Incoming CDC Director: ‘On January 21, Things Are Going To Be Bad; It’s Going To Be Dark’

EXCERPT:

WALENSKY: “We are committed to the science, we are committed to promoting public trust, transparency, to being accountable for our actions and communicating both to the science and to the American people what we know and when we know it. I think we have to be committed in our next phase of this, starting January 20th. When the president-elect is inaugurated. To sort of look to the path forward. I believe that path forward is — is going to be challenging when we get there. I think we all need to acknowledge that on January 21st, things are going to be bad. It’s going to be dark. Right now, we’re already in some dark times. I do think that we’re going to have more deaths, more surge after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. And all of those are going to manifest on, you know, around the end of January. So as I think about the priorities, among the things that I think about are making sure that our hospital systems are OK, that we have enough supplies, that we have enough beds. And that we have enough workforce to work in those systems. I think we need to promote vaccine distribution and vaccination. We have two vaccines now and we need to get more vaccines into people, into vaccinations. We need to promote more testing, because I think we have realized with this new mutant that we are not done with testing. And that all of the population will not be able to be vaccinated immediately. And then I think to your point, to your original question, we need to promote surveillance. Because we need to understand whether that new mutant is here and we need to understand whether and when new mutants will arise. And then maybe the real point that I want to make is the underpinning of all of those strategies is our commitment to equity and that we recognize that we no longer can have a situation in this country where black and brown communities have less access to testing, they have longer delays to get test results, they have higher hospitalization rates and higher mortality rates.”