The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky is facing backlash for using CNN to discuss the “serious public health threat” not from Covid-19, but from gun violence.
“For the first time in decades, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the nation's top public health agency – is speaking out forcefully about gun violence in America, calling it a ‘serious public health threat,’” CNN tweeted on Friday, promoting the interview, in which Walensky seemed to all but promise new laws are being cooked up.
“Something has to be done,” she said, later recalling a promise to President Joe Biden to ‘protect’ the health of the US, which apparently includes gun violence.
“I swore to the president and to this country that I would protect your health. This is clearly one of those moments, one of those issues that is harming America's health,” she said.
Biden previously referred to gun violence as a “public health epidemic.”
For the first time in decades, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the nation's top public health agency — is speaking out forcefully about gun violence in America, calling it a "serious public health threat." https://t.co/7jt8Dgtxza
The CDC is currently spending millions on research projects meant to curb gun violence, as well as tracking gunshot injuries.
“My job is to understand and evaluate the problem, to understand the scope of the problem, to understand why this happens and what are the things that can make it better – to research that, to scale that up, to evaluate it and to make sure that we can integrate it into communities,” Walensky said.
She claimed any potential CDC efforts on gun violence will not be about taking away people’s guns.
“This is not a conversation about having them or not having them. This is a conversation about how we can make them being here safe,” she said. “The research that we intend to do is going to be squarely about making America safe. Making people safe.”
Considering the Covid-19 pandemic is still greatly affecting communities and businesses, and health officials are regularly pushing citizens to get lagging vaccination rates up, many took to social media to express shock at Walensky’s focus on gun violence for an entire CNN report amid pandemic struggles. The network was also criticized for airing the report amid the chaos in Afghanistan as the US military continues to evacuate citizens and allies following an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) attack on Thursday.
“Nice to see @cnn has moved on to the totally normal discussion of the CDC Director discussing guns (again, totally normal discussion) instead of covering an international tragedy,” conservative pundit Chris Stigall tweeted.
“Good to know that all disease is apparently under control now,” another user added.
Gun violence is an issue for local police departments, state attorney generals, and the ATF. In that order.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should maybe stick to its mission of controlling and preventing infectious disease. https://t.co/0axtizLK3V
This is the reason the Centers for Disease Control isn't very good at controlling diseases. Political ambition, mission creep, and ridiculous levels of overfunding long ago smothered the core mission of every agency. The Leviathan has attention deficit disorder. https://t.co/xpvDaLFmT5
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