Wednesday, July 15, 2020

"I'll Be The Oversight" - Trump Wants To Send The Military Into Hospital To Gain Exclusive Control Of Nation's COVID-19 Data

UPDATED:

And the Trump-approved manipulation and distortion of the numbers has begun . . .
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The Trump administration has ordered all US hospitals to send coronavirus patient information to a central database under the control of the Department of Health and Human Services, bypassing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This will give Trump full control over what is publicly known about the spread of the virus.

To make sure his orders are obeyed, Trump will be asking governors to "consider" allowing the National Guard to patrol hospitals to "help improve data collection".

The New York Times reports:
The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic. ...

[T]he Health and Human Services database that will receive new information is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on C.D.C. data to make projections and crucial decisions. ...

Public health experts have long expressed concerns that the Trump administration is politicizing science and undermining its health experts, in particular the C.D.C.; four of the agency’s former directors, spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations, said as much in an opinion piece published Tuesday in The Washington Post. The data collection shift reinforced those fears.
Donald Trump has desperately wanted low numbers of cases and deaths since February and he downplayed the risks and early spread of the virus until it was impossible to hide any longer. Then he simply kept repeating the virus would magically "go away" on its own and better, healthier days were right around the corner - while actively interfering with states' efforts to save lives.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the press for its factual reports on the extent of the pandemic, which is currently raging out of control through most of the United States. It looks like Trump will finally get his wish, as all data will be sent through HHS's political filter. Trump will control what information gets released and what information stays hidden.

Trump does not care how many people get sick or how many people die. His recent rallies (Tulsa, Arizona, Mount Rushmore) reveal his sadistic desire for more people to get infected. Trump is concerned only with making himself look good during this pandemic, so he will do anything to create the appearance that everything is under control. We should soon be hearing the "good news" that the number of new cases is dropping and there have been far fewer deaths. (There already have been credible reports that several states (such as Florida and Texas) are grossly under-reporting the extent of the crisis.)

Nearly half the states in the US (23) are reporting more deaths each day than they were two weeks ago. There were more than 65,000 new cases yesterday, the second-highest daily total of the pandemic. California, Texas, Missouri, Nevada, and Oklahoma all set single-day case records on Tuesday. Three other states, Florida, Alabama and Utah, set single-day death records, and Oregon matched its high-mark in deaths. Florida is the world's latest hotspot. In the last month (since June 11), the average number of daily cases has grown eightfold.

Hospital morgues in Texas and Arizona are nearing capacity and more than a dozen refrigerated morgue trucks (known as "mortuary-support trailers") are en route. It's clear that states learned nothing (and did nothing in preparation) from the hell that New York City went through in April, when 45 mobile morgues were set up around the city.

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Check Daniel Dale's Twitter feed for individual tweets of each lie, including:
"But The Confederate Flag Is A Reminder Of Slavery."
"Well, People Love It."
Stop Testing For Death!
Black Beans Matter

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