五位前董事疾病控制和预防中心他们聚在一起谈论冠状病毒。周四，奥巴马一再表示，美国仍在努力应对这一流行病，原因只有一个:来自领导层的混杂信息。
理查德·贝瑟(Richard Besser)博士曾在2009年担任疾病预防控制中心的代理主任，他说:“这是第一次在没有制定基本规则的情况下，由最好的公共卫生科学驱动的公共卫生应对措施。”“因此，当政治领导人和公共卫生领导人带着截然不同的信息来到这里时，当你看不到政治领导人支持公共卫生科学时，你就失去了信任。
人们质疑做事情是因为科学上的正确做法，还是因为政治原因，这就削弱了控制真正可控事物的努力。”
贝瑟也曾是美国广播公司新闻部的首席医学记者，朱莉·格伯丁博士、汤姆·弗里登博士、杰弗里·科普兰博士和大卫·萨彻博士与美国广播公司新闻部的林西·戴维斯博士进行了交谈。曾在民主党和共和党政府任职的前疾控中心主任也谈到了预防下一次大流行，以及美国人即使在疫苗获得批准后将面临的挑战。
他们说这个国家阻止病毒的最好机会是通过合作。
弗里登曾在2009年至2017年担任疾病预防控制中心主任，他说:“现在，在美国，每分钟就有一个人死于这种病毒，我们需要关注这种病毒正在做什么，以及我们作为一个社区正在做什么来阻止它。”“因为我们所有人都可以做一些事情来减轻它的严重性，无论是戴上口罩、洗手、保持距离还是支持公共卫生，这样他们就可以遏制病毒……并保护最脆弱的人群。
“我们能做的还有很多，”他继续说道。进步掌握在我们手中，但当它被破坏时，就很难取得进步。"
从1993年到1998年担任疾控中心主任的萨彻说:“这种流行病不会突然结束。”“就COVID而言，问题还会持续一段时间，所以问题就变成了:我们什么时候才能超越它?当人们认真对待挑战时。”
美国COVID-19的死亡人数高于世界上其他任何地方至少有159，000人死亡。将近500万美国人被诊断出患有这种病毒。随着31个州的每日死亡人数不断上升，25个州的阳性病例率不断上升，唐纳德·特朗普总统最近几周宣称，美国已经“控制住”了病毒，美国已经“控制住了”非常好的身材。"
在1998年至2002年间担任疾病预防控制中心主任的科普兰说:“每一个这样的谎言都剥夺了我们改善减灾工作的机会……它在每个人的头脑中造成了混乱。”
他说，即使信息需要“糖衣包裹，或者即使它看起来是坏消息，人们会感到不安，事实才是真正重要的。”
他补充说:“一旦你失去了这种优势，那么你的背后不仅仅是病毒——你的背后是公众舆论和人们的行为。”
贝瑟指出，在流感大流行早期，当官员们首次开始就这种病毒举行新闻发布会时，人们对疫情严重程度的认识是脱节的。1月31日，疾病预防控制中心主任罗伯特·雷德菲尔德告诉记者“目前美国公众面临的风险很低。”
疾病预防控制中心国家免疫和呼吸疾病中心主任南希·梅索尼埃说在2月25日的新闻发布会上，他说“关闭可能会严重影响日常生活。”
“通过每天与公众接触，公众将能够了解疾控中心在学习什么，全球公共卫生界在学习什么。贝瑟说:“你可以沿着这条路走下去，这样就不用担心会被遗漏，因为信息很快就传了进来，这将是一个威胁。”“疾控中心一表态，疾控中心就靠边站了。它不再被允许做简报。”
“因此，断章取义的时间点……可能看起来非常奇怪，”他补充道，“但如果与我们的公共卫生领导人进行了持续的对话和对话，那将是这一旅程的一部分。”
前董事们还表示，美国需要采取更积极的态度来预防下一次大流行。格伯丁最近共同主持了一份题为“结束美国全球卫生安全的危机和自满循环”的报告
“如果你看看参加这次谈话的疾病预防控制中心主任的任期，我们每个人都曾主持过某种重要的公共卫生爆发，无论是艾滋病、炭疽、非典、禽流感还是埃博拉。我们都经历过危机的循环。”
她继续说:“被动的投资，难以置信的焦点和短期内的关注。”“此外，缺乏持续的预算和支持，无法真正加强州和地方一级的公共卫生系统，无法与我们的卫生系统合作，也无法将我们需要的对策和设备纳入我们的国家储备，以便真正做好准备。”
弗里登说:“我们必须积极主动。”“我们必须在和平时期进行建设，以便在抗击病毒或其他微生物的战争中做好更充分的准备。”
弗里登说，即使疫苗获得批准，“COVID仍将存在。”他说疫苗只是反应的一部分。
他说:“这不是魔法。”“我们每年仍有10万人死于麻疹，而麻疹疫苗是我们最好的疫苗之一。因此，无论如何，疫苗是我们对抗COVID的唯一最重要的东西。”
弗里登和萨彻还指出了向公众展示疫苗的复杂性，即“有太多的人不信任疫苗。”
弗里登和贝瑟说，他们担心美国人对这种流行病反应不足而变得自满。
弗里登说:“我担心的是，我们已经习惯了现在的糟糕结果。”“我们是全球落后者，我们需要改变我们的方法。我们需要加快步伐，战胜病毒。”
尽管如此，每个医生都表示乐观，认为美国将最终战胜这种流行病。
“我们会恢复，但问题是:需要多长时间?”戈尔丁说。“在我们保持身体距离的同时，我们需要作为社区、作为卫生领导人、作为世界各国走到一起，真正表明我们必须合作。在这个非常分裂的世界里，这是一个很高的要求，但它是关于大流行的。这与政治无关。”
5 former CDC directors on where US went wrong in its COVID-19 response
Five former directors of theCenters for Disease Control and Preventionwho came together to speak about thecoronaviruson Thursday said repeatedly that the United States is still struggling to deal with the pandemic because of one thing: mixed messages from leadership.
"This is the first public health response where the ground rules weren't set up that we would be driven by the best available public health science," said Dr. Richard Besser, who served as acting director of the CDC in 2009. "So, when you have political leaders and public health leaders coming at this with very different messaging, [and] when you don't see the political leadership supporting public health science, you lose trust.
And the people question whether things are being done because they're the right thing to do scientifically or whether they're being done for political reasons, and that leads to an undermining of the efforts to control something that is truly controllable," he added.
Besser, who was also the former chief medical correspondent for ABC News, was joined by Drs. Julie Gerberding, Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan and David Satcher to speak with ABC News' Linsey Davis. The former CDC directors, who worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations, also spoke about preventing the next pandemic and about the challenges Americans will face even once a vaccine is approved.
They said the country's best chance at stopping the virus is by working together.
"Right now, one person a minute is getting killed by this virus in the U.S., and we need to focus on what the virus is doing and what we as a community are doing to stop it," said Frieden, who was the CDC director from 2009 to 2017. "Because all of us can do things to make it less severe, whether that's wearing a mask, washing our hands, watching our distance or supporting public health so that they can box in virus… and protect the most vulnerable.
There's a lot we can do," he continued. "Progress is in our hands, but when it's undermined, it makes it very difficult to make progress."
"This pandemic is not something that's going to end abruptly," said Satcher, who was the CDC director from 1993 to 1998. "The problem is going to be with us for a while in terms of COVID, so the question becomes: When are we going to get on top of it? When people take seriously the challenge."
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is higher thananywhere else in the worldwith at least 159,000 deaths. Nearly 5 million Americans have been diagnosed with the virus. As 31 states see a rising number of daily deaths and 25 states see increasing rates of positive cases, President Donald Trump in recent weeks claimed the U.S. has the virus "under control" and that the country is in "really good shape."
"Every one of those falsehoods drives away our opportunity to improve our mitigation efforts… and it causes confusion in everyone's mind," said Koplan, who directed the CDC from 1998 to 2002.
He said that even when the information needs "sugarcoating or even if it's something that seems bad news and people will be upset, the truth is really what counts."
"Once you lose that edge, then you're behind not just the virus -- you're behind the public opinion and people's behavior," he added.
Besser noted that early in the pandemic, when officials first began press briefings on the virus, there was a disconnect between the perceived severity of the outbreak. On Jan. 31, CDC director Robert Redfieldtold reportersthat the "risk to American public currently is low."
The CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Nancy Messonier hadsaidduring a press briefing days earlier, on Feb. 25, that "disruptions to everyday life may be severe" from closures.
"By engaging the public every day, the public would be able to understand what is CDC learning, what is the public health community, globally, learning. And you can go along that journey so that it's not left standing out there that there's no worry here, because information very quickly started to come in that this would be a threat," Besser said. "And as soon as CDC states that, CDC was sidelined. It was no longer allowed to do the briefings."
"So, a point in time taken out of context… can look very strange," he added, "but if there'd been an ongoing dialogue and conversation with our public health leaders, it would [have been] part of that journey."
The former directors also said the U.S. needs to take a more proactive stance in preventing the next pandemic. Gerberding recently co-chaired a report titled "Ending the Cycle of Crisis and Complacency in U.S. Global Health Security."
"If you look at the tenure of the CDC directors that are participating in this conversation, each one of us has presided over some kind of important public health outbreak, whether it was AIDS or anthrax or SARS or Avian influenza or Ebola. We've all gone through the cycle of the crisis," she said.
"The reactive investment, the incredible focus and attention for a short period of time," she continued. "And then the absence of the sustained budget and support for really strengthening our public health system at the state local level, engaging with our health systems and getting the countermeasures and the equipment we need into our national stockpile to truly be prepared."
"We have to be proactive," said Frieden. "We have to build in peacetime so that we're more prepared when we're fighting a war against a virus or other microbe."
Frieden said that even when a vaccine is approved, "COVID will still be there." He said a vaccine is only one part of the response.
"It's not a magic thing," he said. "We still have 100,000 deaths a year from measles, and the vaccine against measles is one of the best we have. So a vaccine is, by all means, the single most important thing we could have to fight COVID."
Both Frieden and Satcher also pointed out the complexities of presenting a vaccine to the public, namely that "there's so many people who don't trust vaccines."
Frieden and Besser said they're worried Americans are becoming complacent with the inadequate response to the pandemic.
"I'm worried about getting too used to the horrible result we're getting," Frieden said. "We are a global laggard and we need to change our approach. We need to up our game and get ahead of the virus."
Nevertheless, each of the doctors expressed optimism that the U.S. will eventually overcome the pandemic.
"We will recover, but the question is: How long will it take?" Gerberding said. "While we're maintaining our physical distance, we need to come together as communities, as health leaders, as nations around the world to really say we've got to work collaboratively. That's a tall order in this very divided world, but it's about the pandemic. It's not about politics."
