Walensky: CDC 'did not reliably meet expectations'; agency overhaul

Following an external review announced in April 2022, the CDC director told staff that 'in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations' and unveiled the 'CDC Moving Forward' restructuring emphasizing accountability, faster data release, and plain-language communication — an extraordinary public self-criticism acknowledging failures in testing, data, and messaging. Critics cited it as institutional concession of long-documented failures; defenders noted self-correction under a new director and decades of underfunded public-health infrastructure.