Finger Lakes Today

A policy director for the Washington-based Conservative Partnership Institute said in a podcast earlier this month that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the "incompetence of our" public health experts.

Rachel Bovard told Doug Truax of the First Right podcast on Feb. 2 that the handling of the pandemic has bred distrust in public health officials, which could last a generation or longer.

"One of the most stunning revelations from the pandemic has been the incompetence of our public health infrastructure,” Bovard said on First Right. “And I think they've leaned into that, which, which I think has bred such distrust of public health officials that I think that's going to linger for at least a generation, maybe more.”

A survey conducted and published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health in May indicated withering trust for the American public health system, with 52% expressing support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same poll reported that state and local health agencies are trusted by 41% and 44% of Americans, respectively.

“I think somewhat dire consequences for public health in America, because they've just been so incompetent and never admitted fault or humility or, you know, anything in that situation because that's how you restore trust, right?” Bovard said on the podcast. “You say, ‘[Oh], we got it wrong. You know, now, you know, we don't crackdown on speech. We disagree with, we try to answer it.’ Those kinds of things.”

According to Bovard, public health institutions and officials haven’t expressed remorse in the face of what she believes were errors.

“And that, like I said, that's going to be one of the lingering effects of COVID is, is the distrust of those institutions,” she told the podcast.

Bovard, who hails from Dansville, N.Y., serves as the Conservative Partnership Institute’s senior policy director and is a senior tech columnist for The Federalist, as well as a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.

The First Right podcast is hosted by Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration PAC and former U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois