When Barack Obama came into office, he was facing an economy absolutely shoved off a cliff by the wanton speculation generated by Republican gifts to corporations and deregulation of every damn thing. Joe Biden is going to face a much greater challenge. Not only will he have to pull the nation back from an even greater economic blow, he’s going to have to do it with a still ongoing pandemic very likely to have killed over 300,000 before he takes office. Plus he’s going to face the sheer fatigue that the nation faces after four years of Donald Trump’s divisive and abusive statements.
Finally, he’s going to have to do it with a government that is absolutely broken. It’s not just that Trump has loaded up the federal judiciary with hundreds of fresh appointments run down the Mitch McConnell assembly line. Across the board, those agencies that report to the White House have been remodeled from whatever it was they did before, into subdivisions of the Trump PR machine. That includes an EPA where actual scientists have been kicked out of offices and off of boards to make room for lobbyists and sycophants, an FCC now dedicated to seeing that Americans don’t get decent service, and a State Department where a generation of diplomatic experience has been flushed in favor of Q-scented conspiracy theorists.
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But nowhere may have suffered as much as the agencies associated with public health, and when it comes to the CDC, Trump isn’t done—he’s just installed a new set of minders determined to make sure that America is kept safe from science, expert opinion, and facts.
This isn’t the first set of CDC fact wranglers, and some of the original set are still there. After all, Trump appointed Robert Redfield to head the agency despite a history littered with questionable ethics, bad research practices, and zero history managing a large organization. Redfield was described by Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter Laurie Garrett as “an abysmal choice” and “about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time.”
But apparently, that wasn’t enough. To ensure that the CDC didn’t get facts all over Trump’s latest crackpot claims, the agency had to filter everything through Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo. And because the task of censoring all of America’s health care was too much for one man, Caputo then tapped Paul Alexander to take a fact-axe to anything that looked insufficiently happy-happy joy-joy.
That included removing all signs that a CDC report showing that COVID-19 was easily transmitted by children and represented a health risk for both children and young adults, was actually about ... children. That was done to preserve the idea that children are at “zero risk,” per Donald Trump. And it was Caputo and Alexander who infamously rewrote the CDC’s guidelines while Dr. Anthony Fauci was unconscious for an operation. Among other things, the new “improved” guidelines, was a suggested that people no longer needed to be tested unless they were displaying clear symptoms, even if they had been exposed to someone they knew had COVID-19. Quite a suggestion considering that most cases of COVID-19 are spread by people who are asymptomatic.
But then Caputo … had a little problem. His job had seemed a little shaky since September, when he conducted an “emergency staff meeting” to report his concerns about deep state “resistance unit” inside the CDC, talked about death threats, and encouraged his staff to listen to the Grateful Dead. Caputo then piled on more, let’s say “extraordinary,” statements on Facebook. Following this, Caputo took a leave of absence and Alexander decided it was past time to move on. That left the CDC scientists and doctors chaperoned only by Redfield’s basic cowardice, even as one of the agency’s real heroes gave a call to arms.
As the Associated Press reports, this gap is being addressed. Trump brought in two political appointees some time ago and has been moving them around within the CDC to “try to control the information it releases about the coronavirus pandemic” and help “paint a positive outlook” even if that means ignoring the science. Because that has worked out so well up until now.
These two appointees—acting chief of staff Nina Witkofsky and her assistant Chester “Trey” Moeller—have no scientific background and no experience in public health. But then … they don’t really know science to know when scientists are trying to smuggle unpleasant facts to the public.
According to the AP, the pair aren’t just there to make sure that every report comes out of the CDC with a smiley face and a guarantee that it supports whatever Trump is saying on that particular day, they have also “been tasked with keeping an eye on Dr. Robert Redfield, the agency director” just in case he decides to grow a spine and stop backing down from Trump.
Bringing back the luster that the CDC had four years ago is not going to be easy. Neither is restaffing the EPA’s advisory board with knowledgeable scientists or finding diplomats with expertise and experience. Biden and his transition team are going to be extremely busy after November 3.