By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
When I recently posted on masking, I remarked that I’d like to kick the CDC’s twitching corpse. A little. This post does not cover the topic I had in mind for that happy task (why 3M’s respirator, designed in 2008 for just pandemics as our own, was never adopted), but in the course of writing that post, I encountered CDC’s horrid “About Covid 19” page, which provides a plethora of opportunities for putting the boot in, and better yet is affirmatively lethal to those who take it at face value. So I can have fun and do good. Dulce and utile, as the rhetoricians say.
Readers, if you can, I ask you to read the CDC material that follows with an innocent eye. Imagine that you are a school administrator who has conscientiously gone to the world’s premier public health authority to understand how to protect the school’s students, and you know nothing of Covid but what the CDC tells you. Or imagine yourself a parent, seeking to protect your family, again innocent of all knowledge of Covid. Or just an Average Citizen (AC), again, innocent. How would they read these pages? Put yourself in AC’s shoes.
NC readers know that #CovidIsAirborne. However, the Average Citizen does not, and when they come to CDC they will not find a coherent transmission paradigm, clearly and concisely expressed[1]. Instead, what AC will find is a mishmash, a farrago, or to use the French figure, un bordel of institutionally-, politically-, and class-driven paradigms that in fact compete and contradict; reading this material is like seeing Ptolemy and Copernicus jammed together into the same book. Normally, I would draw my conclusions after presenting my data, but this time I think I’ll present CDC’s implicit rules first, so you can match them up with what you read:
Rule #1: airborne. Never use the word “airborne.”
Rule #2: fomites. Legitimize fomite transmission as a possible form of Covid transmission.
Rule #3: droplets. Legitimize droplet dogma, with droplets as the preferred form of Covid transmission.
Rule #4: aerosols. CDC treats droplets and aerosols as a continuum. (A droplet is a loogie, even if small, as from sneezing. It’s ballistic. It falls to the ground (hence CDC’s focus on “close contact”). Aerosols are like cigarette smoke; they linger in the air for hours or even days. If you think cigarette smoke and loogies are two aspects of the same thing, you are thinking like the CDC. CDC has a lot of circumlocutions for aerosols; among them, “respiratory droplets” and “viral particles.”)
Rule #5: asymptomatic. Never imply that asymptomatic infection is significant. But it is: It’s not only the coughing and hacking people who are dangerous. Covid spreads before symptoms establish themselves, which is one reason it’s outsmarting us (see here, here, and here).
Rule #6: masks. Never imply that masks are anything other than a personal choice. (Remember: Walensky believes, or at least says, that masks are a “scarlet letter.” Elites hate them.)
Rule #7: vaccines. Vaccines rule.
(Rules violations can be found. In an institution as sloppy and indifferent as CDC, this is only to be expected. However, as I shall show, these rules give an account of the material I read through, which surveys the high points of what I would do to protect myself and others,)
This rest of this post will consist mainly of annotated screen shots of CDC web pages, starting from this top-level TOC. (I took the screen shots on my iPad, so your layout may vary.) I have highlighted the sections in the TOC that I will drill down into:
(This TOC makes CDC’s Covid material look more organized than it is. In fact, the entire section is a rat’s nest of interlinked pages, many of which don’t appear in the TOC at all.) Prepare for close reading!
Let’s start with the “About” page:
1) CDC has been “reviewing” this guidance since January 2024. 2022. But apparently the review is not complete, or was never complete.
2) Rule #7: vaccines.
3) Rule #6: masks.
Average Citizen AC, reading this, would quite reasonably conclude that no further reading was needed. The page hasn’t been updated, and all you need is vaccines. In particular, no masks. An easy sell to the school board!
“How to Protect Yourself and Others“:
1) On Community Levels, I will quote Water Cooler:
The “green map” is still pervades this material.
2) IMNHSO, weekly reports are too infrequent when the virus is doubling.
3) Rule #2: fomites.
4) Rule #5: asymptomatic. Avoiding contact with only the symptomatic is not enough to project you. The obvious conclusion is that CDC should at least encourage universal masking. But by Rule #6: masks.
Still on “How to Protect Yourself and Others“:
1) Rule #4: aerosols. “Virus particles” is a circumlocution for aerosol. AC sure doesn’t think of a loogie as a particle.
2) Rule #4: aerosols. The virus “spreads” more easily indoors because aerosols float in the air and build up (unlike outdoors, where they dissipate).
3) Rule #4: aerosols. “As much as”? Come on. Do these people have CO2 meters?? UPDATE Dang. I missed that the diverse people in the artwork are not diverse with respect to mask-wearing.
Still on “How to Protect Yourself and Others“:
1) Rule #5: asymptomatic. Avoiding contact with only the symptomatic is not enough to protect you. The obvious conclusion is that CDC should at least encourage universal masking. But by Rule #6: masks.
Still on “How to Protect Yourself and Others“:
1) “Community Levels” once more.
2) “Masks or Respirators” (like apples or oranges). AC would, I think, come away from this section thinking that masks and respirators were two entirely different things. Frankly, I once thought “respirators” were like Darth Vader masks, or like gas masks (possibly through a sonic association with “ventilator”). But they’re not different things:
I can’t figure out what motivates this distinction, which plays out awkwardly all through this material. Perhaps simply a mischievous desire to obfuscate. They’re all masks, so just as one says “surgical mask,” why not say “respirator mask”?
3) An earlooped mask on the female figure, which from the printing looks like a cloth mask with ear loops, ffs, with not even a Badger seal, and no masks on the children. Is it really too much to ask of CDC that their graphics reflect the most protective masking practice, rather than the leat?
“Transmission”
1) Since this guidance has been under review sice July 12, there’s apparently no reason to read further, and AC is a busy man.
2) This fancy image clicks through to the next screen (“How COVID-19 Spreads”) with no value add. So why is it here?
3) Omnicron and variants are off-point for “Transmission.” So why is this here?
4) The odious “Community Levels” once more.
5) Rule #5: asymptomatic. Since Covid spreads asymptomaticallly, wearing a mask only when you have symptoms places personal convenience over the needs of the community.
6) Putting “Protect Yourself” under “How to Protect Youself” seems odd. And the “Protect Yourself” clicks through to the same link at 2). So why are both here?
“How COVID-19 Spreads”
1) Rule #3: droplets and Rule #4: aerosols.
2) Rule #2: fomites.
3) Why is this here?
4) FINALLY, buried deeply, we get the admission that Covid spread is asymptomatic (knocking the props from under all that advice about masking only when sick, or staying away coughing and sneezing people, and so on. Again, the policy recommendation should be at least to encourage universal masking, but of course by Rule #6, CDC can’t do that.
5) Again, weekly is not enough when a surge is beginning. Ideal would be daily.
“Use and Care of Masks”
1) So I guess respirators are masks.
2) Except they’re not.
3) Definitely not.
4) Buried down in the section, we FINALLY get a mention of a layered strategy (although ventilation is, naturally, missing). So why wasn’t this on the about page? Because CDC doesn’t really believe it, by Rule #7: vaccines. (See Note [1] for a layered strategy that’s been thought through.)
5) The horrid community levels metric once more.
6) How, exactly, does the “community” decided? What is the community? A committee of hospital administrators?
7) Rule #6: masks. So, if “people may choose to mask at any time” (thanks), or presumably unmask or not mask at all, how on earth does “the” “community” “decide” anything? If masking is only a personal decision, forever and ever amen, then the community has no say or leverage at all.
“Types of Masks and Respirators”
1) So I guess masks and respirators are apples and oranges again.
2) Ditto. And is “the wearer” the only concern?
Still on “Types of Masks and Respirators“:
I don’t know who “Key Messages” is aimed at. Influencers, propagandists, administrators? Opinion-havers?
1) CDC tries to have it both ways. Everything up to this point, especially including graphics, has been straight Rule #6: masks. Now, buried deep in the Masks section — why not, for pity’s sake, on the About page, the first page AC sees, along with the 3Cs or a Swiss Cheese model of layered protection? — we get a massive Rule #6 violation. Further, “Any mask is better than no mask.” But again, if that’s true, there’s no reason to reduce public> health to personal responsibility. There is such a thing as society. Now, CDC could try to solve this contradiction by producing some highly effective marketing collateral for masking to, er, “nudge” the non-maskers into masking. I’m not seeing anything like that here. And I’ve heard no proposal to do so.
2) Presumably “the most protective mask” includes respirators.
3) But no!
4) And no!
5) And no!
6) This paragraph is a copy-paste of material at 1). Apparently, nobody’s copy-editing this section. Perhaps that’s why the Rule #6 violation snuck in.
Still on “Types of Masks and Respirators“:
1) Rule #3: droplets and Rule #4: aerosols. They’ve just gotta cram that word “droplet” in. Perhaps all that labor caused them to forget that besides spreading through breathing, aerosols also spread by talking, shouting, and singing.
2) Finally data AC can use. Note also the complete collapse of the mask/respirator distinction, since “N95” (a respirator) is also a “filtering mask.’
3) On “individuals may consider the situation,” I can’t even. I suppose this is another way of saying “personal responsibility” will take care of public health. Also, the paragraph should end with a semicolon to introduce the bulleted list.
4) Summarizing, masks are for proles: Bus drivers and grocery store workers, or people who take public transportation.
“Understanding Risk:”
1) I love the assumption that everybody has a healthcare provider. And making a “Covid plan” is homework; the PMC love them their homework. Finally, this section reads as if the Rule #6 violations in “Types of Masks and Respirators” had never been. CDC has no notion that “community” or even (dread word) collective action could reduce the risk for those who have risk factors.
2) Naturally, the CDC asseses risk for age, race, and ethnicity. But not for class. So the “bus drivers” and “grovery workers’” are S.O.L.
Conclusion
From the Miami Herald, “Now that the CDC has abandoned us, it’s up to medical professionals to keep us safe from COVID“:
With a one-two punch, the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have tossed tens of millions of Americans at high risk of death and disability from COVID-19 into a sea of contagion without any clear guidance for infection prevention and control. After President Biden’s thoughtless remark that “the pandemic is over,” the CDC announced days later a quiet undermining of COVID-19 protections in hospitals and nursing homes: the end of universal masking recommendations for healthcare settings. Ordinary Americans who cannot afford to be ill — and that is truly tens of millions of us — now have to appeal directly to America’s working medical professionals: Please make your medical offices safe for us to enter by using N95 masks and top-rated HEPA air filtration. Too many of us are at risk to become severely ill, develop chronic illness or die if we catch COVID-19, even if we are newly boosted.
I would use stronger words than “thoughtless” and “quiet undermining”. When I say “crimes against humanity,” I’m really not kidding. From the Encyclopedia Brittanica:
The term also has a broader use in condemning other acts that, in a phrase often used, “shock the conscience of mankind.” World poverty, human-made environmental disasters, and terrorist attacks have thus been described as crimes against humanity. The broader use of the term may be intended only to register the highest possible level of moral outrage, or the intention may be to suggest that such offenses be recognized, formally, as legal offenses.
The Center for Disease’s Covid documentation entraps the innocent into making decisions that will be lethal for them and for others. That’s a crime that shocks the conscience. An innocent would read the About page, and decide that all that’s required is vaccination. But since the vaccines we have don’t prevent transmission, that decision would condemn others to neurological and vascular damage, not to mention Long Covid. An innocent, reading the CDC’s obfuscations on masks vs. respirators, never having clicked enough levels deep to find out that the N95 is a mask, might well buy a package of less protective masks, again infecting themselves and others. An innocent, who missed CDC’s buried admission that Covid transmits asymptomatically, might well mask up only in the presence of the sick (coughing, sneezing), again infecting themselves or others. An innocent, who believed CDC’s “Community Levels” metric, not understanding that CDC designed it to protect hospitals, not dull normals, would take protective measures and adopt a layered strategy days or weeks too late, infecting themselves or others. An innocent bus driver or grocery worker might look to CDC to alleviate their plight, to provide some data on issues particular to their work situation. But such hopes would be foolish, wouldn’t they?
But to me, CDC’s worst crime is not to place a coherent transmission paradigm right on their About page. Then people could figure out what measures to take. Instead, we get a grotesque gallimaufry of fomites, droplets, and various euphemisms for aerosols. This matters, because while CDC prattles on about “personal responsibility,” they deny innocents the very concepts they need to take responsibility. We still have people wiping down shopping cart handles while buying groceries unmasked, and innocents will get infected and some will die because of that. Those people are trying to do the right thing. But because of CDC, they’re doing the wrong thing. We still have people carefully following cough etiquette, worrying about loogies when they should be worrying about aerosols, and innocents will get infected and some will die because of that. Those people, too, are trying to do the right thing. But because of CDC, they’re doing the wrong thing. We have a slow-moving massacre of the innocents on our hands, and I wish it were possible to make CDC pay for its crimes.
NOTES
[1] Some clear and precised guidance. From Japan, the 3Cs policy:
And better yet, USC’s version of the Swiss Cheese model”
I like especially that USC has masks on the “personal responsibility” side, and mask enforcements on the “USC Actions” (community) side. This is what CDC is unwilling to do.
