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Donald Trump’s administration has downplayed considerations about the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic and watered down reports establishing public fitness in an effort to further the former president’s policy goals, a new House report has revealed.
The House Special Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released its most recent report Monday, based on emails, documents and witness interviews to detail how the Trump White House sought to “compromise the clinical integrity” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said management banned company officials from participating in interviews or media briefings, at a time when he believes Americans “should have heard from public fitness officials. “
The White House has tried to exercise public guidance on COVID-19, with Trump installing his best friend Michael Caputo as deputy secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency.
Kate Galatas, the CDC’s chief communications officer, told the subcommittee that Caputo acted with the goal of making others “feel threatened. “
The subcommittee saw evidence that Caputo criticized Dr. Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases, for being “too alarming” in a June 2020 teleconference.
In another case, Paul Alexander, a senior adviser to Caputo, wrote to CDC officials to attack one of his reports, which he considered contradictory to the information released by the White House, and to allege that the agency’s works harmed the administration. as well as Americans in general.
In May 2020, Alexander also replaced the wording of a CDC draft related to the number of pandemic deaths in the U. S. The U. S. Department of Health and Prevention is expected to make it “more positive,” according to an email reviewed by the subcommittee.
Redfield also said management has “compromised” the agency’s COVID-19 multiple times to paint a more optimistic picture of the pandemic.
Efforts through Trump officials to assign a larger symbol of the pandemic in the U. S. U. S. morale has affected worker morale, but may also have put lives at risk, according to the report.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s deputy senior director, told the subcommittee that she believes fewer Americans would have died at the beginning of the pandemic if the CDC had been allowed to release accurate information.
Redfield said he developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of handling the COVID-19 recommendation writing procedure during his tenure.
The report demonstrated how the Trump White House sought to use the CDC’s authority to advance its own political agenda.
Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, said his division had won an order justifying the deportation of asylum seekers arriving at the U. S. border. He was drafted in the U. S. under Title 42, a 1944 public fitness law that would remove them without delay. to their home country while they are denied the opportunity to apply for asylum. Redfield, who signed the order.
President Joe Biden’s administration has tried to lift that policy, but a court has blocked it.
Cetron also told the subcommittee that Trump’s management was reluctant to consider a mask order on public transportation, even though the personal sector suggested it. Cetron said such mask-related regulations may have prevented many Americans from dying from COVID 19 in 2020.
The subcommittee also found that management officials had attempted to block “at least 19 other CDC clinical reports that they deemed politically damaging to President Trump. “
Specifically, human and fitness officials manipulated a CDC publication known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report to mask early symptoms of COVID-19 transmission.
House investigators found that Trump’s management also used millions of dollars in the CDC’s budget for a campaign, led by Caputo, to “overcome depression and build hope” around the pandemic ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Caputo denounced the report’s findings in an interview with CNN on Monday, adding that the subcommittee had approached him for an interview.
“I don’t care what they say or how they say it, whether it’s in a pre-election policy document through the Democrats, which I have no respect for, or in some other way,” he told CNN.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S. C. ), chairman of the subcommittee, said Monday that Trump’s management “has engaged in an unprecedented crusade of political interference in the federal government’s reaction to the pandemic. “
“This prioritization of politics, for science, and refusal to stick to the recommendation of public fitness experts has damaged the nation’s ability to respond well to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk,” Clyburn said.
The South Carolinian said there is still work to be done to “safeguard clinical integrity and restore the trust of the rest of Americans in our public gyms. “
The subcommittee has been investigating the federal reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years. This is the third report it has published.
This article was originally published on HuffPost and updated.