Breaking news: CDC Director nearly broke in tears as she warned of "impending doom"

Well, it finally happened.  After more than 30 million infections and 550,000 American deaths, a representative of the United States government nearly broke down in tears yesterday as she warned the nation that things have taken a turn for the worse in the battle against COVID.  Described in many headlines as “emotional,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky departed from her prepared remarks in a briefing with the press as she pled for people not to assume that they can stop wearing masks and relax their precautions against the disease.

Responding to new figures that show recent increases across the board in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, she said: "I'm going to lose the script, and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared.”

In a press conference later, Joe Biden backed up Walensky with a plea to governors to re-impose mask mandates if they had relaxed them. “Our work is far from over. The war against Covid-19 is far from won,” Biden said. “This is deadly serious. We’re giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains.  This is precisely what got us into this mess in the first place. As much as we’re doing America, it’s time to do even more.”

When did you ever see anyone in the Trump administration show anything close to that amount of emotion about the disease?  They appeared in the White House briefing room day after day after day as the virus began to take American lives last year, but did any one of them – Trump, Pence, Birx, Redfield, Giroir, Hahn, yes Fauci too – even come close to breaking down in tears as they discussed the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people who died from the disease?

I watched every briefing.  I watched every Rose Garden press conference.  I watched every time Birx got up there with her scarves and her charts and her power-points and her “data” that was spelling, in Walensky’s apt word, “doom” for America, and I didn’t detect a twinge of emotion from her of any kind.  It was like watching replicants as they either provided reports backing up Trump’s rosy outlook or stood by silently as he told one lie after another about how good things were looking, how their testing was “world class,” how the virus was just going to “go away, and go away soon.”

They were like the “smart” kids in 9th grade who turned in their homework early, did all the reading, and when they got up to give their book reports hit all the correct themes but sounded like they were reading instructions for a dish washer or a menu at Denny’s. 

We’ve done this, and this, and this, and tomorrow we’re doing that, and all our projections show that by next month at the latest we’ll be turning the corner and be able to open up and begin to spend time with our loved ones by Easter.

Remember fucking Easter?  Trump talked about Easter, and then they all said it, that everything would be peachy by Easter.  And when that didn’t happen, the numbers would go down because of “warm weather” in the summer, that the fucking sun was going to kill it. 

And then there was hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that was supposed to “cure” COVID.  Trump pushed that shit not for a few days or weeks but for months.  It was given an emergency use authorization by the FDA.  When Rick Bright, the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority told Congress that the FDA had been pressured by the White House to approve the drug, he was attacked by FDA Director Stephen Hahn, by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and by Trump himself.

Oh my God, I found it!  I finally found the time that these masters of the medical universe got “emotional.”  They got mad, not at COVID but at Bright for going off the reservation.  He was untrustworthy, he was disgruntled, and he was just plain wrong, so something had to be done!  They hadn’t done jack shit about COVID, but they could take care of Bright!  They could fire him!

So they did.  They took his job away just as Trump’s fake drug was formally withdrawn by the FDA and orders went out to stop using it because it was killing people.

Do you recall even one of them showing any anger when Trump started tweeting “free Michigan!” and “free Virginia!” and railed against the COVID restrictions and mask requirements they all knew were working?  Trump was attacking the very things that were proven to save lives, and he ripped off his own mask when he returned from being hospitalized with COVID, and he went maskless at his rallies, he went maskless in front of the press, in the Rose Garden, every time he appeared in public.  Did we hear a fucking peep from Birx or Hahn or Azar or Redfield?  What the hell were they doing every day, anyway?

It was like hearing a broadcast from another planet yesterday when CDC Director Walensky looked into a camera with genuine distress in her eyes and obvious sadness in her voice and said, “I'm speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director - not only as your CDC director but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.” 

She wasn’t finished.  Walensky went on to describe with indelible sadness how it felt to be a doctor at a time when so many people were dying: “I know what it's like, as a physician, to stand in that patient room gowned, gloved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else's loved ones, because their loved ones couldn't be there. I know what it’s like when you are a physician, a health care provider, and you don’t have the resources to take care of the patient in front of you.  I know that feeling of nausea when you need the crisis standards of care, and you wonder if there are going to be enough ventilators to go around, and who’s going to make that choice.”

With a catch in her voice, she continued: “And I know what’s it’s like to pull up to your hospital every day, and see the extra morgue sitting outside. We didn’t know at the time when it would stop.  We were just scared.”

Sadness and fear.  That’s what was missing from Trump and Pence and Birx and Redfield and Hahn and Azar and all the rest of them.  People were dying by the thousands every single day, and they just picked up their talking points and stood behind Trump as he told lie after lie after lie, and then they stepped in front of the cameras and backed him up, all of them but Fauci.  He looked looked down at his shoes and shook his head, but there was clearly little he could do but hang in there and be the guy who stood up for science.

It’s fucking amazing that it took fifteen months and 550,000 dead for a government official to speak so forthrightly about this deadly disease that she had to pause and take a breath to stop herself from crying, but it finally happened.

It’s no wonder that old men have sent young people out to die in useless, hopeless wars for so many years.  They don’t feel anything when the body counts come in.  Nor did Trump or any of his bloodless minions with their lies and dodges and make-believe happy talk about “freedom” and “opening up” and “it’s going to be over before you know it.”

If only the dead could talk.  Well, at least we finally got Rochelle Walensky to talk for them, and we’ve got Joe Biden there to back her up.