The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention misled Americans about the risk of transferring or catching the COVID-19 virus outdoors, FoxNews reported.
In its announcement last week, the CDC rescinded some of its prior mask mandates, basing its claims on the highly exaggerated claim that there is a 10% risk of transmission outdoors.
The study that the CDC used, however, really put one’s odds of transmission at around 0.1%.
Even liberal Senator Susan Collins, R.-Maine, attacked the CDC for such an outrageous exaggeration.
Collins accosted CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, asking for an explanation for the CDC’s inconsistencies.
“I always considered the CDC to be the gold standard; I don’t anymore,” Collins told Walensky.
“So here we have unnecessary barriers to reopening schools, exaggerating the risks of outdoor transmission, and unworkable restrictions on summer camps,” Collins said. “Why does this matter? It matters because it undermines public confidence in your recommendations, in the recommendations that do make sense, in the recommendations that Americans should be following.”
Dr. Walensky responded to Collins’s rebuke, claiming that the CDC’s guidance was based on a “meta-analysis” that took into account at least 19 studies.
“The top line result was less than 10%, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, one of our top infectious disease journals,” she said. “That is where that came from, it was from a published study that synthesized studies from many places.”
Further, the CDC claimed that it made such decisions on the basis of “limited data on outdoor transmission.”
In other words, the agency made sweeping proclamations without conducting adequate research, and then overemphasized the dangers of the virus to overcompensate for its lack of understanding.
According to multiple officials, the CDC will monitor the data and adjust accordingly.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, along with Walensky, have been chosen lead that task.
