A government agency that has long been trusted as nonpartisan relies on public trust for the information it releases. When that agency is the Centers for Disease Control, public trust is essential to persuading the public that its advisories represent the work of scientists, unaffected by political considerations. This article by ProPublica describes how the Trump administration persistently interfered in CDC guidelines in an attempt to convince the public that the pandemic was no big deal and that the administration was doing a fabulous job in handling it.
It begins:
At 7:47 a.m. on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, Dr. Jay Butler pounded out a grim email to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Butler, then the head of the agency’s coronavirus response, and his team had been trying to craft guidance to help Americans return safely to worship amid worries that two of its greatest comforts — the chanting of prayers and singing of hymns — could launch a deadly virus into the air with each breath.
The week before, the CDC had published its investigation of an outbreak at an Arkansas church that had resulted in four deaths. The agency’s scientific journal recently had detailed a superspreader event in which 52 of the 61 singers at a 2½-hour choir practice developed COVID-19. Two died.
Butler, an infectious disease specialist with more than three decades of experience, seemed the ideal person to lead the effort. Trained as one of the CDC’s elite disease detectives, he’d helped the FBI investigate the anthrax attacks, and he’d led the distribution of vaccines during the H1N1 flu pandemic when demand far outstripped supply.
But days earlier, Butler and his team had suddenly found themselves on President Donald Trump’s front burner when the president began publicly agitating for churches to reopen. That Thursday, Trump had announced that the CDC would release safety guidelines for them “very soon.” He accused Democratic governors of disrespecting churches, and deemed houses of worship “essential services.”
Butler’s team rushed to finalize the guidance for churches, synagogues and mosques that Trump’s aides had shelved in April after battling the CDC over the language. In reviewing a raft of last-minute edits from the White House, Butler’s team rejected those that conflicted with CDC research, including a worrisome suggestion to delete a line that urged congregations to “consider suspending or at least decreasing” the use of choirs.
On Friday, Trump’s aides called the CDC repeatedly about the guidance, according to emails. “Why is it not up?” they demanded until it was posted on the CDC website that afternoon.
The next day, a furious call came from the office of the vice president: The White House suggestions were not optional. The CDC’s failure to use them was insubordinate, according to emails at the time.
Fifteen minutes later, one of Butler’s deputies had the agency’s text replaced with the White House version, the emails show. The danger of singing wasn’t mentioned.
Early that Sunday morning, as Americans across the country prepared excitedly to return to houses of worship, Butler, a churchgoer himself, poured his anguish and anger into an email to a few colleagues.
“I am very troubled on this Sunday morning that there will be people who will get sick and perhaps die because of what we were forced to do,” he wrote.
When the next history of the CDC is written, 2020 will emerge as perhaps the darkest chapter in its 74 years, rivaled only by its involvement in the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which federal doctors withheld medicine from poor Black men with syphilis, then tracked their descent into blindness, insanity and death.
With more than 216,000 people dead this year, most Americans know the low points of the current chapter already. A vaunted agency that was once the global gold standard of public health has, with breathtaking speed, become a target of anger, scorn and even pity.
How could an agency that eradicated smallpox globally and wiped out polio in the United States have fallen so far?
ProPublica obtained hundreds of emails and other internal government documents and interviewed more than 30 CDC employees, contractors and Trump administration officials who witnessed or were involved in key moments of the crisis. Although news organizations around the world have chronicled the CDC’s stumbles in real time, ProPublica’s reporting affords the most comprehensive inside look at the escalating tensions, paranoia and pained discussions that unfolded behind the walls of CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. And it sheds new light on the botched COVID-19 tests, the unprecedented political interference in public health policy, and the capitulations of some of the world’s top public health leaders.
Senior CDC staff describe waging battles that are as much about protecting science from the White House as protecting the public from COVID-19. It is a war that they have, more often than not, lost.
Please open the link and read it all.
Science means nothing to Trump because he doesn’t know any. He is literally less knowledgeable about science than is your third-grader. This is the guy who wanted to nuke hurricanes and to send astronauts to the sun, thought that injecting disinfectant might be a good idea, and believed that stealth planes were literally invisible.
In this, as in much else, Trump has not only ignored but actively campaigned against the science because the idea that others are experts on subjects that he knows nothing about contradicts his own view that despite his stupidity and profound ignorance, he is the smartest guy not only in the room but in any room. This is but one, of course, of his many ongoing, pathological, psychosis-level delusions.
But he’s still going to get at least around forty percent of the vote.
On the cusp of the defeat of Don the Con in the 2020 elections, I have a couple observations to make in summary of his maladministration:
Imagine being this moron, Trump. Imagine having had the astonishing opportunity to wield the power of the presidency for good. What amazing things you could have done! Now imagine having entirely trashed everything you touched during that time–every federal agency and department, the environment, the economy, civil political discourse, science-based approaches to serious problems (like the pandemic), and all our alliances with democratic nations. Imagine having divided the country more deeply than at any time since the Civil War. Imagine having denied the very existence of the most dangerous threats to the country, and imagine that, by the end of your term, some 400,000 Americans will have died because of your ignorance and heedlessness and nepotism and ineptitude. Imagine having overseen a ratcheting up of economic inequity among our citizens. Imagine having stoked racial tensions and having attempted to use the military to squash a large, democratic movement to end racial inequity and injustice. Imagine having made a complete fool of yourself on a daily basis, to the point that whenever you spoke to an international audience–at the UN for example–your peers around the world almost unanimously LAUGHED OUT LOUD AT YOU. And imagine that, by running for and winning this office, you have invited close scrutiny of your entire personal and business history and have revealed literally hundreds of actionable criminal and civil offenses for which you will pay if you don’t get a second term. Heckuva job there, Donnie!
Now imagine being one of the toadying enablers of all that failure–one with previous experience in government–someone like Bill Barr or Rudolph Ghouliani. Imagine having entirely trashed your reputation and any good will you had accumulated throughout your career by hitching your star to the Trump bulldozer of democratic norms and simple decency.
It’s all pretty breathtaking, isn’t it? Undoing the damage is going to take a good while, and we must not forget those who ignored Trump’s encyclopedic failings and actually aided the Idiot in his treason and malfeasance and criminality and incompetence.
Bob. This is another amazing contribution to this blog. Thank you for the invitation to a thought experiment, one that is really scary when you consider that about 40% of the voters appear to think Trump is doing just fine. That is the real nightmare.
It’s astonishing, isn’t it?
One post I read on social media said that the Republican Party has strapped itself to a suicide bomber and is ready to pull the cord. I don’t know if this is true, but I hope it quiets the most extreme arm of the party and encourages them slither back to the swamp.
Science is fact. Conservatives are finding this out the hard way. The company that makes Regeneron has given out only ten experimental doses. One was for Trump and a second was for Chris Christie, who now endorses wearing a mask. Special treatment for Trump’s inner circle!
Trump is desperate because he knows what he faces when he loses–all those civil and criminal cases, many of them (rape, bank and insurance fraud, indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity) quite serious. In his desperation, ofc, Trump is quite capable of, figuratively, eating his young. He recently threatened to “fire” both Barr and our Flor-uh-duh governor, DeSatan. Loyalty, you see, is as important to Jabba the Trump as it was to Baron Harkkonon in Dune. Poor DeSatan. He tried so hard to be Bad Dad Donnie’s fav Mini-Me!
Trump was joking about DeSantis. He said at his rally in DeSantis’ presence, “I’m counting on you to deliver Florida. If you don’t, I’ll find a way to fire you.” He speaks his mind when he jests.
He reveals what he really thinks when he is “joking.” He has nothing but contempt for his sycophants.
You dropped the “p”
psychophants
LOL. Thanks for catching that, SomeDAM!
Someone wrote that “whatever Trump touches, dies.” A corollary is that whoever served him and bowed to him destroys their reputation forever. I’m looking at you, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander, and every other Republican Senator, including Ben Sasse, who supported everything Trump did, while knowing he is a liar and an ignorant racist.
Amen
I hope you all saw the special last night about the White House photographer, Souza. I dare anyone to claim you got through it dry eyed. I don’t care how much some people rail against what Obama did or didn’t do, Souza captured the humanity and decency of Obama as well as his dedication to the country. Such a contrast to what we have now.
I don’t think that people rail against Obama personally so much as the the people he (or the DNC) appointed into his administration. Obama is a great human being and a decent man. His biggest fault was his administration bailing out those that caused the Great Recession and then letting them off with a slap on the wrist and a “please don’t do this again” warning. He is “guilty” by association and most people don’t have a working knowledge of the complexities of the working government that we have today…..administrations, cabinets, agencies, lobbyists etc.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
How Trump set about destroying the CDC, the world’s best organization for stopping pandemics from breaking out.
COVID deaths in China where the pandemic started = 4,634 or 3 for every million population
COVID deaths in the US under President Donald Trump who set about politizing the CDC and destroying its ability to protect the country and the world from pandemics.
224,084 deaths in the US from COVID-19 or 676 for each 1 million in population. The USA has had more COVID-19 deaths than any other country. India is in 2nd place with 114,064 deaths.
This is all thanks to a malignant narcissist, sociopath, and mass murder by the name of Donald Trump. He doesn’t care how many Americans die on his watch that he will not take responsibility for.
The administration’s appointing of heads of departments, and especially running departments with ‘acting heads’ who don’t need to be vetted, is destroying the public service sector. All gone so easily.
It was all based on gentlemen’s agreements before – and then along came a dictator who is not a gentleman. Pouf!
I think this shows us how NOT sturdy our system is. We’ll survive – I hope – but the system needs a LOT of work – it bowed to the first wannabee to come along. And broke.