Coronavirus committee investigation

Representative James Clyburn, a Democrat from the US state of South Carolina, said his coronavirus committee investigators have found evidence of a “political pressure campaign” to “bully” professionals at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in what may have been an attempt to “cripple the nation’s coronavirus response in a misguided effort to achieve herd immunity”.

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Accusing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield of stonewalling his investigation, Clyburn issued subpoenas compelling them to turn over reams of documents and emails by December 30.

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[F]or months, the letter alleges, [spokesman Michael Caputo and his researcher, Paul Alexander,] waged a campaign to block or change articles on the COVID-19 pandemic in a CDC publication called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which is closely followed by the public health community.

  alJazeera

And hundreds of thousands of people died and are dying. These assholes need to pay a severe price, as does the death cult leader, Donald Trump. Along with Ivanka, Kellyanne, and all the other Trump-protectors.

Further Caputo update

Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official who took over as top spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year, will take a 60-day leave of absence, HHS announced Wednesday.

The move comes after Caputo, who led the agency’s communications on the coronavirus pandemic, reportedly said in a now-deleted video posted Sunday on his personal Facebook page that scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were engaged in “sedition” against President Donald Trump.

  CNBC

I hope 60 days is enough.*

HHS also announced that Paul Alexander, an advisor to Caputo who was working for the agency on a temporary basis, “will be leaving the department.”

Alexander is the one who demanded everything the CDC put out go through him.

Politico reported last week that Alexander had also been trying to control what Fauci, a White House coronavirus advisor, said in media appearances. When asked about the report last week, Fauci said any attempt to control what he says is a “fool’s errand.”

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In a statement obtained by CNBC, Caputo said he will use the leave of absence “to pursue necessary screenings for a lymphatic issue discovered last week.” Caputo added that he has been losing weight for months and had delayed seeing his doctor. He also said “violent threats leveled at me and my family back in Buffalo” have contributed to his stress levels. In the statement, he thanked Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for conferring with Caputo’s personal physician.

“But every American battling COVID — in every city in every state across the nation — has been under enormous pressure. I am just one of them,” he said. “Our family is blessed. We urge all Americans to see their family doctor for the healthcare they need but have missed for months during this crisis. Do it today.”

Especially if you're going to need a medical excuse for some legal trouble you may have gotten yourself into. In other words, if you work in the Trump administration.

The internal shake-up comes after Democratic lawmakers launched an investigation earlier this week into alleged political interference at the CDC by Trump appointees.

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Also earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for [HHS chief Alex] Azar to resign, citing “chaos and mismanagement in his own agency.”

Which won't happen.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 9/16:  Caputo has been diagnosed with cancer.  What of the brain, you ask?

"After surgery last week at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, doctors diagnosed Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo with squamous cell carcinoma, a metastatic head and neck cancer which originated in his throat," according to a statement from David DiPietro, a New York State assemblymember who is serving as Caputo's spokesperson. "He is now home in Western New York, resting in the loving arms of his family, under the watchful eye of Jesus Christ."

  Politico

*UPDATE 10/25: Apparently not.

Further Caputo update

Top HHS spokesman Michael Caputo called an emergency staff meeting on Tuesday to apologize for leveling a series of false accusations on Facebook Live over the weekend.

  Politico

Maybe he should go back on Facebook Live and apologize to the whole world.

Caputo told staffers that his remarks — which included unfounded allegations the Centers for Disease Control was harboring a “resistance unit” — reflected poorly on HHS’ communications office.

No shit.

On Sunday, Caputo took to Facebook Live to level a series of wild and false accusations that warned of an armed insurrection after the election and asserted without evidence that public health officials were trying to undermine Trump’s reelection bid.

Several people inside and outside the administration subsequently raised concerns to Azar and the White House about the Facebook Live video.

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Caputo told staffers that his remarks — which included unfounded allegations the Centers for Disease Control was harboring a “resistance unit” — reflected poorly on HHS’ communications office.

Maybe he should consider that this is not the job for him.

The session left some staffers with the impression that Caputo would soon step aside as the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs.

I'd advise it.

One former HHS official separately told POLITICO that Caputo, a former Trump campaign official who has long complained of the stress caused by having been mentioned in the special counsel's investigation on Russian interference in the 2016 election, was mulling taking medical leave.

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Caputo made allusions to the fact that HHS had functioned for a long time in the past without a permanent top communications official.

Just the way Trump likes it.

Caputo was at the center of a series of reports on political meddling with the department’s Covid-19 response, including POLITICO reports that he and top adviser Paul Alexander tried to influence key CDC scientific bulletins. Alexander, who was hired by Caputo in the spring, also pushed infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci to downplay the virus’ risk to children.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 9/16:  Caputo has been diagnosed with cancer.  What of the brain, you ask?

"After surgery last week at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, doctors diagnosed Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo with squamous cell carcinoma, a metastatic head and neck cancer which originated in his throat," according to a statement from David DiPietro, a New York State assemblymember who is serving as Caputo's spokesperson. "He is now home in Western New York, resting in the loving arms of his family, under the watchful eye of Jesus Christ." 

  Politico

First, control the news

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference.

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But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

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The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.

  Politico

Simply of a piece with Trump's comments to Bob Woodward about downplaying the severity of the virus.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

Behavior encouraged by Trump.

Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."

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"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools.

Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at McMaster University near Toronto whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.

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"Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"

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The efforts to modify the CDC reports began in earnest after a May report authored by senior CDC official Anne Schuchat, which reviewed the spread of Covid-19 in the United States and caused significant strife within the health department. HHS officials, including Secretary Alex Azar, believed that Schuchat was implying that the Trump administration moved too slowly to respond to the outbreak, said two individuals familiar with the situation.

The HHS criticism was mystifying to CDC officials, who believed that Schuchat was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response, the individuals familiar with the situation said. Schuchat has made few public appearances since authoring the report.

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Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," he said.

Jesus wept.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 9/16:  Caputo has been diagnosed with cancer.  What of the brain, you ask?

"After surgery last week at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, doctors diagnosed Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo with squamous cell carcinoma, a metastatic head and neck cancer which originated in his throat," according to a statement from David DiPietro, a New York State assemblymember who is serving as Caputo's spokesperson. "He is now home in Western New York, resting in the loving arms of his family, under the watchful eye of Jesus Christ." 

  Politico