Caving to an infantile Twitter tirade from Donald Trump, the Centers for Disease Control under the aegis of Trump appointee Robert R. Redfield has backtracked on its initial recommendations for school reopenings because they collide with Trump’s re-election prospects.
As reported in the New York Times:
Hours after President Trump assailed guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reopening schools, Vice President Mike Pence, appearing with the White House coronavirus task force, announced the agency would issue new recommendations next week, saying administration officials don’t want the guidance to be a reason schools don’t open.
“Well, the president said today, we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Mr. Pence said. “That’s the reason why next week, the C.D.C. is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
The school criteria issued by the CDC in May, when the pandemic crisis was still under some semblance of control, included the following guidelines:
The more people a student or staff member interacts with, and the longer that interaction, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spread. The risk of COVID-19 spread increases in school settings as follows:
- Lowest Risk: Students and teachers engage in virtual-only classes, activities, and events.
- More Risk: Small, in-person classes, activities, and events. Groups of students stay together and with the same teacher throughout/across school days and groups do not mix. Students remain at least 6 feet apart and do not share objects (e.g., hybrid virtual and in-person class structures, or staggered/rotated scheduling to accommodate smaller class sizes).
- Highest Risk: Full sized, in-person classes, activities, and events. Students are not spaced apart, share classroom materials or supplies, and mix between classes and activities.
The boldface is in the original.
There is also strong emphasis on wearing masks:
Cloth Face Coverings
- Teach and reinforce use of cloth face coverings. Face coverings may be challenging for students (especially younger students) to wear in all-day settings such as school. Face coverings should be worn by staff and students (particularly older students) as feasible, and are most essential in times when physical distancing is difficult. Individuals should be frequently reminded not to touch the face covering and to wash their hands frequently. Information should be provided to staff, students, and students’ families on proper use, removal, and washing of cloth face coverings.
Schools are also advised that ventilation systems may spread the virus, and are encouraged to open windows. Water fountains are discouraged and children are advised to bring their own water, and food, if feasible. Bus routes are to be staggered and multiplied, where feasible, to avoid children congregating in large groups. Temperature checks are encouraged where feasible. Playgrounds and dining halls are to be closed.
It is not clear whether the CDC will delete or "modify" some or all of these, its original recommendations for schools. But the fact that the CDC is now leaping to revise them immediately after a disapproving Tweet from Donald Trump should alarm any parent, because it indicates that their children’s safety is being made subject to Donald Trump’s uninformed and erratic whims. Neither the deadly nature of the pandemic nor the ineptitude of the federal response have changed since May of this year. If anything, both have gotten worse.
This is, in a word, intolerable. It strongly suggests that the CDC’s actions are now being directed by the political concerns of this White House, rather than health concerns of the public. Specifically, the CDC is now modifying public health procedures solely to improve Trump’s poll numbers which are dependent, in his view, on reopening all aspects of American life, including our educational institutions. Notably, Trump declared today that he wanted all public schools to open at all costs, sneeringly dismissed efforts to create “hybrid” programs which combine in-person and online learning, and threatened to cut off federal aid to schools which disobeyed his edict.
In his tirade Trump did not mention the health risks attendant to filling classrooms with children, and permitting them to spread the virus to their parents and grandparents upon returning home each day from school. Nor did he mention the risk to the children themselves.
Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, said Wednesday that the agency’s guidance should not be used to justify keeping schools closed. It was the most clarifying statement the director has made in months as schools try to make sense of conflicting messaging on how they can safely welcome students back to class.
Dr. Redfield said that the guidelines were not meant to be used “as a rationale to keep schools closed.”
As noted above, the CDC’s director is Robert Redfield. To understand how poorly suited Redfield is to this position and why he would be willing to subject the health of the American public to political concerns, it is instructive to recall his role during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s and 90’s.
Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist as well as a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. In an article she wrote for CNN in 2018, she explains why Redfield was an absymal choice to lead the CDC.
Redfield's early engagement with the AIDS epidemic in the US in the 1980s and 90s was
controversial. As an Army major at Walter Reed Medical Institute, he designed policies for controlling the disease within the US military that involved placing infected personnel in quarantine and investigating their pasts to identify and track possible sexual partners. Soldiers were routinely
discharged and left to die of AIDS, humiliated and jobless, often abandoned by their families.
In the 1980s Redfield worked closely with W. Shepherd Smith, Jr. and his Christian organization,
Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy, or ASAP. The group maintained that AIDS was "God's judgment" against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.
Redfield wrote the introduction to a 1990 book, "Christians in the Age of AIDS," co-written by Smith, in which he denounced distribution of sterile needles to drug users and condoms to sexually active adults, and described anti-discrimination programs as the efforts of "false prophets."
Too few Americans are aware of Redfield’s history.
In the early 1990's, ASAP and Redfield also backed H.R. 2788, a House bill sponsored by deeply conservative Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-California). It would have subjected people with HIV to testing, loss of professional licenses and would have effectively quarantined them. (The bill died in Congress.) In the 2000s, Redfield was a top advocate for the so-called "ABCs of AIDS" in Africa, pressing to prevent HIV infection through sexual abstinence, monogamy and the use of condoms only as a last resort.
Such an individual was manifestly unsuited to lead the CDC at any time, least of all during the worst viral pandemic the world has experienced in over 100 years. His willingness—exhibited today-- to reflexively alter the CDC’s course pursuant to the political demands of Donald Trump indicate that the CDC can no longer be fairly considered an independent body.
It is compromised. And everything that flows from it from this point forward should be viewed through this lens.
Thursday, Jul 9, 2020 · 1:09:28 PM +00:00 · Dartagnan
Breaking, July 9th, the head of the CDC, Robert Redfield stated on “Good Morning America” that it will not be re-writing its guidelines, but will add more “reference documents” to assist schools in planning their reopenings.
As noted by CNN:
The apparent attempt to reconcile Trump's politically motivated complaints with the complicated set of new practices needed to reopen schools seems likely to make an already complex situation even less clear for parents, teachers and administrators.