This morning, the Washington Post has an analysis of how the criminally incompetent Trump regime has been working to undercut and sideline the Centers for Disease Control in the fight against coronavirus pandemic. To illustrate the dysfunction and paranoia that's making the fight a losing one so far, despite the valiant efforts of millions of health care workers and essential personnel throughout the country, here are a few snippets from the reporting.
Science vs. politics
As the country enters a frightening phase of the pandemic with new daily cases surpassing 57,000 on Thursday, the CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, is coming under intense pressure from President Trump and his allies, who are downplaying the dangers in a bid to revive the economy ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. In a White House guided by the president’s instincts, rather than by evidence-based policy, the CDC finds itself forced constantly to backtrack or sidelined from pivotal decisions.
The latest clash between the White House and its top public health advisers erupted Wednesday, when the president slammed the agency’s recommendation that schools planning to reopen should keep students’ desks six feet apart, among other steps to reduce infection risks. In a tweet, Trump — who has demanded schools at all levels hold in-person classes this fall — called the advice “very tough & expensive.” [snip]
But some health experts were indignant the agency had been ordered to rewrite guidance to reopen schools to “make it easier and cost less” — a demand that effectively “turns science on its head,” said Tom Inglesby, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.
“CDC should be giving their best judgments on how to lower risks to make schools safer,” he said. “That’s their job. If they aren’t allowed to do that, the public will lose confidence in the guidance.”
Incompetence and paranoia
During a May lunch with Senate Republicans, Trump told the group the CDC “blew it” on the coronavirus test and that he’d installed a team of “geniuses” led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner to handle much of the response, according to two people familiar with the lunch who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“There is a view the CDC is staffed with ‘deep state’ Democrats that are trying to tweak the administration,” said one adviser who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private conversations.
All of the above
Alarmed at the agency’s diminished role, nearly 350 public health organizations sent a letter Tuesday to Azar urging him to advocate for the CDC. The agency must be allowed to speak based on the best available science “and with an unfettered voice,” said John Auerbach, president and chief executive of Trust for America’s Health, a public health nonprofit that led the effort. [snip]
Traditionally the CDC has one political appointee, the director. Now it has Redfield and five other political appointees, including two advisers added in recent weeks.
“Now more than ever, the American people need a robust and effective CDC that is not repeatedly undermined by others in the administration, including the President and the Vice President,” the letter said.
As we face an out of control pandemic thanks to the ignorance, incompetence and a politics- over- people approach, both at the Federal and (Republican) state level, one of our country's greatest resources -- it's medical and scientific knowledge base -- is being neutered. The effect, of course, is to compound the misery and death into the foreseeable future, with severe economic fallout and the misery that becomes a companion "pandemic."White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows views the agency as a problem and has criticized the CDC repeatedly to other administration officials, said a senior administration official.
This indifference to the suffering of others isn't a bug with this regime; it's a feature. We saw it in the policy of caging migrant children at the border. We saw it in the abandonment of our Kurdish allies. We saw it in the bungled response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. We saw it in his response to the Black Lives Matter movement. We've seen it in actions and words on a daily basis from a lawless, mean- spirited, amoral, callous narcissist and his collection of soulless sycophants.
But this time, the indifference hits home because it's touching nearly everyone's life in a profound, destructive way. Maybe that's the only way the real essence of this regime could have been laid bare for even the least observant among us.
