Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19

[Rogue Valley]

Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19

The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals.

9/11/20
The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals. In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation. CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.

Since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether. Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails. Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Kates, the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health expert, defended the CDC's process as rigorous and said that there was no reason for politically appointed officials to review the work of scientists.

About two months ago, tyhe White House ordered that all hospital data on COVID be sent to the White House first rather than to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the agency nominally in charge of such data. Now we find out that Trump political appointees within the CDC have been censoring information .... removing any scientific information/analysis that may clash with President Trumps views and statements.

This is no different than how the Kremlin is managing its failed COVID response .... propaganda is more important than science.

If you're sick of seeing our government operate like the Kremlin, vote for Joe Biden on November 3rd.

Related: Trump appointees sought to alter CDC scientific reports so they don't contradict or undermine the president

 

[CaughtInThe]

shocker

 

[George50]

Alexander is one of the nut jobs Trump hired to try to muzzle the CDC. From the OP article:

:CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."

Of course kids getting together and spreading the virus impacting school reopening is EXACTLY what is happening. But the Trump appointed clueless nut job calls it a misleading hit piece.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk