Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health institute of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Quotes about the CDC

• This is the front line against terrible organisms. Like terrorism, you can’t fight it just within our borders. You’ve got to fight epidemic diseases where they emerge. [...] Either we help or hope we get lucky it isn’t an epidemic that travelers will catch or spread to our country.
  • Tom Frieden on the CDC downsizing its epidemic prevention. Quoted in CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak (February 1, 2018) by Lena H. Sun, The Washington Post

• At the president's direction, as we announced last week, the CDC is going to deploy teams in every single state in the country to do contact tracing over the next 12 to 18 months. The CDC is really the expert at contact tracing. And it really is, Chuck, the way that we, that we typically control the outbreak of infectious disease. You identify someone who has symptoms. You test them. And then you immediately find out who they've been in contact with. That's what the CDC does. And, as we announced last week, we'll be deploying coronavirus CDC teams in every state in the country on top of the hundreds of CDC personnel that are already embedded in states today.
  • Mike Pence on the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, in an interview with Chuck Todd at Meet the Press (April 19, 2020). Transcript online at NBCNews.com

• I've seen that report in the papers this morning. And I know that HHS is making inquiries. But we believe those issues were resolved on that particular test by early February. But it's important for your viewers to know that that test, the slow lab-based test that is typical for CDC and public health labs would never have been able to meet the needs of testing in this coronavirus epidemic.
  • Mike Pence on a FDA's report stating that CDC's initial COVID-19 test was faulty, in an interview with Chuck Todd at Meet the Press (April 19, 2020). Transcript online at NBCNews.com

• Joe Kernen: It was a couple of years ago. Before we get started-- with- we're going talk about the economy and a lot of other things--the CDC-- has identified a case of coronavirus-- in Washington state. The Wuhan strain of this. If you remember SARS, that affected GDP. Travel-related effects. Do you-- have you been briefed by the CDC? And--

Donald Trump: I have, and--

Joe Kernen: --are there worries about a pandemic at this point?

Donald Trump: No. Not at all. And-- we're-- we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's—going to be just fine.

• Interview with CNBC's Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum in Davod, Switzerland, January 22, 2020. Transcript online at CNBC

• The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!
  • Donald Trump, Twitter, 24 Feb 2020. Quoted in Trump’s Statements About the Coronavirus (March 18, 2020) by Rem Rieder, FactCheck.org

• We know all the people. We know all the good people. It's a question I asked the doctors before. Some of the people we cut, they haven't been used for many, many years, and if we ever need them, we can get them very quickly. And rather than spending the money — I'm a businessperson, I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need 'em, when we need 'em, we can get them back very quickly.
  • Donald Trump on the budget cuts to the CDC, the NIH, and the WHO. White House press conference, 2020-02-26, quoted in Jonathan Chait (28 February 2020), "As the World Reaches for Face Masks, Trump Buries His Head in the Sand", New York Magazine 

External links

• Official website
• CDC in the Federal Register
• CDC Online Newsroom
• CDC Public Health Image Library
• CDC Global Communications Center
• CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Atlanta, Georgia
• CDC WONDER online databases.

Authority control: WorldCat search