Reid Hawkins
“The CDC, also known as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of the major operating components of the Department of the Health and Human Services.” It works every hour of every day to protect everyone in the United States from all diseases, known and unknown. Dr. Joseph Mountain is the founder of the CDC. He opened the doors of the CDC on July 1, 1946. They only had one floor of a small building in Atlanta to work at. Even though they were small, he had huge goals for the insignificant branch of the Public Health Service. No one knew the CDC would become as big as it is today. The main goal then was to use trucks, sprayers, and shovels necessary to wage war on mosquitos.
In the following year, the CDC purchased 15 acres of land for the CDC, that is now the CDC headquarters. The headquarters is located on Clifton Road in Atlanta, Georgia. This new purchase helped them expand and allowed research to be done on all communicable diseases at all times and allowed them to be able to do research on more than just one disease at a time. They could work on big diseases and small diseases. It also allowed them to help state health departments when they needed it. There have been several different accomplishments since the beginning of the CDC in 1946.
More than 50,000 people have worked as CDC employees since its beginning in 1946. The CDC employees include physicians, epidemiologists, communication specialists, lab scientists, accountants, lawyers, administration professionals, and many other disciplines that makes the CDC produce efficiency and productivity. These people work to protect us from health, safety and security threats from other foreign countries. No matter where the disease starts the CDC will work to fight it off and limit the spread of the disease. Their job is it detect and respond to new and emerging health threats, such as the Coronavirus.
They are working hard to take down COVID-19 and make the number of deaths as few as possible. The CDC gives guidance for helping people stay healthy. For example, during COVID-19, they have recommended that people wear a mask, wash their hands, avoid large crowds, and remain at least six feet apart from others in order to stay healthy.
They also do scientific research. For COVID-19 their learning about how the disease spreads so they can limit the spread and how it affects you as well as communities, and the United States and the world as a whole. Also, if one contracts the disease, the CDC will use contact tracing in order to contact the people who might have been exposed. The CDC releases weekly articles showing how you can keep yourself and others safe. The Coronavirus spreads very rapidly, so they experiment in order to come up with the best ways to stop the spread of the worldwide virus, that became a pandemic.