Redfield said the agency is focused on getting its recommendations on how to stop the spread of the disease out through other channels, not on appearing at high-profile briefings.

“I don’t think that the press briefings, at the end of the day, with all the different things, is really the place to do that,” Redfield said. “It’s more how do we maximize our public-health message to the components of the American public who are involved in public health.”

“You may not see them on the television, or you may not read about them, or hear them on the radio, but we're constantly communicating with the American public to make sure they get the best information that CDC has to give them,” Redfield said. Redfield cited guidance on the agency’s website and more narrowly tailored outreach to medical workers, faith communities, business leaders and nursing homes, including daily telephone calls that draw up to 40,000 participants.

Signage stands outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta. Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg
As questions have arisen about the CDC’s role in recent days, Redfield has become more outwardly visible. He gave an interview to the health news publication Stat published on April 4, defending the agency’s performance, and appeared at a CNN event on April 9. He’s also engaged in appearances on local, often conservative, talk radio, reported Politico, which characterized his role as a trusted voice speaking to Trump’s base.

Before they stopped, the CDC’s briefings were a reliable source of information about the virus and the government’s response. They also proved prescient about the impact on the U.S., at a time when the White House was downplaying the situation and calling the virus nearly contained and unlikely to have a major impact. 

Almost three weeks before the White House called for significant social distancing measures to stop the spread of the virus, one of the CDC’s top infectious-disease experts warned that Americans needed to start preparing for dramatic changes, including the possibility of closing schools, sporting events and other elements of daily life. The official, Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned of a serious outbreak in the U.S.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Messonnier said at the Feb. 25 briefing.

Messonnier, whose comments helped spark a drop in the U.S. stock market, hasn’t spoken publicly in recent weeks. The closing of the channel between the agency and the public leaves the nation less prepared, one of Redfield’s predecessors said.

“Let’s be frank: they are our No. 1 experts in how to address a pandemic of respiratory illness,” Tom Frieden, who led the CDC under then-president Barack Obama, said on call with reporters in early April. “If all of us had been hearing from Doctor Nancy Messonnier every day for the past five to six weeks, we as a country and families and as individuals would be much better prepared.” (Frieden is currently chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, which is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, whose founder, Michael Bloomberg, is also founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP.)

Changing Role
Redfield said that as the pandemic spread, the public face of the government’s response naturally shifted up the government ranks. What began as a response led by Messionnier’s center within the CDC rapidly escalated to the entire agency, and then to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and eventually to one led by the White House.