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In a disturbing new report from Politico, the president’s politically appointed cronies have been interfering and making changes to weekly scientific reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to better align with Trump’s publicly stated messages on the coronavirus.
Politico’s Friday exclusive cites administration communications aides, including former Trump campaign official and now Department of Health and Human Services undersecretary for public affairs, Michael Caputo, who has no medical or scientific qualifications, sending emails. by successfully lobbying CDC officials to change the language. In the agency’s weekly morbidity and mortality reports (MMWR). These reports, which the CDC has created for decades, are distributed to doctors and health officials on the front lines and are intended to deliver the most up-to-date government information on the virus and how it is spreading.
In emails to CDC Director Robert Redfield, Politico reported, politically appointed communications officials “openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump’s optimistic messages about the outbreak.” And while other CDC officials have backtracked and refused to make some of the significant changes suggested in MMWR’s historically non-political and important weekly scientific reports, the pressure resulted in a nearly a month delay of a report advising against to doctors prescribing the Trump-backed drug hydroxychloroquine.
Caputo claims that the interference is an attempt to thwart a bogus conspiracy that some supporters of the president rely on to compromise his nefarious behavior and do Trump’s dirty work: the so-called “deep state.”
“Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic, not deep state motives hidden in the guts of the CDC,” Caputo told Politico.
In an Aug. 8 email to Redfield, a Caputo adviser, Dr. Paul Alexander, berated CDC scientists, called their reports “pieces of success” and accused the agency of deliberately exaggerating the effect. of the virus in children to “hurt the president” While Trump pushed for schools to reopen.
The “CDC, to me, seems to be writing successful articles on the administration,” Alexander’s email read, adding that “CDC tried to report as if once the kids are reunited, it will spread and this will affect the reopening school … Very misleading on the part of the CDC and embarrassing to them. Their objective is clear. ” Of course, anyone who has followed the news knows that several schools in many states were forced to close after restoring in-person learning exactly because the virus spread among students.
On Saturday, Emory University School of Medicine professor Carlos del Rio responded to the report in an interview with CNN, calling it “incredibly troubling.” He also spoke about the importance of MMWR to the global scientific community.
Del Río concluded by saying that although he will continue to look for information in the reports, “he will begin to read with some skepticism.”
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