Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

Donald Trump pushed a baseless conspiracy theory that the “deep state” is delaying a coronavirus until after the election in an early morning Twitter rant on Saturday. “The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics,” he wrote. “Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!” The head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr Stephen Hahn, was nominated by Trump for the role in 2019.

Trump claims ‘deep state’ is delaying coronavirus vaccine until after election | The Independent

• The only amazing thing is that this stuff is no longer amazing..
  

[Admin]

President Trump is ratcheting up pressure on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus. The agency on Sunday announced an emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 patients, following extraordinary sustained attacks on the agency by Trump. The president on Saturday accused the "deep state" at the FDA of slowing the development of treatments and vaccines before the November election. "Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!" Trump tweeted. Trump appeared to reiterate that belief during a Sunday news conference, telling reporters that he thought some health officials were allowing decisions to be “held up” for “political reasons.” “I think there are people in the FDA and actually in your larger department that can see things being held up and wouldn’t mind so much. That’s my opinion, very strong opinion,” Trump said.

The campaign being waged against public health officials has alarmed outside experts, who fear politicizing the FDA could undermine confidence in the agency or worse, result in an unproven vaccine being pushed out to the public just before Election Day. "The FDA was once again bullied into doing something that initially it wasn't going to do," said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit said Trump's tweet attacking the FDA "was exactly what you most fear." "You get the sense he is trying to get a vaccine or vaccines approved before Nov. 3, which I think scares people. It should scare people. It makes you think that these vaccines may not be adequately tested," Offit added. The plasma announcement marked a turnaround for the agency, coming just days after officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) staged a rare intervention to stop the FDA from issuing the emergency use authorization.

Trump turns up pressure on FDA | TheHill

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In what is being called a “stunning reversal” the CDC has posted updated guidance saying that even in cases of close contact with someone infected with the coronavirus testing is “not necessarily” needed. On Tuesday the CDC quietly posted new guidance. “If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms,” it says, “You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one.” ABC News reports the “public health reasons for the change were not immediately clear.” “When asked to explain, the Department of Health and Human Services — not the CDC — responded.” HHS is seen as a more politicized government agency than the CDC. President Donald Trump for months has been trying to have less people tested, falsely insisting that testing causes coronavirus cases... Experts are warning the reversal is dangerous. Yale University Professor of Epidemiology, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis says “This change in policy will kill.”

Experts sound alarm after CDC says coronavirus testing ‘not necessarily’ needed in close contact cases – Alternet.org

When I asked the CDC about the changes earlier this week, they referred the question to the Department of Health and Human Services — which struck me as unusual, since it suggested the CDC wasn’t overseeing the guidelines. An HHS official told me that the recommendations were “revised to reflect current evidence and the best public health interventions.” HHS didn’t provide or explain that evidence when pressed further, or explain why someone who’s been exposed to a person with Covid-19 shouldn’t always try to get tested. Experts widely agree that more testing is crucial to stopping the coronavirus pandemic, with some already calling the guidelines change misguided and dangerous.

Now CNN and the New York Times report that the changes came from the higher levels of the Trump administration. “It’s coming from the top down,” an unnamed official told CNN. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Sanjay Gupta at CNN that he was under anesthesia for a surgery when the White House’s coronavirus task force met to discuss the guideline changes. He added, “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact, it is.””

Trump asked for less Covid-19 testing. Now the CDC is recommending it. - Vox

• Political intervention to reduce testing numbers and cases to create an alternative reality in which the pandemic is receding so boosting Trump's reelection chances but puts more people at risk, welcome to Trump's US
  

[Admin]

Standing before half a dozen American flags during a press conference at his country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, President Donald Trump heralded what has become a central plank of his argument for re-election in November: his administration’s handling of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump says he saved 51 million jobs in pandemic. Economists, U.S. officials say otherwise - Reuters

• You can't make this up..
  
• If you were ever in need of illustration how these rightwingers create a completely alternative reality, here it is..
  

[Admin]

The Trump administration’s moves pressuring science agencies to take controversial steps on the coronavirus are threatening to undermine public confidence in health experts at a moment when they have become uniquely visible. On Sunday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma as a treatment for COVID-19. Scientific studies are inconclusive about taking that approach, and some said authorizing its use will hinder the ability to conduct more definitive research.

And on Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly changed its guidance on testing those who have come into contact with a COVID-19 patient. The agency no longer recommends those contacts be tested, despite what is known about the risk of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread of the virus.

Both decisions appear tinged by politics: A new treatment, announced by President Trump on the eve of the Republican National Convention, has been presented as evidence that the nation is on the brink of a miraculous recovery. At the same time, guidance suggesting fewer people ought to be tested is likely to lead to lower case counts, even as the virus continues to spread widely.

And in both cases, the scientists who run the agencies later acknowledged the concerns raised by their actions. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said criticism of his decision to authorize emergency use of convalescent plasma was “entirely justified,” while CDC Director Robert Redfield on Thursday  clarified the new guidance against testing contacts. But the initial decisions left some in the public health community worried that the damage has already been done..

Trump pressure on health agencies risks undermining public trust | TheHill

[Admin]

As President Donald Trump was painting a positive picture of the coronavirus pandemic and urging states to reopen the nation's businesses and schools, data from the White House coronavirus task force released Monday shows he was getting increasingly dire reports about the spread of the pandemic in July and August. The House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus on Monday published eight weeks' worth of state reports compiled by the White House task force.

The task force releases these reports each week to governors' offices for their respective states, and has previously declined to make them publicly available or confirm the authenticity of any of the data reported. There had been some discussion on a call with governors earlier this month, audio of which was obtained by CNN, about making some of the data publicly accessible in real time, but that has yet to happen.

"Rather than being straight with the American people and creating a national plan to fix the problem, the President and his enablers kept these alarming reports private while publicly downplaying the threat to millions of Americans," subcommittee Chairman James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, said in a statement..

Task force reports show dire reality despite Trump's positive messaging - CNNPolitics

[Admin]

With her thin eyebrows arched high on her forehead, Robyn Openshaw urged her 212,000 fans to stand up to a new menace: contact tracing. Openshaw, a widely followed health blogger who goes by “Green Smoothie Girl” on Facebook, had recently heard of a bill in Congress that would provide $100 million to mobile health clinics to help monitor the spread of COVID-19. “Are you willing to hand over your freedom and create a health police state?” she asked her viewers, punctuating her statements with a karate chop to the air. “We will hold them accountable for the rollout of what looks an awful lot like communism.”

Openshaw is so suspicious of contact tracing that when restaurants she dines at ask her for a phone number so they can call her if someone else at the restaurant tests positive for COVID-19, she sometimes gives them a fake number, she told me later. Her fears are ill-founded. Contact tracers recommend that infected people self-isolate, but they have no power to enforce isolation. Most countries with coronavirus outbreaks have started contact tracing, and of them, only China is Communist. But Openshaw’s outraged reaction to the concept helps explain a major problem bedeviling the American pandemic response: Contact tracing does not work as well here as it has in other rich countries.

Is Contact Tracing Working in the U.S.? - The Atlantic

• This is what happens when airheads get a platform and opine on stuff they know nothing about
  
• The US already has a President like that, no need for other people to step in..
  

[Admin]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly changed its recommendations, saying people without Covid-19 symptoms should not get tested.. Trump administration officials on Wednesday defended a new recommendation that people without Covid-19 symptoms abstain from testing, even as scientists warned that the policy could hobble an already weak federal response as schools reopen and a potential autumn wave looms.

Top U.S. Officials Told C.D.C. to Soften Coronavirus Testing Guidelines - The New York Times

[Admin]

Political interference in the health response to the Covid pandemic:

• Emergency FDA clearance of Hydroxychloroquine
  
• The US government buying tons of Hydroxychloroquine
  
• Changing the CDC guidelines for school opening
  
• Emergency use FDA clearance for convalescent plasma
  
• Changing the CDC guidelines for testing asymptomatic people
  
• Sidelining Dr. Fauci in favor of a hack Scott Atlas
  
• Influencing key reports
  

[Admin]

A key forecasting model often cited by experts and used by the White House has revised its prediction of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., now estimating a peak of 410,451 by Jan. 1. The model created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington posted an update Friday predicting an additional 224,000 Americans will die by the beginning of next year. 

The model says that as many as 122,000 of those deaths could be avoided with safety measures, including near-universal mask use, but it warns that easing restrictions could cause the death toll to be more than 620,000. “We all must learn from those leaders of nations where the virus has been contained, or where second waves of infections have occurred, and where swift action has been taken to prevent loss of life,” IHME Director Christopher Murray said in a statement.

Murray warned about governments pursuing herd immunity as a way to expedite the reopening economies. 
“This first global forecast represents an opportunity to underscore the problem with herd immunity, which, essentially, ignores science and ethics, and allows millions of avoidable deaths,” Murray said. “It is, quite simply, reprehensible.” ”

Key model predicts 400,000 coronavirus deaths in US by January | TheHill