non-stop, with some setting up cots in-
side their offices. While the virus re-
mained overseas, the C.D.C. led commu-
nications, scrupulously following E.I.S.
protocols. But soon after the coronavirus
landed on American shores the White
House took over. E.I.S. officers were dis-
mayed to see the communication prin-
ciples that the C.D.C. had honed over
the years being disregarded, and some-
times turned on their head. A Corona-
virus Task Force, led by Vice-President
Mike Pence, was formed, excluding ev-
eryone from the C.D.C. except its direc-
tor, Dr. Robert Redfield. “The C.D.C.
was ordered into lockdown,” a former
senior official at the agency told me.
“They can’t speak to the media. These
are people who have trained their entire
lives for epidemics—the finest public-
health army in history—and they’ve been
told to shut up!”
Since then, the primary spokesperson
during the pandemic has been not a sci-
entist but President Donald Trump—
a politician notoriously hostile to sci-
ence. Further complicating matters,
Trump has highlighted a rotating cast
of supporting characters, including
Pence; Dr. Anthony Fauci, from the Na-
tional Institutes of Health; Dr. Debo-
rah Birx, from the State Department;
and the President’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner. “When there are so many
different figures, it can cause real con-
fusion about whom to listen to, or who’s
in charge of what,” Dr. Tom Inglesby,
the director of the Center for Health
Security, at Johns Hopkins, said. “And,
if the response becomes political, it’s a
disaster, because people won’t know if
you are making recommendations based
on science or politics, and so there’s the
risk they’ll start to tune out.”
Already, it’s clear that some confu-
sion has taken hold. Though the C.D.C.
formally recommended, in mid-March,
that Americans practice social distanc-
ing, governors in five states have refused
to order residents to stay home. (One of
those states, South Dakota, is now con-
tending with a major outbreak.) Federal
leaders have given shifting advice—ini-
tially, Americans were told that they did
not need to wear masks in public, but
on April 3rd, at a White House press
briefing, masks were recommended—
and this has risked undermining pub-
lic confidence. Trump announced the
change by saying, “You don’t have to do
it. I ’m choosing not to do it.” Had the
C.D.C. been in charge of communicat-
ing about masks, the agency surely would
have used the change in guidance as a
teaching opportunity, explaining that
scientists had come to understand that
people infected with the coronavirus can
be contagious but asymptomatic for lon-
ger than originally thought—which
means that we need to be more careful
when we cough, even if we feel healthy
or just have seasonal allergies. Trump’s
daily briefings, however, are chaotic and
contradictory. Within the span of a few
days, Trump threatened to quarantine
New York City, then reversed himself;
soon after declaring that he intended to
“reopen” the U.S. economy within two
weeks, he called for thirty additional
days of social distancing. Such incon-
stancy from a leader is distracting in the
best of times. It is dangerous in a pan-demic. “Right now, everyone is so con-
fused by all the conflicting messages that,
each time the guidance evolves, fewer
and fewer people might follow it,” Besser,
the former C.D.C. director, said. “We’re
going backward in our sophistication.”
Morale at the C.D.C. has plummeted.
“For all the responses that I was involved
in, there was always this feeling of ca-
maraderie, that you were part of some-
thing bigger than yourself,” another for-
mer high-ranking C.D.C. official told
me. “Now everyone I talk to is so dispir-
ited. They’re working sixteen-hour days,
but they feel ignored. I’ve never seen so
many people so frustrated and upset and
sad. We could have saved so many more
lives. We have the best public-health
agency in the world, and we know how
to persuade people to do what they need
to do. Instead, we’re ignoring everything
we’ve learned over the last century.”T
he initial coronavirus outbreaks in
New York City emerged at roughly
the same time as those in Seattle. But
the cities’ experiences with the disease
have markedly differed. By the second
week of April, Washington State had
roughly one recorded fatality per four-
teen thousand residents. New York’s rate
of death was nearly six times higher.
There are many explanations for this
divergence. New York is denser than
Seattle and relies more heavily on public
transportation, which forces commuters
into close contact. In Seattle, efforts at
social distancing may have been aided by
local attitudes—newcomers are warned
of the Seattle Freeze, which one local
columnist compared to the popular girl
in high school who “always smiles and
says hello” but “doesn’t know your name
and doesn’t care to.” New Yorkers are
in your face, whether you like it or not.
(“Stand back at least six feet, playa,” a
sign in the window of a Bronx bodega
cautioned. “COVID-19 is some real shit!”)
New York also has more poverty and in-
equality than Seattle, and more inter-
national travellers. Moreover, as Mike
Famulare, a senior research scientist at
the Institute for Disease Modeling, put it
to me, “There’s always some element of
good luck and bad luck in a pandemic.”
It’s also true, however, that the cit-
ies’ leaders acted and communicated
very differently in the early stages of the
“Of course he’s home. He’s a snail.” pandemic. Seattle’s leaders moved fast