One of the many things that has suffered during the coronavirus pandemic is the government’s credibility. This goes all the way from yet another mayor spotted violating her own mask mandate to a lengthy list of politicians and celebrities doing likewise to the ever-changing pronouncements of Anthony Fauci and the CDC. There are exceptions, but top to bottom, American government at virtually every level has failed the American people.

It is the CDC that’s our focus today.

In a story titled “The C.D.C. Isn’t Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It Collects,” The New York Times reports that “the agency has withheld critical data on boosters, hospitalizations and, until recently, wastewater analyses.” In fact, says the Times, “Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected.”

That opaque approach has hurt the public response to the pandemic in numerous ways, likely costing unnecessary economic and political damage, as well as people’s lives.

Public officials should be able to count on accurate data from our federal government’s leading health agency when making decisions about pandemic policy. None have been able to, which has exacerbated partisan splits.

For example, the COVID vaccines have been highly politicized in part because of the CDC. Agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund explained the slowness of data release “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” The Times doesn’t directly quote her, but adds, “Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted.”

Better to hide the information for your own good. Or something.

How did vaccine boosters perform in the 18-49 age demographic? The CDC left that out when publishing data recently. Perhaps because that’s the demographic that, as the Times put it, is “least likely to benefit from extra shots.” One gets the impression that the CDC suppressed information that might lead to fewer shots received. A shot, by the way, that Joe Biden unconstitutionally mandated for millions of Americans.

The CDC suppressed and distorted information regarding natural immunity, too, insisting for far too long that it was not as robust as the vaccine, only belatedly acknowledging that the science showed just the opposite.

Do you think the people who lost their jobs because “natural immunity didn’t count,” including many healthcare workers who only months before their firing had been hailed as heroes, might have a grievance against the CDC?

In a nation of 330 million people living on the Internet, a fair number of them are going to oppose vaccines — especially rushed ones created for a novel virus — no matter what. Did the pinheads at the CDC really think that hiding information from Americans would not add to that distrust? Nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of reliable information, and in the face of a government actively hiding that information from people, something will fill that space.

This all prompts another big question: What did The New York Times leave out of its coverage? We already know that conspicuously absent from the story is the name “Anthony Fauci.” Granted, he’s not with the CDC, but as Mark Alexander asks, “When was the last time you read an article about the COVID data that did not mention Fauci?”

Another thing avoided by the Times is asking questions about hospitalizations and deaths with COVID versus because of COVID. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has studiously avoided answering that question herself, even though the answer would have huge implications for public policy. At least that would be true if anyone out there is actually “following the science.”

Fauci alluded to this in January when he declared: “If you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID. If a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID. And they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual when, in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s overcounting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.”

Exposing the lies means following the numbers. If you can find them. But as Alexander noted in January: “I can tell you I have searched deep within the CDC website for the last year, and that comorbidity death distinction data is nowhere to be found. There are lists of comorbidity factors, but no cumulative data on how, or how many of, those factors are attributable to deaths with COVID.”

Do you think public policy might be different if the CDC had been honest about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines, or the risk factors and comorbidities that make COVID deadlier to some people than to others?

Fauci and the CDC have destroyed their own credibility with their erratic and highly politicized response to this pandemic. Worse, they have by extension undermined the credibility of healthcare providers around the country. How many people died because CDC bureaucrats thought it would be better if you didn’t know certain data points?