The city Health Department “whistleblower” reassigned after he called out as political correctness run amok the agency’s tepid response to the monkeypox outbreak says it also mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Don Weiss, the veteran surveillance director who was shifted to another unit unrelated to his expertise after disagreeing with department brass over monkeypox messaging, said “too often public health policy has cared more about optics than data” — particularly citing what he deemed as onerous and unnecessary COVID-19 testing requirements for kids in schools.
“Take school testing for COVID-19. It didn’t take long to show that few kids were testing positive and that transmission in schools was not a major contributor to the pandemic,” Weiss said in an extraordinary “leadership” letter posted on his personal website.
“Yet we still continued to force it upon children and families,” he said.
Weiss also said the city’s contact tracing program was an expensive $1 billion plus bust.
“Several of us in the bureau said contact tracing wasn’t likely to work and the pandemic flu plan didn’t include this activity,” he said.
“And did any of our testing and contact tracing have much of an effect? All you need to do is look at the waves, particularly the Omicron wave. We had no shortage of testing and a fully staffed contact tracing operation, and we still had a peak of > 60,000 cases per day,” said Weiss.
He said officials were “using teaspoons.(expensive ones) to bail out a gash like the one that sunk the Titanic.”
“Test and Trace shut down this spring and there has been no contact tracing for the current BA.5 wave. Last I heard the cost of the program was in excess of $1 billion dollars,” Weiss said.
He said that the pandemic took a heavy toll on the staff at the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, who worked around the clock in a stressful, politically-charged environment.
Weiss claimed the agency has a 30 percent staff vacancy rate as a result after “good people have left in droves.”
But Weiss also claimed weak leadership had contributed to the exodus.
“Leadership support is more than platitudes, and certainly more than gifting a bottle of foul-smelling hand sanitizer on people’s desks. People don’t mind working hard or the extra hours if they know their leader has their back and will stand up to bullying and denigration from politicians,” he said.
He said he worked under seven health commissioners and praised five as having strong public health experience — Neil Cohen under Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Tom Frieden and Tom Farley under Mayor Mike Bloomberg; Mary Bassett, now the state health commissioner; and Oxiris Barbot, under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I may not have agreed with every decision prior commissioners have made, but I knew each was made with deliberation and learned consultation,” said Weiss.
He notably left the two recent commissioners, David Chokshi, a de Blasio appointee, and current boss Ashwin Vasan, Mayor Eric Adams’ selection, off the list.
“Perhaps a 2021 quote from a neighborhood coffee barista says it best (roughly, and second hand paraphrased): Dr. Farley was a gentleman, Dr. Bassett was elegant and always asked after my family, this one treats us like we are his servants,” he said.
Weiss, the former director of surveillance, was transferred to the family and child health unit after publicly criticizing the department’s advice to gay men about reducing the transmission of monkeypox. He said the department was more concerned with “stigma avoidance” instead of making it explicitly clear that gay men should reduce sexual activity to curb viral spread.
He likened his predicament to the Russian imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny who dared to take on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
“There is little chance that I will be reinstated with the Bureau of Communicable Disease. And I believe the department would prefer that I depart quietly. Like Navalny is to Putin, I am perceived as a threat to power. I can see that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes and I am not afraid to say it. That’s my first amendment right,” Weiss said.
The health department rebutted Weiss’ criticisms, especially regarding testing for COVID-19 in schools and the Test and Trace program.
Last school year, the city’s In-School Surveillance Testing Program administered nearly 2.5 million COVID-19 tests to New York City students and school staff, and the positivity rate remained at about 1% for the year, the department said in a statement.
“School surveillance was critically important – especially as schools opened early on — to be able to be able to compare COVID transmission in schools with the wider community,” said Health Department spokesman Patrick Gallahue.
“Moreover, it gave staff and students access to testing, which may have otherwise been burdensome. Making testing easy and accessible promoted safety and peace-of-mind for school communities.
The department spokesman also noted that the federal government gave New York stimulus funding “to specifically set up testing operations to keep schools safe.”
The agency also defended the Test and Trace program, which has never closed, and has been rebranded the NYC Test and Treat Corps. It reached 1.7 million New Yorkers with COVID-19 and identified 1.8 million close contacts — ultimately connecting with more than 30% of the city’s population.
The program helped deliver 2.3 million meals and 600,000 care packages to those in quarantine or isolation, steering 32,000 New Yorkers to hotel rooms to safely isolate and provide millions of dollars in cash assistance and scheduled thousands of appointments for testing and vaccination, the statement said.
“The regular communication the program’s contact tracers had with New Yorkers who were infected with or exposed to COVID-19 ensured that they could effectively quarantine and isolate, breaking chains of transmission and stopping the spread of the virus,” Gallahue said.
“Contact tracers also ensured New Yorkers infected with or exposed to COVID-19 were referred to the information and resources needed to safely separate and recover and remained informed about the latest COVID-19 guidance.”
In addition, Test-and Trace program distributed more than 33 million at-home tests to schools for students to administer at the first sign of infection or exposure.
“These measures ensured schools remained open and the safest place for young people to be,” Gallahue said.
