After running the institution into the ground, there really wasn’t anything left for Rochelle Walensky to do at the CDC, I guess.

Today, Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced that she will be leaving the CDC on June 30th. At that point, she will have held the job for about two and a half years, since she was named in December 2020 as Biden’s pick for the job, and became director on the day he was inaugurated. To put it bluntly, Walensky was selected because she was going to be a rubber stamp for whatever Team Biden wanted. Masking forever? Yup. Letting the teachers’ unions write the rules for school reopening? Yup. Insisting on a vaccine mandate? Yup. There was not a single instance where Walensky contradicted the Biden administration’s wishes, even when it was clear that she had no scientific data to back her up. The government’s response to COVID-19 was an experiment in how much the general public would allow the state to control our lives. And they enjoyed that power too much.

But as it became more and more obvious that COVID was less and less of an issue, and as the Biden administration was dealt legal defeats, the power of the CDC was curtailed and eventually ignored. The Biden administration was forced to drop their vaccine mandate quest. The House and Senate finally passed a bipartisan bill to end the national emergency, and Biden was left with no choice but to sign it just less than a month ago.

Which brings us to today, when the WHO announced that their COVID emergency was over, too.

JUST IN: WHO downgrades COVID-19, no longer a global emergency https://t.co/mLRvhZSP2F pic.twitter.com/OyGGD9y7Yw

— The Hill (@thehill) May 5, 2023

“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend, with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing and the pressure on health systems easing. This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press briefing Friday.”

“Yesterday, the emergency committee met for the 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern. I have accepted that advice,” he said. “It is therefore with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.”

The national emergency is over. The WHO has declared their international public health emergency over. I guess there was nothing left for Rochelle Walensky to do. The CDC apparently sent out an email to employees to announce that she was leaving.

The White House issued a press release this morning announcing Walensky’s departure next month.

Dr. Walensky has saved lives with her steadfast and unwavering focus on the health of every American. As Director of the CDC, she led a complex organization on the frontlines of a once-in-a-generation pandemic with honesty and integrity. She marshalled our finest scientists and public health experts to turn the tide on the urgent crises we’ve faced.”

Dr. Walensky leaves CDC a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans. We have all benefited from her service and dedication to public health, and I wish her the best in her next chapter.”

IS the CDC really “stronger” for having Dr. Rochelle Walensky in charge during a pandemic?

Walensky was just never a good fit. She consistently went with whatever the political messaging was at the time, even if it required contradicting or misleading regarding the data and science. It did serious harm to the credibility of the CDC. pic.twitter.com/65eg7cE7cr

— AG (@AGHamilton29) May 5, 2023

And the CDC’s public image has taken a massive hit.

About one-quarter of Americans say they trust the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s health recommendations “not very much” or “not at all,” according to a new survey co-authored by the agency’s researchers, four times worse than for doctors and nurses.”

Of those surveyed, 37% said they have a “great deal” of trust in the CDC’s health recommendations, and an additional 37% “somewhat” trust the agency. 16% have “not very much” trust in the CDC’s recommendations, and 10% trust them “not at all.”

The findings, published this week in the journal Health Affairs, are from a survey conducted in February 2022 examining the nation’s trust in public health agencies in the wake of COVID-19.”

As a collective institution, public health failed the public in the United States. The recent blame-shifting and dodging of lockdown proponents like Anthony Fauci and Randi Weingarten are proof positive that they know they were wrong, but they can never admit that. Does Rochelle Walensky realize how wrong she was? Is she going to be called to account for any of her decisions? Or will she just quietly fade away back into academia (she was a professor at Harvard before being tapped as CDC Director) and hope history forgets her?

Walensky has six more weeks on the job. Hopefully she can’t screw anything else up in that period of time. I don’t think a single person is going to be sorry to see her leave.

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Featured image: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, official government portrait, cropped, public domain