CDC’s COVID Collapse: Organizing for a People’s Response

Candidate Joe Biden denounced the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID pandemic. And with good reason. In less than a year, half-a-million Americans were killed by both the virus and the negligent response. Despite running on a platform to get the outbreak under control, and even now with a vaccine in hand, by next spring the new administration will bear responsibility for another half-a-million passing. Like its predecessor, the Biden administration has repeatedly tried to turn the page on COVID, largely in the service of reopening the economy first, rather than intervening into this major public health emergency at the scale it requires. Under both administrations, the CDC has repeatedly bent the science of COVID against a full-spectrum response and increasingly with the aim of sending millions back to work and school under what have proven to remain dangerous conditions. That kind of anti-public health approach is unacceptable. What does a people’s response to such a dereliction of public health duty look like? Join our panel of epidemiologists and community leaders for a discussion of what an exit out of the COVID trap requires. Help set up working groups to push for specific interventions that are proven to help both control the COVID outbreak and mitigate the burdens that arise from these intercessions. Despair alone is not an option. We need to act! Thursday, January 13, 5PM ET/2PM PT Edgar Rivera Colon (moderator) Medical anthropologist Mindy Fullilove Social psychiatrist Justin Feldman Social epidemiologist Rob Wallace Evolutionary epidemiologist Daniel Joseph Wiley Community leader And others. Sponsored by Pandemic Thinktank, Pandemic Research for the People, Justice is Global, and the University of Orange. Please email us if your organization is interested in co-sponsoring the event.