Seems the CDC is afflicted with the government habit of treating information as something to hoard and withhold from the citizenry which can’t be trusted to understand or handle it. As Elise Viebeck of The Hill reports:
Health officials are refusing to answer growing questions about their response to the first Ebola case in the United States. Under intense questioning from reporters, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Texas health department and the City of Dallas repeatedly declined Thursday to provide details about the steps being taken to prevent an outbreak.
What, exactly, is the reasoning here? (Assuming that there is a logic, always a leap when attempting to explain the government’s actions and motives.) How will informing the public make things worse or compromise the actions of those trying to contain the spread of a disease from which, we were recently assured, we had absolutely nothing to fear? Well, secrecy breeds suspicion and … fear.
Most likely, they aren’t saying because they simply don’t want to.
Which is good enough when you are doing government work.
