Secret documents reveal: Donald Trump and his administration wanted to cover up Corona virus!
Documents reveal new details about Trump’s political interference in the COVID-19 situation! Did the President and his team want to keep the Corona issue quiet? Did his actions cost many lives?
Did the Trump administration’s actions cost many lives?
Top political officials in the Trump White House sought to block public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and remove evidence of political interference in scientists’ reports on the coronavirus, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.
The latest documents from a House committee investigating the previous administration’s response to the pandemic shed additional light on efforts to blunt or even block the messages and corona findings of career officials because they did not match Trump’s rosy predictions.
There were warnings long ago!
During a press conference on February 25, 2020, former senior CDC official Nancy Messonnier warned of the coming dangers of COVID-19, telling reporters that the spread of the coronavirus was essentially inevitable.
“It’s no longer so much a question of if it’s going to happen, but rather exactly when,” she said.
Her statement angered Trump, after which the government stopped giving CDC officials permission to brief the public. The agency held no information sessions from early March through June, one of the earliest and most confusing phases of the pandemic.
The truth was suppressed!
In an interview with the House subcommittee on the pandemic, Messonnier said it was her intention to tell the truth.
“My intention was not and has never been to scare the public … our intent was certainly to draw the public’s attention to the likelihood that COVID would occur and spread in the U.S. and that we felt there was a high risk that it would be disruptive,” Messonnier said.
The CDC’s former principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat, was then ordered to appear at another Health Department press conference that same afternoon.
The White House determined the wording!
“I was given the impression that the reaction to the morning briefing was pretty strong, and another briefing – you know, later on I was under the impression that another briefing might lead to – you know, there was nothing new to report, but that additional voices would be talking about the situation,” Schuchat said in her testimony before the committee.
After that day, the White House took over the response to the pandemic, including all public communications, and banned the CDC from holding its own briefings.
“I remember the agency asking to do briefings, but I don’t remember when or which ones. I know at some point they stopped asking because they kept saying no,” Schuchat said.
The White House Coronavirus Task Force began holding its own briefings in the spring. Schuchat said she eventually stopped following them because she felt they were unhelpful and conveyed conflicting messages.
Were the messages being glossed over?
At the same time, other Trump officials sought to prevent the CDC from releasing information that the White House perceived as negative about the pandemic. In particular, the officials sought to influence the CDC’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality Reports (MMWR) to better align with the White House’s more optimistic messages about the state of the virus.
Christine Casey, the MMWR editor, confirmed to the committee that she was instructed to delete an email in which former HHS politician Paul Alexander called on the CDC to stop publishing truthful scientific reports that he believed were harmful to Trump.
Atlas, a radiologist who had no experience with infectious diseases, was added to the task force in the summer of 2020 after Trump saw him on television.
The guidelines were abruptly changed on Aug. 24, 2020, saying that most asymptomatic people should not be tested even if they have come into contact with someone with the virus. The CDC updated the guidelines on its website without publicly announcing it or explaining the reasons for this important change.
Birx told the committee she believed Atlas was spearheading the change because it wanted less testing.
Administration officials told reporters at the time that the guidelines were a collaborative product and approved by the full White House task force, but Birx said she was traveling when the updated guidelines were enforced.
“After that guidance was released, we saw a dramatic drop in the number of tests conducted in late August and early September,” Birx said. “This document led to less testing and less aggressive testing of people without symptoms, which I think was the main reason for the early spread in the community.”
Less than a month later, the CDC released revised testing guidelines to clarify that anyone who comes into close contact with a person infected with coronavirus should be tested.
The revised guidance was written by Birx, Redfield and Henry Walke, a veteran CDC official.