While the nation is being distracted by our First Lady’s mimicry of human empathy, her husband has quietly transformed our Centers For Disease Control (CDC) from a public health agency designed to provide reliable guidance in the midst of a public health catastrophe unparalleled in modern history into a political weapon whose primary mission is to support his re-election campaign.
As reported by the New York Times:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was instructed by higher-ups in the Trump administration to modify its coronavirus testing guidelines this week to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 — even if they have been recently exposed to the virus, according to two federal health officials.
One official said the directive came from the top down. Another said the guidelines were not written by the C.D.C. but were imposed, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.
This modification was made to comport with Trump’s preference that the country conduct far fewer tests for COVID-19, since more testing yields higher numbers of persons identified as being infected. The higher those infection rates go, the more threat they represent to Trump’s chances for re-election, as the country comes to terms with the sheer scale of the disaster caused by his negligent disregard of the pandemic earlier this year.
The modifications were specifically decided by Trump’s “Coronavirus Task Force,” at a meeting timed to coincide with the absence (due to a medical procedure) of NIH director Anthony Fauci, who, according to the Times, is believed to have objections to the changes.
[T]he final debate over the guidance took place at a task force meeting last Thursday, the same day Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a member of the task force, was having surgery under general anesthesia to remove a polyp on his vocal cord, and he was not present, according to a person familiar with Dr. Fauci’s thinking.
Since as many as 40% of those who carry the SARS-CoV-2 virus are asymptomatic, the new guidance will result in the virus being spread, undetected, at a far faster rate than would occur if no modifications to the guidance had been made, particularly in those Republican-governed states which will cite the new Trump-sanctioned guidance as an excuse to conduct fewer tests.. As noted by Nick Valenci, Sara Murray and Kristen Holmes, reporting for CNN:
The new guidelines raise the bar on who should get tested, advising that some people without symptoms probably don't need it -- even if they've been in close contact with an infected person.
Previously, the CDC said viral testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic.
As both the Times report and the CNN article note, these changes are in line with Trump’s policy that fewer tests should be run. Medical experts have reacted to the changes with alarm:
Experts have called the revisions alarming and dangerous, noting that the country needs more testing, not less. And they have expressed deep concern that the C.D.C. is posting guidelines that its own officials did not author. The former C.D.C. director, Tom Frieden, railed against the move on Twitter:
With these steps, Donald Trump is ensuring that the coming winter, in which COVID-19 infections are expected to spike due to more people staying indoors, will be the deadliest in U.S. history, whether he is re-elected or not.
