Donald Trump Aides Blocked Accurate Covid Information: US Probe

Former US president Donald Trump's administration prevented health officials from providing accurate information about Covid-19 in a bid to back up his overly optimistic view of the outbreak,...

The administration of former US President Donald Trump has prevented health officials from providing accurate information about Covid-19 in an effort to support his overly optimistic view of the outbreak, according to a report from Congress on Monday.

Senior staff at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told investigators that Trump aides intimidated staff and tried to rewrite their reports in an effort to align the guidance with the president's public downplay of the crisis.

The report said officials had taken "unprecedented steps to bring political appointees into the publication process and to refute the CDC's scientific reporting, including crafting opinion pieces and other public messages designed to directly confront the CDC's findings."

Investigators interviewed dozens of current and former officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as senior administrative figures for the 91-page document released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

The panel describes how Trump appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) attempted to seize the CDC's weekly scientific journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), and edit or ban articles they believed might be harmful to Trump.

Trump appointees sought to "change the contents, refute,

Or delaying the launch of '18 MMWRs and a health warning, has succeeded on at least five occasions.

The report quoted a CDC communications official who complained that Trump's HHS ally had used "bullying behavior" that made CDC officials "feel threatened."

Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the CDC,

He said he "wasn't really asked to come back for phone briefings" after his comments were deemed "extremely worrying."

"The Select Subcommittee's investigation demonstrated that the previous administration engaged in an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government's response to the pandemic,

The committee chair, a Democrat, Jim Cleburne, said in a statement that the order undermined public health in favor of the former president's political goals.

“As today's report shows, President Trump and his top aides have repeatedly attacked CDC scientists, and harmed the agency's public health guidance,

And scientific reports were suppressed in an attempt to reduce the seriousness of the Corona virus.”

An earlier report outlined the Trump administration's attempt to prevent government health officials from speaking publicly about the pandemic.

Another described his pressure on the US Food and Drug Administration to reissue an emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug that Trump has been promoting despite its ineffectiveness in treating Covid-19.

BY
ProBuzzFeed