'Right now I'm scared': CDC director says she is worried about rising COVID cases
On Monday Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she has a feeling of "impending doom" as COVID-19 cases around the country rise.
Video Transcript
ROCHELLE WALENSKY: When I first started at the CDC about two months ago, I made a promise to you. I would tell you the truth, even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen.
I'm going to pause here, I'm going to lose the script, and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now, I'm scared. I know what it's like as a physician to stand in that patient room-- gowned, gloved, masked, shielded-- and to be the last person to touch someone else's loved one, because their loved one couldn't be there.
I know what it's like when you are the physician, when you're the health care provider, and you're worried that you don't have the resources to take care of the patients in front of you. I know that feeling of nausea when you read the crisis standards of care and you wonder whether there are going to be enough ventilators to go around, and who's going to make that choice. And I know what it's like to pull up to your hospital every day and see the extra morgue sitting outside.
I didn't know at the time when it would stop. We didn't have the science to tell us. We were just scared. We have come such a long way-- three historic scientific breakthrough vaccines, and we are rolling them out so very fast. So I'm speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director-- and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter-- to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done.
I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet. And so I'm asking you to just hold on a little longer, to get vaccinated when you can so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends.
