The reported next director of the CDC is under scrutiny for how she led North Carolina's public health response to COVID-19, particularly the disconnect between her words and actions on risk level and school reopening.
Mandy Cohen, then-secretary of North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services, went so far as threatening to sue a school district for rescinding one-size-fits-all quarantine policies in fall 2021, more than a year after publicly declaring schools are a trivial source of COVID spread. Now executive vice president and CEO of Aledade Care Solutions, Cohen also suggested she had made decisions about COVID restrictions without independently evaluating scientific evidence.
Cohen would take over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as congressional Republicans and school reopening advocates continue to shine a harsh light on Director Rochelle Walensky's decisions and communications ahead of her scheduled June 30 resignation.
When one school district eased up on lengthy quarantines for "Close contacts" of students who tested positive for COVID the next school year, Cohen become more strident.
She conspicuously failed to mention hospitalization figures or her earlier assurances that children face low risk from COVID. The "StrongSchoolsNC Toolkit" provides for close-contact quarantine exemptions, including those who are "Fully vaccinated" or wear masks "Consistently and appropriately" after exposure, Cohen wrote.
Cohen kept recommending masks for "Everyone" seven months after the CDC changed its guidance to only recommend masking for people who were not fully vaccinated, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson noted, calling Cohen "The worst possible person" to succeed Walensky.
Cohen didn't mention reviewing evidence before making decisions when asked about "State-to-state relations" at a Duke business school event in May 2022, several months after she left the job for Aledade.
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