Biden's Probable New CDC Director Just Might Be Worse Than the Last One

As we reported, dictatorial Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky will be stepping down on June 30 after running roughshod over our natural born rights and spewing misinformation throughout the COVID pandemic. That’s the good news—the bad news is that Joe Biden’s apparent pick for her replacement might be even worse.

The New York Times reports that former North Carolina Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Mandy Cohen is the choice, and she has a history of demanding strict lockdowns and laughing at those who suffered through them:

As NC health director, @DrMandyCohen felt comfortable wielding dictatorial power. Here she laughs about consulting with her counterparts in other states:
When she was like, are you gonna let them have professional football? And I was like, no. And she's like, OK, neither are we. pic.twitter.com/5Qq4YrGX0S

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) June 1, 2023

Alex Berenson, an author and also a fierce critic of the nation’s COVID response, sounded the alarm on his Substack Friday:

Cohen shares the same health authoritarian impulses as Walensky. She supported mask and vaccine mandates – and lockdowns even in 2021. But she is apparently more bureaucratically competent, and thus more dangerous, than Walensky. [emphasis mine]

She also appears to be a Fauci fanatic. You’ll remember that the good doctor—of “I am the science” fame—repeatedly told falsehoods and led the nation down an Orwellian path of school closures, mask mandates, and ineffective vaccine dictates.

(Read: A Fitting Farewell to Fibbing Fauci—a Roundup of His Greatest Misinformation Hits)

Yet Cohen appears to worship him like a rock star or religious figure:

Sorry. It's real. https://t.co/YzcMX5WEWl

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) June 1, 2023

Like so many officials during those draconian days, Cohen exhibited hypocritical behavior:

By the way, Mandy Cohen apparently only masks when there’s a camera around. Here she walked into the press conference unmasked, not realizing a camera caught it. This was June 30, 2020, a couple months before she tweeted the photo of the Fauci mask. pic.twitter.com/8QV0qt2ZDu

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) June 1, 2023

Not surprisingly, the Times puff piece on her makes her sound like the Second Coming, noting that she “steered her state through the tumultuous first two years of the coronavirus pandemic” and “established herself as a familiar and steady voice who maintained the public’s trust despite deep political divisions”:

Addressing graduating students at Guilford College in North Carolina last month, Dr. Cohen made trust the theme of her commencement speech. “Change happens at the pace of trust,” she said, adding that while it was possible to motivate people to change their behavior by scaring them, “fear will only get you so far.”

If she is ultimately chosen, she will have her work cut out for her because, as I’ve written, the CDC has deservedly and completely lost the trust of the American people.

(Read: CDC Admits Abject Failure in Its COVID Guidance, Yet No One Is Held Accountable)

Berenson:

Besides pushing lockdowns through March 2021, Cohen also threatened legal action against a school district that wanted to drop quarantines and contact tracing – in September 2021, long after Covid’s lack of risk to school-age children became apparent. She pushed jab mandates for health care workers and explicitly tied loosening restrictions to vaccination levels.

In other words, Cohen has heartily supported every authoritarian measure that the last three years have proven useless. Of course, to the White House, her views are a feature, not a bug. And the Biden Administration seems to believe she will be able to make the CDC even more willing to follow its lead.

Walensky, meanwhile, leaves behind a dumpster fire of a record. RedState Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar reflected on her legacy earlier this month:

[H]er department admitted to “abject failure” in their COVID guidance; like her contemporaries Anthony Fauci and Barbara Ferrer, she didn’t follow the same rules all of us did; she relied on a shoddy study co-authored by Barbara Ferrer’s non-MD daughter to recommend mask mandates in schools; her husband received $5 million in HHS grants for his start-up and wasn’t held to the same standards as other recipients;and let’s not forget her disgusting statements on the Tuskegee Experiment.

If Mandy Cohen gets a chance, she will likely quickly resort to the fear-mongering and assault on our rights practiced by her predecessor. It would seem by this choice that the Biden administration is showing that they just can’t quit the COVID era—and the power it gave them. Even worse, this time our overlord will be a character from Mean Girls.

Just imagine all the officials in the Biden White House sitting around like, “Who should be our new CDC Director?” “How about Mandy Cohen, the lady who wears a cloth Fauci mask for the cameras and laughs about suspending citizens’ rights like a high school girl.” “Brilliant!”

— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) June 3, 2023

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