White House Forced The CDC To Downplay The Need For Coronavirus Testing

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forced by HHS and the White House coronavirus task force to downplay the need for testing in updated guidance published to the CDC website last month, a new report reveals.

According to The New York Times, “A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by C.D.C. scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times.”

The controversial document suggested that Americans who didn’t show symptoms of the virus didn’t need to be tested for it, even if they were exposed to an infected person.

That guidance, according to The New York Times, was not put through the usual CDC review process.

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

More from The New York Times:

The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that the document was a C.D.C. product and had been revised with input from the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield.

But officials told The Times this week that the health department did the rewriting itself and then “dropped” it into the C.D.C.’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process.

“That was a doc that came from the top down, from the H.H.S. and the task force,” said a federal official with knowledge of the matter, referring to the White House task force on the coronavirus. “That policy does not reflect what many people at the C.D.C. feel should be the policy.”

Downplay, downplay, downplay

Despite the president’s lie that he “up-played” the virus, it is now abundantly clear that the administration’s central pandemic strategy has been to downplay, downplay, downplay.

And it’s not some liberal conspiracy theory to suggest that Trump has been intentionally misleading the American people. He admitted – on tape – that that’s exactly what he was doing.

Donald Trump didn’t just downplay the pandemic, but he repeatedly dismissed measures that are known to slow the spread of the virus and save American lives, like testing and masks.

His fatal incompetence is the reason the United States has more cases and more deaths than any country in the world.

Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.