{"id":30954,"date":"2021-02-08T22:38:01","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T22:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=d6a907c8d4e580f7a96f978ea2eed59a"},"modified":"2021-02-08T22:38:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T22:38:01","slug":"house-democrats-say-trump-admin-told-cdc-to-suppress-covid-tests-to-hide-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/08\/house-democrats-say-trump-admin-told-cdc-to-suppress-covid-tests-to-hide-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"House Democrats Say Trump Admin Told CDC to Suppress COVID Tests to Hide Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"\"President<\/a>

In a move that renews the House Oversight Committee\u2019s investigation into former President Donald Trump\u2019s pandemic response, Rep. James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) has requested assistance from the White House in finding more information and documents to help them delve deeper into the matter. <\/span><\/p>\n

In his request, <\/span>Clyburn says<\/span><\/a> that the panel has unearthed evidence, via emails, that the Trump administration was \u201cdeeply involved\u201d in the decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to weaken testing guidance. <\/span><\/p>\n

In August, much to the <\/span>chagrin of public health officials<\/span><\/a>, the CDC changed its guidance on COVID testing and discouraged asymptomatic people from getting tested, even if they knew that they had come in contact with someone with the virus. This guidance flew in the face of the fact that research showed that asymptomatic people <\/span>play a large role<\/span><\/a> in spreading the virus. The agency retracted the guidance in October.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis guidance was weakened in order to hide evidence that the virus was spreading rapidly among asymptomatic people,\u201d <\/span>wrote Clyburn<\/span><\/a> in a letter to President Joe Biden\u2019s chief of staff, Ron Klain. \u201cAccording to an internal email obtained by the Select Subcommittee, the Trump Administration wanted to stop testing of \u2018asymptomatic infections in low risk people\u2019 because these tests were causing infected people to quarantine, which one political appointee complained was \u2018preventing the workforce from working\u2019 and would not allow schools and colleges to \u2018optimally re-open.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The political appointee that Clyburn references is Paul Alexander, who was appointed by <\/span>Trump ally Michael Caputo<\/span><\/a> and was a science adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at the time. Previously unearthed emails have shown Alexander also advocating for the \u201c<\/span>herd immunity<\/span><\/a>\u201d strategy in the summer that later took hold among members of the Trump administration. <\/span>Politico<\/span><\/i> reported that Alexander was a top deputy to Caputo and, when communicating with the CDC, spoke on behalf of the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though it <\/span>has been suspected<\/span><\/a> that the Trump administration was responsible for the change of guidance, the recent evidence confirms these suspicions in a more concrete way.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the <\/span>emails that lawmakers recently obtained<\/span><\/a>, Alexander is defending CDC\u2019s guidance change and also implies that he had a hand in making the changes, saying that \u201cwe felt the guidance needed a bit of updat[ing].\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The panel also obtained <\/span>email exchanges<\/span><\/a> between Alexander, Caputo and others in which Caputo emphasizes the administration\u2019s need for Alexander to make the case that the economy needed to reopen, which was Trump\u2019s focus at the time. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alexander said he was seeking out statistics on the effects of not reopening schools and businesses in May, to which Caputo replied: \u201c<\/span>This is singularly important<\/span><\/a> to what you and I want to achieve.\u201d Alexander\u2019s emails about herd immunity, a strategy that <\/span>some have likened to eugenics<\/span><\/a>, were sent several weeks after. <\/span><\/p>\n

Clyburn\u2019s letters — one to Klain and one to the <\/span>acting secretary of the HHS<\/span><\/a> — were sent on Monday. The White House is looking them over, <\/span>NPR<\/span><\/i> reports<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

The letters come a day after Biden said in his first network interview as president on Sunday that the Trump administration\u2019s handling of the pandemic was \u201c<\/span>even more dire<\/span><\/a> than we thought.\u201d After having inherited the consequences of Trump\u2019s pandemic response, Biden\u2019s COVID team has discovered many deep problems, from <\/span>millions of missing vaccine doses<\/span><\/a> to the <\/span>complete lack<\/span><\/a> of a coherent vaccine distribution plan.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Latest \u2013 Truthout<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"President<\/a><\/p>\n

Democrats investigating Trump\u2019s COVID response found emails from Trump staffers trying to use data for political gain.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338,7015,49,51,4,4708],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30955,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30954\/revisions\/30955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}