The Epoch Times is a publication– both print and online– that provides high quality written reporting at the national level. It has covered all aspects of the Covid pandemic more comprehensively than perhaps any other online news site.
This publication was started up by folks from Hong Kong who want to resist the adoption of Marxism in the United States after having seen its effects in China.
In any event, they just published an article about Mandy Cohen’s first days at the CDC. They sought the reaction of health care professionals in North Carolina. I was among those interviewed. Dr. Bose Ravenel, a retired pediatrician who used to practice in Winston-Salem, also was quoted. Brandi Smith– a nurse– spoke about Cohen’s decision to sue Union County over mask requirements.
The article by Matt McGregor is found here. I am taking the liberty of excerpting heavily:
Brandi Smith is a nurse in Union County who sits on the advisory board for the North Carolina Physicians for Freedom.
She worked on the frontlines of COVID while feeding data to Merrell and the board of education, she said, “so they had facts to stand on.”
“Gov. Roy Cooper’s mask mandate for the state expired that summer, so 55 schools voted for mask optional,” Ms. Smith said. “Cooper did not like that, so he sent a letter to all 55 schools. Fifty of those schools rescinded their mask mandate. That left five of us.”
That’s when Dr. Cohen stepped in and changed the quarantine rules for mask-optional schools, making it more difficult for them, Ms. Smith said.
“This hurt our children excessively,” Ms. Smith said. “The new guidelines sent thousands more home than they would have if masks were required.”
In one week, there were over 7,000 teachers and students out because of the quarantine rules Dr. Cohen put on mask-optional schools.
Ms. Smith’s own daughter had to quarantine for 14 days because she was in class with a student who tested positive, she said, even though she tested negative.
“That’s a big problem for working parents,” Ms. Smith said.
Though local public health officials didn’t agree with what Dr. Cohen and Gov. Cooper were doing, they “were too scared to speak up,” Ms. Smith said.
“But not Melissa Merrell,” Ms. Smith said. “She went head-to-head and didn’t hesitate to stand up for the kids and parents of Union County.”
All the while, COVID cases in the district were lower than they were in other districts in the state, yet Dr. Cohen denied UCPS’s request to decrease the days required for quarantine.
In the face of the threat of litigation, Ms. Smith said, Ms. Merrell “called their bluff.”
With no facts, data, or studies on their side, Dr. Cohen, she said, “had no leg to stand on.”
On her stated goal to reestablish trust with the public, Ms. Smith said, “I just don’t think it’s possible.”
“For three years, I watched people die who didn’t have to die because these institutions like the CDC,” Ms. Smith said. “They put profit over patients and put things into place that had no scientific data or evidence to support it. They lied on numerous occasions.”
The ramifications of what Ms. Smith called its “dictatorship” continue to reverberate through the lives of those who got caught in the web of its conflicting narratives, narratives to which Dr. Cohen contributed, she said.
“I don’t know how the CDC would come back from this,” Ms. Smith said. “I say gut it. Gut it from the top down. Mandy Cohen will never build the trust back with the CDC. She was a part of the problem on a local level, and now they just gave her more power.”
‘The Antithesis of Transparency’
The policies Dr. Joseph Guarino in Reidsville, North Carolina observed throughout the pandemic contradicted what he learned when he studied public health.
“When the lockdowns began, and I saw what Dr. Cohen was doing in this state, I thought, ‘Gee, I don’t remember any of this in my training,” he told The Epoch Times.
He even pulled out his old textbooks to confirm, he said.
“I can tell you that everything she did was, for the most, part wrong,” Dr. Guarino said. “And she did it without a whole lot of opposition, even though Republicans controlled the state legislature there.”
Dr. Guarino doesn’t think there will be much of a difference in how she’ll operate on a federal level, he said, pointing to her floating the annual COVID-19 vaccine.
“The field of public health has a fairly defined set of ethical ground rules and a set of best practices that practitioners are supposed to follow, and when you look at those individual pieces, Dr. Cohen failed pretty much every single one,” Dr. Guarino said. “As a result, there was a massive violation of public health ethics, and a lot of people got hurt in a lot of different ways.”
On whether Dr. Cohen can rebuild trust, Dr. Guarino said it could only be done “by deception and untruth.”
“If she does on a national level what she did here, it means she would be ingratiating herself with the Republican legislators, charming and deceiving them while giving the appearance of being transparent when she’s really not being transparent,” Dr. Guarino said.
There’s an ethical requirement to be transparent about the ground rules for public health, which he said didn’t take place in the state or federal government.
The most blatant lack of transparency was when federal agencies and pharmaceutical companies covered up the adverse reactions from the vaccines, yet continued to push them without giving informed consent.
“That’s really the antithesis of transparency,” he said.
Inconsistent Narratives
Retired pediatrician Dr. Bose Ravenel shared Dr. Guarino’s view.
Dr. Ravenel has up to 5,000 hours of studying COVID, and what he witnessed during the pandemic was a deviation from basic commonsense practices on the part of Dr. Cohen and other public health officials, he said.
“In her tenure as HHS secretary, the governor’s office repeatedly produced narratives that weren’t consistent with the actual published studies when analyzed carefully,” Dr. Ravenel said. “Under her leadership, the narratives that we were given were misleading and went unsupported by rigorous scientific study.”
On whether Dr. Cohen can gain the trust back of the public as CDC director, Dr. Ravenel answered, “No, absolutely not. The regulators have been in a revolving door with Big Pharma positions.”
The Epoch Times contacted the CDC for comment. Ross Muscato and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Bravo Doctor Joe. Mandy Cohen was a disaster in North Carolina and will be the same authoritarian at CDC. Best advice is to just ignore any mandates she tries in Washington.
Thanks, Fred. And yes, she needs to be ignored. It is pretty sad that we have reached that point that we must ignore the CDC director.
The CDC years ago used to be highly regarded in the field of public health, even though it is an unconstitutional agency.