Congressional investigators released emails and documents on Friday showing that Department of Health and Human Services officials under former President Donald Trump regularly brag about their efforts to change staff scientists. reports about the coronavirus.
Officials tried So rewrite the weekly scientific reports Trump could use the data to support his political views on wearing masks and reopening the economy, according to emails released Friday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus.
“Our investigation has shown that Trump administration officials are engaged in an ongoing pattern of political interference in the country’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, dominating and bullying scientists and making damaging decisions that could accelerate the spread of the virus,” said chairman Rep. James Clyburn, DS.C.
Clyburn accused former Covid-19 White House adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, advocating “policies that would allow the virus to spread widely among many Americans.”
Documents obtained by the panel show that Atlas was “aware of, and may have participated in, attempts to attack reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to counter President Trump’s attempt to overthrow. justify reopening, ”said Clyburn.
Atlas and other politicians within HHS have on several occasions succeeded in changing the language and influencing the tone of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, which provide weekly public updates on scientists’ findings. found the panel. MMWRs are data-based scientific studies that are generally not subject to political pressure.
The investigation was first started after reports surfaced that Trump had demanded the right to change the CDC’s reports. The emails reveal that Trump officials are bragging about changing the reports.
“Small victory but still a victory and yippee !!!” Former science adviser Paul Alexander wrote in a Sept. 9 email to let Michael Caputo, then HHS’s chief of public affairs, know that he had managed the opening line of a CDC report on the Covid-19 transfer. schoolchildren.
Just two days later, Alexander Atlas asked for help with the change another CDC report on Covid-19 youth deaths that Alexander said was “timely for the election” to keep schools closed.
“Can you help me make an opinion piece,” Alexander wrote to Atlas. “Let’s advise the president and get permission to prevent this because it’s running for the weekend, so we have to flatten the edge because it’s misleading.”
Earlier in the month, Alexander had asked Atlas to draft another opinion piece to oppose masks for children and school closures during the pandemic.
“I think a short 400 words on this will help people go back to school, I think locking up our children (and healthy adults) and masking them can dampen their functional immune systems. Do you think this can be done?” Alexander wrote in an email dated September 3.
Alexander famously said “we want them infected” when he advocated a herd immunity strategy in a July 4 email released by Clyburn investigators in December.
Pushing for the same strategy in the fall, Atlas wrote, “Universities should remain open, even if they see an increase in the number of cases … Yes, the number of cases will increase among young people as they interact socially, but that should should not be cause for panic, ‘following dangerous herd immunity theories, in an opinion piece published Sept. 15. A draft of that op-ed was first edited and revised by Alexander, according to an email dated Sept. 8.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the president, previously dismissed the idea of spreading the coronavirus to achieve herd immunity last fall as dangerous “nonsense”.
“Dr. Fauci has no data, no science to back up what he says about the reopening of the school, no … he is unjustly scaring the nation,” Alexander wrote to senior HHS officials last summer, arguing that Fauci’s parents frightened.
In another example, Trump officials tried to camouflage Covid-19 case numbers with other metrics to push political points of discussion.
“I know the president wants us to list the economic cost of not reopening. We need solid estimates to say something like: 50,000 more cancer deaths! 40,000 more heart attacks! 25,000 more suicides!” Caputo wrote to Alexander on May 16 e-mail. “You need to take ownership of these numbers. This is extremely important to what you and I want to achieve,” Caputo added in a follow-up email.
After the Trump White House appointed Nina Witkofsky as acting CDC chief of staff last summer, Alexander seemed pleased with her influence on the agency.
“The last 2 MMWR reports have been more positive than usual and I can tell [that] encouraging, “Alexander wrote to Witkofsky in an Aug. 3 email.” You may have a huge impact and this is huge. Well done!”
In more emails, Alexander constantly praised his influence the reports of the agency. In another example, Alexander bragged about changes to the “main opening line” of a report on a Covid outbreak at a summer camp in Georgia.
The line stressed the importance of understanding youth transfer to develop guidance for school. That line was removed and replaced with another that said there was “limited data” on the transmission of coronavirus in individuals under the age of 21. The CDC explained that the rule had been removed and replaced because of “thoughtful comments” from Alexander and CDC leaders.
Dr. Robert Redfield, the then CDC director, said last year that the reports released by the agency were unaffected by political interference. “The scientific integrity of the MMWR has not been compromised at any time. And I can say it will not be compromised under my care,” Redfield testified in the Senate last September.
However, Redfield told news outlets last month that Trump officials repeatedly tried to change MMWRs they didn’t like, according to The Washington Post. The then HHS secretary Alex Azar denied the accusation.
Congressional investigators are looking for more documents from appointees involved in the emails and others.
Alexander and Atlas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.