US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are both suffering staff shortages as "bad science" has led to low morale, said a top public health expert. .Both agencies, along with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been swamped by controversy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic for inconsistent messaging and for decision-making that didn't seem to line up with available science, according to Dr. Marty Makary, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University.."Major decisions made by the agencies that hurt morale included support for masking in schools, school closures during the pandemic, and the authorization of COVID-19 vaccines for children four and under," said Makary in a Daily Mail article. ."They have no leadership right now. Suddenly, there's an enormous number of jobs opening up at the highest level positions," an anonymous NIH scientist told Common Sense Media..Initial data reports showed children "suffered limited risk" when they contracted the virus and it was mainly the elderly and "severely immunocompromised" who suffered from the virus's burden. The Daily Mail reported that, despite the evidence, the CDC still recommended schools stay closed until the end of the 2019–2020 school year. Earlier this year, Makary said the decision to keep schools closed was "one of the worst made in the pandemic," specifically citing that "minority communities who disproportionately lived in these areas were set the furthest behind, academically." "Learning loss, mental health exacerbations were obvious early on, and those worsened as the guidance insisted on keeping schools virtual," Makary said. "CDC guidance [has] worsened racial equity for generations to come. It failed this generation of children." The decision that seemed to raise the most commotion was the authorization of COVID-19 jabs for children aged six months to five-years-old. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signed off on those vaccines in June after a panel of advisors to the CDC voted 12 to 0 in favour of COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months on June 18. "We now know, based on rigorous scientific review, that the vaccines available here in the United States can be used safely and effectively in children under five," said Walensky. "Vaccinating children is a critical opportunity to protect them against hospitalization and death from COVID-19." Makary criticized the data submitted by Pfizer and Moderna that received the green-light saying it was "lacking" as Pfizer's trial included fewer than 1,000 children and the vaccine didn't show any efficacy against prevention of infection. "Moderna reported just a 4% reduction in infection in their trial of around 6,000 children," Makary stated. He said a more honest announcement would have been, "We approved the vax for babies and toddlers based on very little data. While we believe its safe in this population, the study sample size was too low to make a [conclusion] about safety." He also noted studies were done in kids without natural immunity. Makary told Daily Mail about the decision in June. "The public has no idea how bad this data really is. It would not pass muster for any other authorization," an FDA official said. Amid controversies, the CDC announced in April it would "re-evaluate its structure and processes" in the hopes of developing better standards to communicate with Americans. It is unclear what those changes were.
