Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair:
Though Fenton is a FEMA superstar with ample experience responding to tornadoes and hurricanes, it would have been more logical for the top person to come from within the HHS family of agencies, though a division director from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was assigned as Fenton’s deputy. The choice “reflects the fact that CDC can’t operate its way out of a paper bag,” said the former HHS official.
Third year into the covid-19 pandemic and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that the CDC is moribund. Institutional decay comes for all during the fat and lazy times.
Katherine Eban also wrote this brilliant account of the lab-leak hypothesis and a hair-raising book about the FDA that made the agency’s fumbles, unlike the CDC’s, not at all surprising.