Gates Package — page 919

6* < The Premonition. June. July 27, 2021: The CDC recommends that fully vaccinated people resume wearing masks indoors in parts of the country where case counts are surging. It also recommends that masks be worn indoors by all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to schools regardless of their vaccination status You could get whiplash from trying to follow along. Does this mean the staff of the CDC were incompetent? No. I won't defend every decision the CDC made--many experts thought at the time that the May 13, 2021, advice on masks was a mistake, for example, and I agreed--but during a public health emergency, decisions are made by imperfect people using imperfect data in an environment that's constantly changing. We should have studied respiratory virus transmission a lot more beforehand, instead of learning during the pandemic. And, expecting perfection during an outbreak actually sets up a perverse dynamic, as the story of David Sencer illustrates.6* Born in Michigan in 1924, Sencer joined the U.S. Navy after graduating from college. After a yearlong bout with tuberculosis, he ended up joining the U.S. Public Health Service, intent on saving people from diseases like the one that had sidelined him for so long. Sencer made his mark early on with vaccines. After moving to the Centers for Disease Control, he helped draft legislation that created the first broad vaccination program in the U.S. and dramatically expanded the number of children who received the polio vaccine. He became director of the CDC in 1966 and led its expansion into work on malaria, family planning, smoking prevention, and even the quarantine of astronauts after returning from space. Sencer * Michael Lewis tells Sencer's story well in his book The Premonition.