From a report by Apoorva Mandavilli in The NY Times:
Current and former employees recall rising desperation as Trump administration officials squelched research into the new coronavirus.
The link should allow passage through The NY Times paywall.
While we are waiting for a possible indictment over Trump’s dalliance with a porn star, the truth remains that hundreds of thousands of Americans became sick and died who might have been spared that fate — and Trump is the reason why, along with all those who were complicit. None of them will suffer any consequences for what they did.
In early March 2020, as the nation succumbed to a pandemic, a group of young scientists walked out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They left quietly, one or two at a time, through the building’s front doors, flashing their badges at guards, instead of through side exits where their departures would be recorded.
Gathering in a small park across the street, they stood with their coffees in hand and agonized over some shocking developments.
All through February 2020, agency scientists had been gathering evidence that the new coronavirus was being spread by people without symptoms. In early March, the C.D.C. said that any employee who had been deployed elsewhere to track Covid-19 must isolate at home for 14 days, whether or not he or she had symptoms.
To the scientists gathered outside, trainees in the agency’s vaunted Epidemic Intelligence Service, the implication was clear: C.D.C. leaders realized that the virus was being spread not just by people who were coughing and sneezing, but also by people who were not visibly ill. But the agency had not yet warned the public.
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Remember early on, when Trump said the virus would just fade away, that it would soon be gone? How he didn’t want bad news about the pandemic on his watch?
...Interviews with 11 current and former agency employees, including trainees at the E.I.S., as well as a review of text messages and other documents obtained by The New York Times, portray an agency under intense pressure from the country’s political leaders. Some younger staff members wrestled with guilt, anger and a rising sense of powerlessness as administration officials meddled with or simply disregarded important scientific research.
Dr. Wozniczka, 35, left the C.D.C. in July 2021 and sought help from Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal organization. He testified before a House subcommittee on the pandemic last August and October, describing a disconnect between what the C.D.C.’s scientists were learning about the coronavirus in early 2020 and the agency’s public stance on the risks.
Other scientists still at the C.D.C. spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions at work. Many said they had sought therapy or had begun taking medication to cope with their frustration and disillusionment. Some said they were frequently in tears.
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At the beginning, Covid was a new disease; there was little to none hard information on how it spread, how dangerous it was, how to deal with it. But while CDC was trying to get a handle on it...
...The first big shock came in February 2020, when the Trump administration reprimanded Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a senior C.D.C. official, for warning Americans to prepare for a pandemic.
Two days later, on Feb. 27, C.D.C. employees were told that all messaging from the agency would be routed through Vice President Mike Pence, who had assumed leadership of the coronavirus task force.
That day, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who led the C.D.C. during the swine flu pandemic of 2009, declared on Twitter that the coronavirus “pandemic is coming,” prompting one E.I.S. officer to remark: “Someday I hope to tweet with the freedom of a former C.D.C. Director.”
What CDC researchers were finding out early on was that the virus was being spread by people without symptoms. Screening for people with fever, cough, etc. was not enough to detect people with active infections who were contagious but appeared healthy. They knew — but they were not allowed to tell the public.
In an internal memo on March 9, the C.D.C. said that any employee who had been deployed elsewhere to work on Covid-19 was required to isolate at home for 14 days — symptoms or not.
Three days later, E.I.S. officers were told to stop posting about Covid on social media, according to internal communications obtained by The New York Times. (Dr. Wozniczka did not initially comply, but did so after he was threatened with dismissal.)
It was only on March 30 that the C.D.C. director, Dr. Robert Redfield, warned of asymptomatic transmission of the novel coronavirus in a radio interview. On April 3, at a White House press briefing, the agency advised Americans to wear masks.
Dr. Redfield did not respond to a request for comment, but he and other top officials at the C.D.C. told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis that the White House denied the agency’s requests to hold press briefings on mask guidance. “For a while, none of our briefings were approved,” Dr. Redfield told the committee last year.
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What were the consequences of the administration’s efforts to suppress how serious the pandemic was? Here’s just one estimate:
As the months wore on, E.I.S. officers worked 16-hour days, seven days a week, at nursing homes, meatpacking plants, airports and cruise ships, doing shoe-leather epidemiology — recording patients’ symptoms, tracing their contacts and charting the spread of the virus.
But many of their reports — including ones on when the virus arrived in the United States, guidance for meatpacking plants and religious services and on the risks to children — were suppressed or altered beyond recognition by the Trump administration, several said. (The House select subcommittee on the pandemic concluded that the Trump administration had meddled in or blocked at least 19 reports.)
Morale plunged after a May 2020 report estimated that imposing social distancing measures one week earlier in March 2020 would have saved 36,000 lives.
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As the pandemic surged, Republicans did what Republicans do: they looked for scapegoats.
In August 2020, Michael R. Caputo, then the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, described C.D.C. scientists as lazy and as traitors engaging in sedition.
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A look at the wikipedia bio of Caputo is stomach-turning — he was a bad actor long before getting installed at HHS. What he and the team he assembled did would be beyond belief — if we hadn't seem so much of it during Trump’s reign of error and grift and all through the Republican Party through today. That he has been allowed to retire to Florida without any consequences is infuriating — and so Republican. IOKIYAR. (See Thom Hartmann on Republican Presidents)
CNN has a timeline of all the times Trump declared the pandemic was just going to disappear. It’s an interactive graphic that shows how cases were rising even as Trump continued to blow smoke up the nation’s collective butt for months.
That Trump and his people will never be held accountable for any of this is infuriating beyond belief, a clear demonstration that justice in this country is seriously flawed, and still more proof that Republicans are an existential threat not only to America, but to humanity at large.
Related story — how Republican anti-abortion laws are driving OB-GYN doctors out of Idaho, for fear of being sued and/or going to jail. Women will die for lack of health care. Listen to the podcast in the update at the link for the grim details.
Read the whole NY Times report, look at Caputo’s wikipedia entry, and the CNN timeline. But check your blood pressure first.
It’s not over. The denial is still strong on right wing media. The conspiracy theories won’t die. House Republicans are planning to scapegoat Fauci for the pandemic — and this article on the CDC shows how badly they need scapegoats for their criminal behavior.
The CDC has a weekly covid tracker review, wrapping up at the end of March. Here’s the latest community report. (See the map at the link.)
As of March 16, 2023, there are 49 (1.5%) counties, districts, or territories with a high COVID-19 Community Level, 310 (9.6%) with a medium Community Level, and 2,861 (88.7%) with a low Community Level. Compared with last week, the number of counties, districts, or territories in the high level decreased by 0.4%, in the medium level decreased by 3.4%, and in the low level increased by 3.8%. Overall, 38 out of 52 jurisdictions** had high- or medium-level counties this week. Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and South Carolina are the jurisdictions that have all counties at low Community Levels.
To check your COVID-19 Community Level, visit COVID Data Tracker. To learn which prevention measures are recommended based on your COVID-19 Community Level, visit COVID-19 Community Level and COVID-19 Prevention.
*CDC recommends use of COVID-19 Community Levels to determine the impact of COVID-19 on communities and to take action. CDC also provides Community Transmission Levels to describe the amount of COVID-19 spread within each county. Healthcare facilities use Community Transmission Levels to determine infection control interventions.
**Includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Also:
Reported Cases
As of March 15, 2023, the current 7-day average of weekly new cases (21,422) decreased 19.7% compared with the previous 7-day average (26,685). A total of 103,801,821 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States as of March 15, 2023.
The Republican claim to be the “Party of Life” is another Big Lie. They are truly the Party of Death. From the perspective of history, the Trump administration deserves a place somewhere among the ranks of Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Stalin, Hitler, and other autocrats whose actions led to mass deaths. This is one more thing that will not be taught to American children in school.