Dr. Mandy K. Cohen dropped by the Fox affiliate in Dallas in November, just days after the governor of Texas signed a law barring private employers from requiring Covid-19 shots. If she thought promoting vaccination would be a tough sell in a ruby-red state, Dr. Cohen, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not give any indication.
“I’m not just the C.D.C. director, I’m also a mom,” she said cheerily, noting on live television that her daughters, 9 and 11, had already received the latest Covid and flu shots. She added, “So I wouldn’t recommend something for the American people I wouldn’t recommend for my own family.”
It was the kind of stock phrase that Dr. Cohen has repeatedly invoked as she pursues a task that some public health experts fear is impossible: restoring Americans’ faith in public health, and in her battered agency. Five months into her tenure, with the Covid public health emergency officially over, the C.D.C.’s new leader is relentlessly on message.
Americans’ trust in the agency, and in science more broadly, was badly damaged by the coronavirus pandemic, and the loss of faith is particularly pronounced among Republicans. In a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 38 percent of Republicans said they had little or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, up from 14 percent in April 2020.
At the same time, the C.D.C.’s winter vaccination campaign appears to be falling on deaf ears. On Thursday, the agency issued an alert warning that low vaccination rates for the flu, Covid and respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V., could lead to “severe disease and increased health care capacity strain in the coming weeks.” And partisan divisions over vaccination persist: A KFF poll in September found that seven in 10 Democrats but just a quarter of Republicans planned to get the updated Covid shot.