Does USB CDC always use a UART channel?
Is it possible to have a USB CDC that doesn't interact with the UART so I can actually use that UART channel separtely from the USB CDC as a UART on the separate pins of the MCU?


Of course. Your microcontroller can do whatever it wants with the data that's sent over USB; bridging it to a UART just happens to be a really obvious and easy-to-implement example.