Agreed. Though from experience and what I've read, they do have certain questionable commercial motives. Should call this out everytime.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-m... https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus-contracts/contra...

> no human adversarial motives

It's a historical point of fact that this is untrue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

"The statements of fact they release pertain to public health with no human adversarial motives."

The CDC has knowingly lied about the efficacy of masks intending to trick the public to deprive them of useful medical gear. They were slow to identify the spread of covid as aerosol based, even after it was widely known. CDC guidance focused on "6 feet apart" instead of the importance of ventilation. The CDC temporarily halted the J&J vaccine unnecessarily, wasting time and eroding trust in vaccines generally. Early in the pandemic the CDC blocked hundreds of labs from doing their own covid tests in favor of flawed CDC tests that took substantially longer - again, this was at an absolutely time critical moment in the pandemic.

I have never really paid attention to the CDC until this pandemic. Now, I feel like they constantly make huge blunders and don't really deserve much trust. Even when they aren't lying to you, as they did regarding masks, they don't seem like they really know what they're doing.

The temporary halt seems necessary -- the usual treatment had bad effects, and the proper treatment needed to be disseminated to doctors and nurses.

If the CDC did the opposite in each of these cases, people would find fault in that. "They told the general public to wear masks early on, leading to mask shortages at hospitals!" And "When blood clots were reported in JnJ vaccine they did nothing to protect Americans!"

False dichotomy. The CDC's only two choices weren't to say "everyone wear masks" or "masks don't work." They also could have told the whole truth and said "masks do work, but please hold off on wearing them until we're sure there's enough for first responders."

If they only had the choice to do one of two diametric opposite actions you might have a point. Of course, in reality, there is no such limitation. If the CDC had told the public masks work and research shows home made, cotton, or surgical masks are significantly better than nothing and we need to get our N95's to our medical frontline... Or, you know, been prepared with enough masks for medical frontline people. Doing nothing when blood clots were reported is a bad idea, doing analysis (ideally in advance) to know what levels of side effects should and shouldn't be cause for alarm would be a better idea.

I do agree the "avoid a medical shortage" white lie did harm their credibility, but I know why they did it (I think). It will be a good case study for bioethics and public policy students.

I always assumed the virus was airborne, and they tended to say outside was safer than inside. I haven't looked at the new way they're phrasing it, but I need to look more.

The J&J vaccine halt was done for scientific reasons, and precisely to instill confidence in people that the CDC is acting in good faith and isn't going to sling something out there without knowing all they can about its effects. That you think they made the wrong decision is funny if it weren't sad.

Finally, and I don't know you, but I think it's cute how all the CDC haters/people saying Fauci is evil are the ones who through the pandemic have laughed at the virus and said vaccines are evil. Now here we have an instance of someone skeptical of the CDC because they didn't give enough warning about the virus and they eroded trust in vaccines!