbreaking work that appears in high-level journals. Those
get corroborated over time. Those are widely accepted
eventually as dogma and science, and then there are new
questions that are presented based on that dogma.
Certainly we have done a lot of lessons learning in COVID-
19. We had a new virus. But over time, there were very well-
respected experts in public health, and healthcare, and
academia, and scientists who really understood as the science
was evolving and emerging. That, I think, we then take as fact.
When you have people who are not trained and reading the
literature, people are expressing their opinions who have not
read the literature, I think then you have to start to question
upon which they are making those decisions and giving that
advice.
Dr. Ruiz. I think that opinion versus misinformation plays
in here because somebody's opinion can say that masks do not
work. However, there is data and scientific fact that masks
prevent the transmission of droplets from being transported in
the air and infecting others. And you mentioned some scientific
fact that the incidence of infections decrease in settings
where people actually wear their mask. So when does it become
opinion versus misinformation, and then if people are well
versed in the science or they read the literature and still
proclaim that masks do not work, then does that become
disinformation?
The other thing to discuss is whether or not vaccines work.
So now, the science and public health research demonstrates
overwhelmingly that when you vaccinate a population with COVID-
19, you significantly reduce the transmission. You
significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths from the
vaccine. We have real-life experience in that we are at a
different place than we were before the vaccines, and we also
have scientific literature. So knowing in the aggregate that
vaccines are safe and that they work, also knowing that our
system of reporting adverse events, our system of learning
about these and who are at risk of these adverse effects, and
then recommending contraindications or recommending people not
get the vaccine, and using other measures is a system that
works.
But focusing on these adverse effects and to say that the
statement vaccines are safe and effective is erroneous and
dangerous. When is that opinion versus misinformation, not
based on the aggregate of public health scientific fact, and
when, if it is done intentionally, knowing and believing the
medical literature? When does it become disinformation,
intentionally moving it forward? And that is, I think, a big
point that we are trying to say because science is to help us
get to the truth.
And even some studies, you look at whether it was done
correctly, whether methodology was flawed. And then you look at
the rare study that, you know, has a breakthrough that leads us
to a different path, and then we unfold and we pursue that
path, and we unfold even more truths that will change our
practice in medicine or in public health. And so you know, to
capitalize on the confusion, or not the confusion, the
complexity of science to then say this is confusing, and that
is why it is wrong, or that is why it is intentionally misled
or intentionally suppressed, or intentionally covered up is not
necessarily accurate.
And so in closing, I just want to really, you know,
highlight the clear differences that we witnessed today. First,
I want to really commend you, Dr. Walensky. I can yield if you
want to say a few words.
Dr. Wenstrup. Can we do that?
Dr. Ruiz. Yes, sir.
Dr. Wenstrup. And then you yield.
Dr. Ruiz. I will yield.
Dr. Wenstrup. If you do not mind.
Dr. Ruiz. Okay. Look, he has got to go, so out of courtesy
to the Chairman, there is a clear difference today. You know, I
am hoping that we can get out of being stuck in the quicksand
of partisan narratives. I really do. Like my colleague, Debbie
Dingell, mentioned, we are talking about the same things,
whether there was politicization in the guidance, whether there
was collusion, whether there was suppression, whether there was
all these different things that, quite frankly, should not be a
priority because they do not lead to the biggest impact that we
can make in terms of systematic change to prevent the next
pandemic. And you saw the questions that we had were very
focused on solutions on the future systematic changes that put
people over politics in order to save lives. I yield back.
Dr. Wenstrup. And I apologize that I have to leave. I have
mentioned to you before the dilemma. Look, there is a lot we
learned. We learned from the trials. We know that viruses
produce variants. We know that the vaccine helped save the
hundreds of thousands of lives. I was totally for emergency use
authorization, but we have the responsibility of looking for
when we say, ``safe and effective.'' It is like any other
medicine. When you talk to your patients, you have to say, here
is what we do not know yet, and down the road, maybe we will
see side effects, but here is what we know at this time, and
here is what we have seen as side effects. I think that is a
responsibility that we have as physicians and in medicine in
general in America.
You know, I spend time trying to explain to people what 95-
percent efficacy meant, right? And you took the time, and when
it came to masks early on, when we had supply chain shortage, I
said if you only have one mask between the two of you, give it
to the person who has COVID. They need it more than you to
prevent the spread, in my opinion, right? So, you know, we have
got things to deal with on infrastructure supply chain, all of
these to make the CDC more effective, but we have got to rely
on data.
And I am just going to say going forward, I want to get
more accuracy to the system and accuracy to the doctor that you
know, so that you can go talk to your doctor and say what is
best for me at this time, whether it is this or anything else,
and we are going to continue to work on that. And I expect that
we may be engaging with you a little further down the road. And
with that, I yield back.
And with that, and without objection, all Members will have
five legislative days within which to submit materials and to
submit additional written questions for the witnesses which
will be forwarded to the witnesses for your response.
Dr. Wenstrup. If there is no further business, without
objection, the Select Subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:49 p.m., the Select Subcommittee was
adjourned.]
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