If you saw the HBO show about Chernobyl, you might recall that the initial Soviet response was to use its power to hide the problem, not understanding that something that devastating would inevitably make itself known. A common reaction among viewers was that such a thing could never happen in the US.
In new excerpts of transcribed interviews, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said she was made aware that then-President Donald Trump was angered by a February 25, 2020, briefing during which she warned the public about the dangers of the coronavirus. Messonnier says in the transcript she had calls with former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and former US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar after the briefing, and that she was “upset” after her conversation with Azar.
In the transcripts, other CDC officials described how requests to hold briefings about mask guidance and pediatric Covid-19 cases and deaths were denied. When asked about a CNN report that CDC officials felt “muzzled,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s former principal deputy director, said, “That is the feeling that we had, many of us had.”
[…]
Further, several interviews described efforts by the administration to alter or influence the agency’s guidance and weekly scientific reports, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which typically are not shared outside the agency before they’re published.
It took “great effort to protect that integrity,” Schuchat said in the transcribed excerpt, and “active effort” on the part of CDC officials “to make sure that the attempts were not successful” to alter the reports.
In another interview, Dr. Christine Casey, an editor of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, described an email from Trump appointee and former US Health and Human Services adviser Paul Alexander that she saw as a request to stop a report. She called it “highly unusual and quite concerning for somebody to ask to put an immediate stop on MMWR reports. I don’t think in my memory that has ever happened. And, to be accused — because it is accusatory language — that MMWR content is designed to harm our commander in chief, the President.”
For perspective: Late Feb 2020 was when…
1) The number of Covid cases in the US was roughly zero
2) I thought it was roughly the same as the flu
3) Team Blue was claiming Trump was a racist for shutting down flights to China.
4) The WHO had not officially declared it a pandemic (that happened in March).Report
Which is why it was a good idea to treat it as a PR issue rather than a medical issue.Report
Yes, a new, emerging, and potentially dangerous situation is one that should be investigated by non-experts instead of experts.Report
The experts:
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That. We had dueling experts on how bad it was going to be until March.
At this point in time…
Only 5 weeks earlier the WHO decided it could be spread person to person.
Three weeks after this point Trump declared a national emergency, i.e. two days after the WHO decided it was a pandemic.
The USSR’s initial problems with Chernobyl was there were “experts” who claimed it wasn’t a serious problem. The basic problem was they didn’t get their job via technical competence.
Our problem was the basic, basic facts of this disease weren’t known by anyone(*). Within the margin of error we could have had something worth shutting down the economy or a new (weaker) flu-ish type disease (i.e. bird-flu 2).
(*) That assumes this is a natural new thing and not something China was studying and got loose.Report
There are always conflicting experts in every situation, always and everywhere. From warfare to business to science, information is always imperfect and minority opinions abound.
That’s a lame excuse for raging incompetence and indifference at the executive level, the equivalent of “the sun was in my eyes!”Report
And since there was disagreement among experts, all of them should be silenced by a corrupt would-be dictator.Report
He was wrong. Did he suppress other points of view?Report
Oh, suppressing other points of view is bad. No question there.
Especially when experts disagree.Report
Sam Daniels : Sir, I sent you the fax six hours ago…
General Billy Ford : Sam, I am not going to issue an alert.
Sam Daniels : I don’t wanna bust up your party, sir, butyou gotta issue an alert.
General Billy Ford : You said it was contained!
Sam Daniels : I said containment was probable. You should be monitoring the airports, you gotta…
General Billy Ford : Sam! Do you remember 1989?
Sam Daniels : Yeah.
General Billy Ford : You found two lousy cases of Congo fever in Nairobi and we put a note to every American kid’s lunchbox. You remember that?
Sam Daniels : Yeah, I was wrong.
General Billy Ford : You were wrong.
Sam Daniels : Uh-huh.
General Billy Ford : What about 1992? Lassa fever?
Sam Daniels : I was wrong. Yup.
General Billy Ford : Wrong again. But you’re right about this?
Sam Daniels : No, I could be wrong…
General Billy Ford : Yet you waltz into my party smelling like dirty socks, snatch me away from Senator Rosales, whom I need not remind you, Sam, is head of the Senate Arms Services subcommittee which is in charge of our f*cking budget.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114069/characters/nm0000163Report
Expert 1: Covid will be a crisis.
Expert 2: Covid will be manageable.
Expert 3: Covid is a fake made up by the haters and losers.Report
See also: the efficacy of the Trump Vaccine.Report
This is how authoritarian regimes always behave, where everything becomes politicized and all loyalty is to the man not the nation.
And it continues. The vaccine wasn’t partisan until the political needs of the man decided it should be so. Now the entire party has swung firmly behind anti-vax hysteria.Report
This flashback seems not-irrelevant here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-19-plan-maybe-axed-for-political-reasons-report-2020-7Report
Its hilarious to me how much cheerleading they insist we give Trump for funding the initial development of the vaccine – which he di – but then the refuse to take it because Biden handed it out. Much like Obama passing the ACA the Republicans are so hell bent on retaking power they freely pass up opportunities to talk about their actual successes if a Democrat is involved.Report
“You’re going to say to the American people now, ‘Here’s a vaccine, it was new, it was done quickly, but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it’s safe? And we’re not 100 percent sure of the consequences.’ I think it’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine, and they should be.”Report