“I’ve heard from every C.D.C. in the world — the European C.D.C., the African C.D.C., China C.D.C. — and they say, ‘Normally our first call is to Atlanta, but we ain’t hearing back.’ There’s nothing going on down there. They’ve gutted that place. They’ve gagged that place. I can’t get calls returned anymore. Nobody down there is feeling like it’s safe to talk. Have you even seen anything important and vital coming out of the C.D.C.?” The NYT’s Frank Bruni talks to Laurie Garrett, the prophet of this pandemic. “Having long followed Garrett’s work, I can attest that it’s not driven by partisanship. She praised George W. Bush for fighting H.I.V. in Africa. But she called Trump ‘the most incompetent, foolhardy buffoon imaginable.'” (I could have closed my eyes and copied and pasted a great pull quote from this piece.)