Tag: Trump trying to hide his botched COVID-19 response

Threats and invective hurled at health director who sought to postpone Trump’s Tulsa rally, emails show

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Three days before President Trump’s first indoor campaign rally during the coronaviruspandemic — at an arena in Tulsa in June — the director of the Tulsa Health Department marveled at the wave of abuse that was cresting in his direction.

“It’s been crazy since the announcement of the presidential rally,” Bruce Dart wrote to Lori Freeman, a colleague who led an association of local public health officials. “It’s amazing how people strike out against anyone who they assume is not supportive of the president instead of listening to our messaging around staying safe in this pandemic.”

“You’re doing a fabulous job,” Freeman wrote back. “Be strong (as will I).” Continue reading.

Emails Detail Effort to Silence C.D.C. and Question Its Science

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Emails from a former top Trump health official and his science adviser show how the two refused to accept Centers for Disease Control and Prevention science and sought to silence the agency.

WASHINGTON — On June 30, as the coronavirus was cresting toward its summer peak, Dr. Paul Alexander, a new science adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, composed a scathing two-page critique of an interview given by an experienced scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, a 32-year veteran of the C.D.C. and its principal deputy director, had appealed to Americans to wear masks and warned, “We have way too much virus across the country.” But Dr. Alexander, a part-time assistant professor of health research methods, appeared sure he understood the coronavirus better.

“Her aim is to embarrass the president,” he wrote, commenting on Dr. Schuchat’s appeal for face masks in an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association. Continue reading.

They voted for him and now regret it. Why White women are turning away from Trump.

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From her home in the Philadelphia suburbs, Nin Bell works for an answering service, taking calls from people trying to reach more than 10,000 funeral homes and end-of-life companies. As the coronavirus began to sweep the country earlier this year, the number of calls related to new deaths tripled.

Caller after caller told her about losing a loved one to covid-19, as well as to suicides and drug overdoses. They provided an overwhelmingly painful window into just how badly the country was suffering.

And then Bell would hear President Trump — whom she voted for in 2016, helping him win Pennsylvania — downplay the severity of the pandemic. Continue reading.

Political Appointees Meddled in C.D.C.’s ‘Holiest of the Holy’ Health Reports

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Trump loyalists at the Health and Human Services Department have been exerting influence on the Centers for Disease Control’s weekly reports on all disease outbreaks, the coronavirus and beyond.

WASHINGTON — Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to revise, delay and even scuttle weekly reports on the coronavirus that they believed were unflattering to President Trump.

Current and former senior health officials with direct knowledge of phone calls, emails and other communication between the agencies said on Saturday that meddling from Washington was turning widely followed and otherwise apolitical guidance on infectious disease, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, into a political loyalty test, with career scientists framed as adversaries of the administration.

They confirmed an article in Politico Friday night that the C.D.C.’s public morbidity reports, which one former top health official described on Saturday as the “holiest of the holy” in agency literature, have been targeted for months by senior officials in the health department’s communications office. It is unclear whether any of the reports were substantially altered, but important federal health studies have been delayed because of the pressure. Continue reading.

Public Health Experts Stunned By Trump Flack’s Attempt To Censor CDC Reports

Days after President Donald Trump admitted to knowingly downplaying the Covid-19 pandemic in his statements to the public, new reporting late Friday revealed that Trump political aides have been reviewing—and in some cases altering—weekly CDC reports about the deadly virus in an effort to bring them into closer alignment with the president’s false narrative and claims.

Politico reported Friday evening that the Health and Human Services Department’s politically appointed communications aides, led by former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo—a Republican strategist with no medical expertise—”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.”

The primary target of the Trump officials’ interference, according to Politico, has been the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), a crucial resource for experts, public officials, and members of the public seeking to track the spread of Covid-19. While CDC officials have pushed back on meddling from political appointees, Politico reported that the agency has “increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording.” Continue reading.

Trump Pressed for Plasma Therapy. Officials Worry, Is an Unvetted Vaccine Next?

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New details of how the president has demanded faster action from health agencies help explain the intensifying concern that he could demand pre-Election Day approval of a vaccine.

WASHINGTON — It was the third week of August, the Republican National Convention was days away, and President Trump was impatient.

White House officials were anxious to showcase a step forward in the battle against the coronavirus: an expansion of the use of blood plasma from recovered patients to treat new ones. For nearly two weeks, however, the National Institutes of Health had held up emergency authorization for the treatment, citing lingering concerns over its effectiveness.

So on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Mr. Trump called Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., with a blunt message.

“Get it done by Friday,” he demanded. Continue reading.

Trump says he didn’t want to spark panic. But he’s running on fear.

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“I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic.” 

— President Trump, explaining why he misled Americans about the coronavirus, Sept. 9, 2020

Bob Woodward’s first book on Trump was called “Fear.” But now the president is trying to rebut his own words in Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” by suggesting that he was trying to keep the nation calm by not revealing how much he knew about the dangerous nature of the novel coronavirus.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call with Woodward. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Speaking to reporters for weeks afterward, however, Trump repeatedly played down the threat, suggesting that it was not much more dangerous than the seasonal flu. Continue reading.

Emails show HHS official trying to muzzle Fauci

Emails obtained by POLITICO show a top aide at the department dictating what the nation’s top infections disease expert should say during media interviews.

A Trump administration appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to prevent Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, from speaking about the risks that coronavirus poses to children.

Emails obtained by POLITICO show Paul Alexander — a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs — instructing press officers and others at the National Institutes of Health about what Fauci should say during media interviews. The Trump adviser weighed in on Fauci’s planned responses to outlets including Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and the science journal Cell.

Alexander’s lengthy messages, some sent as recently as this week, are couched as scientific arguments. But they often contradict mainstream science while promoting political positions taken by the Trump administration on hot-button issues ranging from the use of convalescent plasma to school reopening. Continue reading.

California’s GOP Senate leader was under quarantine. She spoke with no mask at a huge prayer event anyway.

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In front of thousands of worshipers packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the Capitol, California Senate Minority Leader Shannon Grove (R) grabbed the microphone on Sunday and promised the huge church event would have a real impact.

“I declare that after all of this is over tonight, the remnant, the residue of this worship will saturate this ground and seep into that building,” Grove told the crowd, the Sacramento Bee reported.

But state leaders are warning the event’s impact could actually be a mass coronavirus outbreak. Although Grove’s permit allowed 1,000 people and required social distancing, the California Highway Patrol said three times as many showed up; videos showed virtually no social distancing or masks in the crowd. Continue reading.

A GOP county chair asked Trump to wear a mask to his rally. Instead, Trump mocked pandemic restrictions.

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Hours before President Trump arrived in Winston-Salem, N.C., for a campaign rally on Tuesday, the county’s top Republican official issued a warning: The president better be wearing a mask.

“It’s been ordered by the governor,” David Plyler, a Trump supporter and GOP chair of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, told the Winston-Salem Journal. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in North Carolina, do as the governor says.”

But when the president emerged Tuesday evening to address a cheering group of supporters, his face was fully exposed, a likely violation of the state’s coronavirus rules. Continue reading.