Trump administration influenced CDC guidance to suppress Covid testing, House panel says
Source: CNBC
The Trump administration sought to suppress Covid-19 testing in the United States last year by softening guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who needed to be tested, a House panel said Monday.
In August, the CDC revised its Covid-19 testing guidance to say that people who dont have symptoms do not necessarily need a test even if they were exposed to an infected person. The move was widely criticized by public health specialists and politicians, who said testing asymptomatic people is an important part of identifying and cutting off chains of spread.
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In the emails, former HHS scientific advisor Paul Alexander defended the change in testing policy and downplayed the importance of testing people without symptoms, saying it is not the point of testing. Alexander was brought into HHS by Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally who led the departments communications last year before departing abruptly after he accused CDC scientists of sedition.
Testing asymptomatic people to seek asymptomatic cases is not the point of testing, for in the end, all this accomplishes is we end up quarantining asymptomatic, low risk people and preventing the workforce from working, Alexander wrote one day after the change in CDC testing guidance was reported in an email to other HHS officials.
In this light, it would be unreasonable based on the prevailing data to have widespread testing of schools and colleges/universities. This will not allow them to optimally re-open, he added, defending the policy change.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/trump-administration-influenced-cdc-guidance-to-suppress-covid-testing-house-panel-says.html
ffr
(22,672 posts)Accountability!
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,234 posts)Thankfully they failed. Then again how mony would still be alive if they did the right thing?
mahina
(17,705 posts)They are culpable, all of them who didnt speak up, all of them.