The CDC has always been shit, actually
For anyone shocked and horrified at the CDC relaxing COVID guidance for capitalism, let me share with you a little story from the world of public water:
Many people are familiar with the story of Flint, Michigan, but what was unique about Flint was mostly that it got as much attention as it did. Almost 15 years before Flint, there was a similar leaded water crisis in Washington DC which is less remembered these days. Like Flint, the DC crisis was caused by accident, though this one was motivated by good intentions, not budget.
In 1997, DC decided to switch their water disinfectant from chlorine, which had been used to treat public water in the US since 1908, to chloramine, which had been shown to be safer and more effective. What they didn’t know at that time was that chlorine has anti-corrosive properties, which had been preventing old lead-coated pipes from breaking down. After the switch, with no anti-corrosive present, the pipes began to shed their coatings into the drinking water, causing spikes in lead in public drinking water at levels six to eighteen times the federal action level of 15µg/L.
Let’s be clear: There is no safe level of lead in drinking water. Every bit of lead a child consumes is known to decrease cognitive development and increase behavioral disorders. The action level is the level at which regulators are required to act to reduce a contaminant.
The DC lead issue was discovered and first reported in 2001, but it didn’t start really making headlines until 2004. In those years between 1997 and 2004, elevated lead levels in drinking water are estimated to have directly caused to more than 200 stillbirths and more than 2000 miscarriages. We cannot accurately quantify the impact on children who drank DC water during those years.
To understand what happened next, you need to understand how public water is regulated in the US. A municipal water system is monitored and regulated by a state EPA, which in turn is regulated by the federal EPA. For example, the Michigan EPA was found responsible for failing to adequately monitor and regulate the water in Flint.
This was an issue for DC in particular, because it is not a state and therefore does not have a state EPA to oversee water quality. Its water is directly regulated by the USEPA, which investigated itself and found no wrongdoing (go figure). After the Washington Post started to raise the alarm about the issue in 2004, the CDC was called in to investigate the USEPA.
What followed was perhaps one of the most damaging medical reports ever written. The CDC went to homes in the worst contamination levels, tested the lead levels, and then tested the blood of children in those homes. They found, miraculously, that elevated lead in drinking water did not significantly contribute to elevated blood lead levels. This conclusion was, of course, absurd, and didn’t take into account the fact that these peoples had known about the lead for 3 years and hadn’t been drinking the water for 3 years.
But the CDC report stood: leaded water didn’t cause lead poisoning. This report was used to absolve the USEPA of wrongdoing and was afterward used by several governmental agencies to defend not acting upon leaded drinking water, thereby expanding the damage caused by the DC lead crisis exponentially.
The CDC has never been about controlling disease or protecting public health. The CDC’s primary goal is to protect the interests of the federal government.
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