Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show

[brooklynite]

Source: Washington Post

Trump appointees in the Health and Human Services department last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then-President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.

The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year’s explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees were attempting to blunt the scientists’ messages, edit their findings and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points.

Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.

Pointing to one change — where CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them — Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/cdc-covid-political-interference/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_politics

[Comfortably_Numb]

1. Unfortunately thousands of dead young people can't celebrate the "yippie

with these murderous thug idiots. Fuck you all the way to the sign that says “no more fuck you beyond this point”

[chowder66]

3. +1

[Lonestarblue]

2. Trump and his toadies took a world-renowned CDC and turned it into an incompetent mess.

Some of the respect is coming back, but what Trump taught the world is that politics affects everything and the US is not to be trusted or admired. Trump’s damage will live on far after he is gone.

[tanyev]

4. "We're corrupting science!!" *high fives all around*

[Leghorn21]

5. Are these the same little fuckers who are facing a "jobs desert"? Because

GOOD

[twodogsbarking]

6. Putin poisons people.

This seems similar.

[aggiesal]

10. You mean Put-In Trump ...

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Their EMAILS!!!

Make sure they never work in anything related to science again. They have betrayed science.

[IronLionZion]

8. The were trying to kill liberals

thinking it would mostly impact people in cities. And they hoped young people would spread it around through parties or whatever with a false sense of security.

These idiots probably didn't expect how badly it would hurt rural conservatives and how their voters would spread it around.

[riversedge]

9. Disgusting creeps--and they walk free

[Hugh_Lebowski]

11. In a country with actual Rule of Law, people would go to jail for this obvious corruption

Leading directly to thousands if not 10's of 1000's of deaths.

It's freaking dumbfounding to me that nothing will happen to them.

And you know it won't.

Look back to BushCo's phony war justifications to see just how these things play out.

[Hugin]

12. Sadly, yup. n/t

[Kid Berwyn]

13. When do we hold these mass murderers to account?

Hundreds of thousands of Americans dead for no reason other than making Donald Trump happy.