Before taking the CDC job, Walensky had never held a government position, and had only visited the CDC as a guest speaker. As with other specialists in her field, for her the agency represented the best and final word on public health; every time she typed in C, her Google search tab auto-filled CDC. On the one hand, coming to the agency from outside of the government gives her a clearer sense of how the CDC can and should convey its advice to the health community and to the public. On the other hand, she lacks an extensive network and experience navigating conflicting political and bureaucratic demands—which may have led to some mixed messages from the CDC that, in some people’s eyes, only deepened the confusion and mistrust the public feels toward the agency and its recommendations. Read more about Rochelle Walensky : https://time.com/6132792/rochelle-walensky-covid-19-cdc-profile/ Subscribe to TIME’s YouTube channel ►► http://ti.me/subscribe-time Subscribe to TIME: time.com/subscribe Get the day’s top headlines to your inbox, curated by TIME editors: http://ti.me/the-brief Follow us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TIME Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/time/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/time/