Image Credit: REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo
None of the officials pressuring the CDC had backgrounds in medicine
Recently unearthed emails show members of the Trump administration taking victory laps after they successfully managed to convince the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to downplay the severity of the coronavirus.
According to The Washington Post, Donald Trump’s science adviser, Paul Alexander, emailed then Department of Health and Human Services’ public affairs chief Michael Caputo, and bragged that he had caused the CDC to change a line about how the virus spreads amongst younger people.
In the email, Mr Alexander called it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless, yippee!!!”
Later in the report, Mr Alexander tells Mr Caputo that he and Dr Scott Atlas – a doctor with no background in infectious disease or epidemiology that Mr Trump used as the public face of the White House’s coronavirus taskforce – successfully pressured the CDC to alter a weekly report discussing virus deaths among young Americans.
Apparently Mr Alexander and Mr Caputo wanted to create data suggesting a spike in suicides occurring during the pandemic, despite the fact that suicides in 2020 actually decreased by six per cent.
The scheme to inflate the number of suicides brought on by the virus may have been spurred by the administration’s desire to see the economy re-open.
Mr Trump frequently – and often incorrectly – used the economy as a proof of his superiority as a leader. With the economy in shambles due to coronavirus-induced shut downs, it removed a key weapon in Mr Trump’s arsenal.
“I know the President wants us to enumerate the economic cost of not reopening. We need solid estimates to be able to say something like: 50,000 more cancer deaths! 40,000 more heart attacks! 25,000 more suicides!” Mr Caputo wrote.