EXCEEEDING EVEN VLAD'S HOPES:

The report, issued on Friday, documents multiple channels of interference by Trump and his underlings. To begin with, the White House shut down public briefings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Feb. 25, 2020, Nancy Messonnier, the CDC official in charge of respiratory diseases, warned Americans that a pandemic was coming and that they should prepare for school and workplace closures. Trump responded by threatening to fire her. For months thereafter, the White House refused to authorize CDC briefings. In transcribed interviews, CDC officials told the subcommittee that in April 2020, the White House rejected the agency's request to hold a briefing to present the scientific case for wearing masks.

Instead, Trump delivered his own COVID briefing, at which he said of masks: "You don't have to do it. I'm choosing not to do it." That statement and others, according to CDC officials who spoke to the subcommittee, gravely undermined the agency's efforts to control the pandemic.

Second, the White House altered CDC guidance to religious congregations, deleting recommendations to wear masks and take other precautions. In a May 2020 email obtained by the committee, Jay Butler, a CDC official, reported that the White House had stripped out crucial elements of the guidance. "All references to face coverings are missing in the WH version," Butler wrote. In addition, he noted, "References to considering virtual events are absent from the WH version."

Third, the administration tried to limit COVID testing in order to hide the extent of the pandemic and keep businesses open. At a political rally on June 20, 2020, Trump said he had told "my people" to "slow the testing down." He later claimed that he was half-joking, but the report found evidence that in subsequent months, Trump's people tried to do exactly as he had instructed. On Aug. 24, 2020, the administration changed CDC's guidance to say that most people who didn't have COVID symptoms shouldn't get tested, even if they had been exposed to a known carrier. An Aug. 27, 2020, email from Paul Alexander, an advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services, explained that the guidance had been altered because tests of asymptomatic people, if they came out positive, would end up "preventing the workforce from working," and "widespread testing of schools and colleges/universities" would "not allow them to optimally re-open."

Fourth, from September 2020 to January 2021, the White House ignored urgent entreaties from its COVID task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx. She told the subcommittee that during these months, she had repeatedly circulated internal reports pleading for more promotion of mask use, better access to monoclonal infusion and other therapies, immediate provision of vaccines to elderly people based on "compassionate use," and "aggressive testing" to find and alert carriers before they infected others. By comparing states that implemented such measures to those that didn't, Birx estimated that if her pleas had been heeded, fatalities could have been reduced by 30 percent to 40 percent.

The report also details other ways in which the White House impeded or corrupted the public health response.

Tweet   @brothersjudd