Former CDC director and Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher: Federal COVID response 'very scary'

The first Black director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who also served as Surgeon General under President Clinton, gives the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic a C grade, boosted above a D only because "there are so many people working so hard." 

Dr. David Satcher addressed USA TODAY's editorial board a day after Vice President Mike Pence suggested Louisiana schools didn't have to abide by CDC's guidelines and the White House directed hospitals to report coronrvirus data to the Department of Health and Human Services instead of the CDC. 

Satcher called the sidelining of the agency “very scary.”

“There is conflict right now between the CDC and the White House,” he said. “Somehow we’ve got to get past the conflict in the interest of saving lives.”

A pandemic, Satcher added, is in some ways "worse than war."

"You have to respond appropriately to protect the health of people," he said. "You have to put in place rules and strategies that are appropriate for the situation." 

Satcher reiterated concerns he and three other former CDC directors raised in an Washington Post editorial this week about science taking a back seat to politics during the pandemic. The White House's actions, he said, show "there is no leadership."

"We've got to allow the science to function as science," he said Wednesday. "We've got to allow scientists to take leadership dealing with the scientific issues. We need research to continue to dictate our actions." 

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Satcher acknowledged, "it's not always easy" to separate science from politics. He learned that when he was Surgeon General and also served as HHS' assistant secretary for health. 

He said he supported the administration's position on opioids from his post at HHS, but disagreed with it as Surgeon General.

"Luckily that doesn't happen a lot, and luckily we no longer combine those positions," he said. 

Satcher, whose new book, "My Quest for Health Equity" comes out in September, said more consistency in leadership is needed given COVID-19's disproportionate effect on Black Americans. 

"We still seem to have problems deciding who is going to lead and how they're going to lead," said Satcher. "We have leaders that I don't think are taking their roles and their responsibilities as seriously as we need them to take them."

The debate and problems in Florida, where coronavirus cases are surging, is indicative of the larger leadership problems. Cities are struggling, Satcher said, because mayors lack the clarity they need to do their jobs. 

"If you don’t have clarity of leadership at the top, it's very difficult to get at other levels," said Satcher.