Let's Go Back to Ignoring CDC and Federal Health Guidance Like We Always Have

About a couple of weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made an abrupt change in its recommendations for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Instead of recommending face mask usage in various public settings, the CDC decided to recommend that vaccinated individuals are safe in almost every indoor and outdoor scenario: "You can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart." Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the Director of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], also said that day that vaccinated people do not need masks while outdoors. While this might come off as a step in the right direction or a warranted sigh or relief, it made me ask a vital question: why are we listening to the CDC or Fauci in the first place? 

You might think that listening to the government experts is the way to go in the middle of a pandemic. After all, those who work at such organizations as the CDC, FDA, and NIH have a good amount of topical expertise. Normally, I would be for heeding good advice from experts. However, I hesitate to take my COVID-related advice from the government, especially given how the U.S. federal government has operated on this front. For one, the CDC has historically and institutionally been an exceptionally cautious agency in terms of its advice. If you look at some of the advice that government agencies in the past have given, it is amazing how many Americans ignore it:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends eating two cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables a day. According to the CDC, only 1 in 10 eat the recommended amount.
• The CDC defines "moderate drinking" as one alcoholic drink for women and two alcoholic drinks for men. The CDC also says that 2 out of 3 Americans drink above moderate levels at least once a month. 
• The CDC also recommends that pregnant women avoid drinking all together, even though 1 out of 9 pregnant women drinks anyways. 
• The CDC doesn't want you smoking, yet 14 percent of Americans smoke regularly.
• The CDC would like for people to exercise at least twice a week. How many people are successful? According to a 2018 CDC report, just 23 percent get enough exercise.
• The CDC recommends at least seven hours of sleep, but 1 out of 3 Americans do not get enough sleep.

I'm not here to say that all the aforementioned recommendations are bad or inaccurate. However, when it comes to the main indicators of good diet, exercise, and adequate sleep, Americans generally disregard what the government recommends them. But it's not just that. The government dropped the ball with its initial response to the pandemic. In April 2020, I detailed 15 ways in which pre-existing government policies got in the way of an adequate response. Both the CDC and FDA botched mass testing. FDA regulations delayed rollout of face masks, ventilators, and hand sanitizers. This is to say nothing of state and local regulations, but I'm going to keep my focus on the federal government today. Let's see a few examples of how the federal government handled their response to the pandemic and how they went about recommendations:

• Face Masks at Onset of Pandemic: At the beginning of the pandemic, there was mixed messaging about wearing masks. The federal government went from recommending that we do not wear masks and subsequently recommending that we do masks, with mask shortages being cited as the reason for the initial guidance. In short, it was acceptable to mislead the public on masks because we did not have enough masks at the beginning. Can you see how people can be confused when someone like Fauci said at the beginning of the pandemic that we do not need masks to Fauci wearing two masks at the beginning of 2021?  
• School Closures: Last summer, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Dr. Anthony Fauci were arguing in a Senate Committee hearing about whether schools should be open. Back in the summer, Fauci thought that children were a high enough risk. Fauci got around to admitting in November that children were unlikely vectors of COVID. The data did not change in the interim to justify a change. As I pointed out in July, there was plenty of evidence to show that schools could be open. Fauci chose to ignore the evidence because it was politically expedient to do so.
• Herd Immunity: At the beginning of the pandemic, Fauci thought that herd immunity would be around 60 percent. Later in the year, he increased it to 70 percent and eventually upped it to 85 percent. According to an interview Fauci had with the New York Times, he did not base his estimation on science. He looked at polling data. When he saw that at least 60 percent were willing to get the vaccine, he increased his estimate to encourage people to get vaccinated. Granted, herd immunity can be an elusive concept since still do not know how long immunity, either that from the vaccines or natural immunity lasts. But it's harder to take an estimate seriously when it is based on a gut reaction. 
• Outdoor Transmission Risk: Earlier this year, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that the risk of outdoor COVID transmission was about 10 percent. That figure was based on a study released in February (Bulfone et al., 2021). It turns out that one of the co-authors of that study said that Walensky misrepresented the study and over-exaggerated the risk of outdoor transmission. It looks like outdoor transmission risk is lower than 0.1 percent. That really only happened either in large crowds or if you were in someone's face. Plus, that was before vaccines. Given that vaccines are shown to be effective at minimizing COVID spread, the odds are even lower....so low that the CDC finally got around to recommending that fully vaccinated people can be outdoors (and most indoor venues) without a mask. Walensky exaggerated by the order of two magnitudes to try to be needlessly stringent. Let that sink in for a moment. 
• Fully Vaccinated People (CDC): Back in March, the CDC was much more strict and arbitrary with its recommendations for fully vaccinated people, e.g., fully vaccinated people should only hang out with other vaccinated people. As I argued last month, vaccines are safe and effective. Since vaccines were meant to be the end-game to get us back to a "pre-pandemic normal," it would follow that fully vaccinated people are safe to more or less resume living as they had prior to the beginning of the pandemic. However, that is not what happened. I would surmise that the CDC remained strict up until its May 13 interim recommendation to try to get more people vaccinated. But if little to nothing changes, why bother getting vaccinated? While I am glad that the CDC changed their tune, I would also contend that the initial recommendation based on stringency actually impeded the vaccination campaign.
• Face Masks for Fully Vaccinated (Fauci): On May 18, Fauci wanted to explain the confusion over the CDC's new mask recommendations for the fully vaccinated. While interviewing with Good Morning America, he said that he did not want to give mixed messaging before the CDC recommendations, and then proceeded to say that the chance of getting infected while indoors was low. Contrast to when Fauci was testifying before the Senate a couple of months earlier when he was wearing two masks while vaccinated. He got into a heated argument with Senator Paul (again!) about why fully vaccinated people should wear masks. Paul accused Fauci of practicing "theater," and Fauci vehemently disagreed. It looks like Paul was right after all: wearing masks for the fully vaccinated is political theater. 

If the government were to potentially have any legitimate role in pandemic response, at least from a libertarian standpoint, it would be to give solid, evidence-based recommendations for the public to follow. As I have already shown, that has been far from the case during this pandemic. Messaging on the most important aspects of flattening the curve and non-pharmaceutical interventions have been mismanaged. It has further eroded the American people's trust in experts, which further contributes to the post-truth world in which we live. All that has been accomplished with such arbitrary and inconsistent messaging is rendering the CDC more irrelevant. 

I think this leads to another point: we gave too much credence to the likes of the CDC. As their history has shown, they are going to be stricter than most Americans can handle. Plus, given the mismanagement, we should not be leaving it up to the CDC or Fauci to tell us how to live our lives. As Robby Soave at Reason Magazine points out, "Normal does not mean the CDC grants permission to enjoy life again; normal means ignoring the CDC and enjoying life anyway." As much as fear has driven so many personal decisions and as much as risk assessment has been eroded as a concept, I hope that we can get back to living our lives without unreasonable fear and without needing approval from the federal government to do so.