Walensky, asked about her decision to scrap the ACIP recommendation on boosters, gets way down with the weasel words

https://www.statnews.com/2021/10/07/cdc-director-defends-decision-to-overrule-expert-panel-on-covid-booster-shots-for-health-workers/

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Thursday defended her decision to overrule an expert panel on whether health care workers and other frontline workers should be offered Covid-19 booster shots, saying it was based on how she would have voted, had she been able to cast a vote.

Walensky insisted she made the call without consulting the White House, which had announced in mid-August a plan to give booster shots to all Americans 16 years of age and older, even though regulators had not yet approved any company’s booster shots. Currently only one booster jab has been authorized — the one made by Pfizer and BioNTech.

“I know that if I had been in the room voting, I would have voted to offer boosters to that group, and that’s ultimately where I laid,” Walensky said during a question and answer session with reporters hosted by the Health Coverage Fellowship, a training program for journalists.

[Laid, landed or lied? And look at the next paragraph of gobbledygook:]

“I consider myself part of the scientific community. I consider myself scientifically able to understand,” she said. “This was not Rochelle Walensky as a citizen, this was not Rochelle Walensky as a health care worker. This was Rochelle Walensky as a CDC director, public health servant to the United States of America. And I made the decision,” said Walensky, who was an infectious diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital before taking the CDC job earlier this year.

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration that met on Sept. 17 voted against recommending all Americans 16 and older be offered a booster shot six months or longer after they had completed their primary Covid vaccination series, with an utter lack of data on the safety or effectiveness of a booster in 16- and 17-year olds clearly playing a role in the outcome...

“The FDA [advisory committee] had voted in a way that was different from the way the ACIP voted. And so I went with what I thought was right and how I would have voted in the room,” Walensky said to explain her late-night decision to overrule the ACIP and recommend booster shots for those at risk because of where they live and work.

Actually, Walensky's 1 am overruling of the ACIP, which has only happened once in the past 20 plus years, is extremely difficult to justify because I am not sure she actually has the authority to do so.  The ACIP is supposed to make the decisions, not Walensky.  And she didn't consult the White House?  And she didn't consult a team of lawyers? Just having a sleepless night?

But what I found especially repugnant was that the ACIP basically voted in agreement with the FDA's advisory committee, VRBPAC. Both said no boosters. 

It was Richard Marks, FDA's head of CBER, who went against his advisory committee.  So both he and Rochelle went against their advisory committees to give the Biden administration what it had demanded.  And now we know the Biden admin has been bluffing to get its mandates, without taking the first step to legally impose them. Government by bluff.

Rochelle, counting on the public to be ignorant of the details, essentially lied about the VRBPAC vote, and in so doing let it appear she was agreeing with the VRBPAC, which is absolutely untrue.  I wonder how hard they have to look to find people who are willing to say and do anything the master tells them.  COVID has shown us the weasels outnumber the honest brokers.  Who'd a guess it, two years ago?