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Epic Fail: Political Interference [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-03

First of five posts.

In January 2022, Musings of a Nobody ran a series of posts about the Trump administration’s historic failure in its handling of the coronavirus as detailed in a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

As we approach Trump’s inauguration, we’re running the series again. The goal is to remind people of the corrupt, politically driven mismanagement that led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and the accompanying financial crisis, to serve as a warning of the type of administration we may be seeing during the next four years, and to illustrate the kind of damage and suffering that it’s corruption and incompetence is capable of creating.

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The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis “uncovered extensive evidence of widespread political interference that degraded every major facet of the Trump administration’s public health response.”

Here are some of its findings:

Blocked CDC briefings and media appearances

*The Trump White House blocked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention (CDC) from conducting public briefings for more than three months after a Feb. 25, 2020, briefing in which then-CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Dr. Nancy Messonnier accurately warned the public about the risks posed by the coronavirus.

*Messonnier said this briefing“angered” then-president Donald Trump, and that she received calls after the session from then-CDC Director Robert Redfield and then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar that caused her to feel “upset.”

*The CDC requested to hold a briefing in April 2020 that would have provided information on the state of the pandemic, a new CDC recommendation to wear cloth face coverings, and new evidence of pediatric cases and deaths from the coronavirus, but the Trump White House refused the request.

*Media requests to interview CDC officials were also denied during this period. One former CDC official said that “many of us” felt muzzled by the White House and that its decisions were driven by politics rather than science.

Sought to sidestep the CDC in finalizing guidance

*Officials in the Office of Management and Budget sought to sidestep the CDC when finalizing coronavirus guidance for faith communities after the CDC declined to accept edits to the guidance proposed by officials outside of the agency.

*A senior CDC official said the published version of guidance for faith communities “softened some very important public health recommendations,” such as removing all references to face coverings, the suggestion to suspend choirs, and language related to virtual services.

*The official said that the concerns he had about Americans getting sick and potentially dying because they relied on this watered-down guidance “will haunt [him] for some time.”

Purposefully weakened CDC testing guidance

*Trump administration officials purposefully weakened CDC’s coronavirus testing guidance in August 2020 to obscure how rapidly the virus was spreading across the country. This was confirmed by former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx.

*Then-Special Advisor to President Trump Dr. Scott Atlas was involved in changing CDC’s testing guidance to assert -- contrary to consensus science-based recommendations -- that most asymptomatic people should not be tested even if they were exposed to the virus.

*Birx said that these changes were made specifically to reduce the amount of testing being conducted, and that Atlas had the intention of changing the testing guidance when he arrived at the White House.

*The CDC eventually restored the science-based testing guidance on September 18, 2020, over the objections of senior White House officials.

Instructed CDC career scientists to destroy evidence of political interference

*A CDC official confirmed in a transcribed interview that she was instructed to destroy evidence of political interference by a Trump administration political appointee.

*The CDC official said that she understood this instruction -- which “seemed unusual” and made her“uncomfortable” -- came from Redfield.

Pressured the Food and Drug Administration to authorize ineffective coronavirus treatments

*Trump administration political appointees attempted to exert pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to authorize ineffective coronavirus treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma, over the objections of career scientists.

Championed a dangerous herd immunity strategy

*Trump administration officials, including Atlas and then-HHS political appointee Dr. Paul Alexander, advocated for the federal government to adopt a dangerous herd immunity strategy without vaccines, which would have risked the loss of even more American lives unnecessarily.

*Birx detailed how Atlas championed this strategy inside the White House, calling for most people to “be allowed and actually encouraged to get the virus and spread the virus.”

*To advance this approach, Atlas apparently spearheaded a roundtable event at the White House in August 2020 between Trump and outspoken proponents of a herd immunity strategy, and later coordinated a similar meeting in October 2020 with Azar.

*Birx described these herd immunity proponents as “a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on-the-ground, commonsense experience,” and refused to be associated with their meeting at the White House.

*Other top public health officials, including National Institutes of Health (NIH) DirectorDr. Francis Collins, expressed deep concerns about the herd immunity strategy being advocated by “fringe epidemiologists” whom Atlas had embraced. In an email to NIH colleagues, Dr. Collins called for “a quick and devastating published take down” of the herd immunity strategy known as “The Great Barrington Declaration”

*Birx said she was “constantly raising the alert” about the “depths and breadths of [her] concern” about Atlas to senior Trump Administration officials, and that Atlas’s presence in the White House undermined the effectiveness of the overall pandemic response effort.

Used personal email accounts to conduct official business

*Multiple Trump administration officials, such as then-White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing PolicyDirector Peter Navarro, used personal email accounts -- including an encrypted email service -- to conduct official business related to the pandemic,

*This raised troubling questions about whether these individuals intentionally sought to shield official communications about the pandemic response from public view. These documents also raise concerns about whether Trump administration officials potentially violated the Presidential Records Act.

Neglected the pandemic response to focus on the 2020 election and the Big Lie

*Trump administration officials allowed the pandemic response to take a “back-seat” in the fall of 2020 to focus instead on the presidential election and promoting former PresidentTrump’s Big Lie that the election results were fraudulent.

*Birx said White House officials “were actively campaigning” for the presidential election, and that the narrow focus on campaigning “took people’s time away from and distracted them away from the pandemic.”

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Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.

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