The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 1,000 current and former officials at the Centers for Disease Control denounced the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19.
More than 1,000 current and former officers of an elite disease-fighting program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed an open letter expressing dismay at the nation’s public-health response to the Covid-19 pandemic and calling for the federal agency to play a more central role.
“The absence of national leadership on Covid-19 is unprecedented and dangerous,” said the letter, signed by current and former officers of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service of outbreak investigators. “CDC should be at the forefront of a successful response to this global public health emergency.”
Signers included two former CDC directors: Jeffrey Koplan, who led the agency under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and Tom Frieden, who served under President Barack Obama.
All of the signatories were writing to “express our concern about the ominous politicization and silencing of the nation’s health protection agency” during the current pandemic, said their letter, which was published Friday in the Epidemiology Monitor, a newsletter for epidemiologists.
“CDC has today, as it has every day during its 74-year history, provided the best available information and recommendations to the American public,” the agency said in a response to the letter. “Since January, more than 5,200 CDC personnel have dedicated themselves to protecting the health of the American people.”
Long regarded as the world’s premier public health agency, the CDC normally plays a leading role globally in a response to epidemics.
The Trump administration has been deeply involved at times in the shaping of scientific recommendations at the CDC during the pandemic, raising objections to guidelines for reopening churches and schools and for wearing masks, The Wall Street Journal reported. An administration spokesman said that “the CDC occupies a critical seat on the (coronavirus) task force, which is made up of public health leaders with an array of valuable expertise.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What the Idiot has done to the CDC is clearest indictment of what he and his minions have done to destroy this nation. Hopefully every rational person now understands the consequences of Bannon’s unraveling of the administrative state comments. What is potentially most tragic is the fact that a potential President Biden will be blamed for not fixing everything right away and we’ll be back to square one. The CDC was arguably the most revered American institution throughout the world. That reverence and respect of the American idea is also likely dead.
“Hopefully every rational person now understands the consequences of Bannon’s unraveling of the administrative state comments.”
This is a hope I share… but QAnon is one of too many cults thriving on irrationality and now pushing to become part of the “administrative state,” evidenced in the fact that some QAnon believers are running for Congress.
The administrative state is a pejorative phrase that Bannon and others rely on to condemn civil servants and more generally officials elected to govern the USA.
There is a real threat to the nation from the trashing of expertise in the CDC and from Bill Barr’s belief in nearly unlimited executive power clearly matched by Barr’s willingness to follow through on Trump’s wildest aspirations to harm his political opponents.
Will Bill Barr still believe in unlimited executive power when Biden is president?
It’s good to see this in the Wall Street Journal.
The letter was published in the Epidemiology Monitor, a newsletter for epidemiologists.
So – how many people in Joplin, MO or Janesville, WI and hundreds of other small town and outstate bastions of people salivating over this president read the WSJ or a medical journal?
“Fake news” is not the problem. NO NEWS in outstate outlets is the problem!
Do they know the security risk not to mention the evil of the leader of the free world refusing to denounce conspiracy theories, refusal to shut down U.S. white terrorists, and refusal to tell the CIA or FBI who he owes a half-a-billion to (every single person who works for the government must disclose loans for that very reason – security risk to trade their debt for information)
Is Bloomberg spending his millions on billboards across middle red America?
Are ads being run in these towns’ local newspapers?
Are their red senators in contested races being challenged with if they support their president and party who gets 1,000 doctors ticked off?!
Is the Lincoln Project running tv spots in outstate local stations?
And….
Will VP Biden hammer away with this letter, the letter signed by 500 military generals, the list of GOP leaders who have denounced the president?
Has anyone caught this yet?
During the VP debate, Mike Pence accused Joe Biden of plagiarising Trump’s COVID-19 response plan making it Biden’s. Watch the video to hear Pence say it.
https://www.insider.com/what-are-all-the-amendments-us-constitution-meaning-history-2018-11
Now, during the one-and-only presidential debate, Bully-Troll Trump accused Biden of having a COVID 19 plan that would have killed more than 2,000,000 Americans and that under Trump’s plan, lives had been saved.
https://www.insider.com/what-are-all-the-amendments-us-constitution-meaning-history-2018-11
Did Pence and Trump between them admit that their plan, or an absence of one, will kill more than 2-million Americans?
All the president will say is he banned travel from China… over and over and over.
Pence did the same thing.
Please Joe, Please Kamala respond…
“Wonderful! Take credit. Maybe you slowed down the spread in April. But YOU mr. president own the cases and deaths in May, June, July, August, September and October.”
“You called your supporters to arms to take on their State Houses.”
“You made threats and bribes to reopen states and colleges and schools too soon”
Now those states – your red states are knocking the top of the charts of cases and deaths and no hospital beds.”
“Name five specific actions you took AFTER you banned travel from China”
It he didn’t really ban travel from China. The New York Times reported at the time that there were many exceptions and more than 40,000 people flew from China to the US.