Dear fellow MoveOn member,
On July 10, the Trump administration ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and send all COVID-19 data to a central database at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).1
The Trump administration's new order means that information vital to tracking the COVID-19 pandemic, including daily reports about patients and the number of available ventilators, will no longer go to the CDC—a federal agency with the expertise to collect this data—but to a new centralized system managed by the health data firm TeleTracking, which received a "noncompetitive, multimillion-dollar contract" for this "duplicative health data system."2
Unlike the CDC database, the HHS database is not open to the public, which undermines researchers, health officials, and others who depend on this data to conduct research and make crucial public health decisions, and hinders the efforts to curtail our nation's surging COVID-19 cases. And if the Trump administration wanted to withhold or skew data, with this new database, they could do so with impunity.
Four of the CDC's former directors, from both Republican and Democratic administrations, wrote a joint letter commending the CDC's commitment to providing sound public health guidance and condemning politicians who are attempting to undermine the agency.
"The CDC is home to thousands of experts who for decades have fought deadly pathogens such as HIV, Zika and Ebola," CDC's former directors wrote. "These are the people best positioned to help our country emerge from this crisis as safely as possible. Unfortunately, their sound science is being challenged with partisan potshots, sowing confusion and mistrust at a time when the American people need leadership, expertise and clarity."3
This move by the Trump administration is yet another dangerous, politically-driven decision in its mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, and Congress must immediately step in to revoke the Trump administration's order to make hospitals report COVID-19 data not to the CDC but to the non-transparent, politicized, and untrustworthy database at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Thanks!
—Eric Williams
Sources:
1. "Trump Administration Strips C.D.C. of Control of Coronavirus Data," The New York Times, July 14, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/141153?t=10&akid=269059%2E10220574%2EDC-P4u
2. Ibid.
3. "We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has." The Washington Post, July 14, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/141154?t=12&akid=269059%2E10220574%2EDC-P4u
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