It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Friday, March 27.

With us now, former head of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Richard Besser, who has also been the ABC News

Chief Health and Medical Editor. He is currently president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,

leading the largest private foundation in the country devoted solely to improving the nation's health.

When Richard Besser ran the CDC as acting director in 2009, he directed the nation's health. When Richard Besser ran, the CDC, as acting director in 2009,

he directed the U.S. response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic,

so he obviously has experience very relevant to today.

Dr. Besser, welcome, and thanks very much for coming on.

Thanks, Brian.

Really great to be here this morning.

So you wrote in the Washington Post as head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a pretty

candid op-ed, candid about something that maybe you did wrong a decade ago, saying that when you

were ahead of the CDC during H1N1, you called for schools to close for two weeks,

but other people had to educate you about a blind spot in that recommendation. Would you like to

tell that story? Yeah, I would. I do think it's extremely relevant to what's going on now. So I led the CDC back in 2009, and the CDC is the nation's public health agency, and very science-based, focused on what guidance would we feel would protect people the most.

And it was clear that with influenza influenza with the flu, children play a

very important role. And so we put forward a recommendation based on science that with the first

case of flu or suspected flu in a school, the school should close for two weeks so that there wouldn't

be further transmission. The school could be cleaned. There could be further testing

and separation. And we went forward with that guidance, and I very quickly started to hear from

public health leaders in the field. And they said, you know, you put up these guidance for

...