Wednesday, December 16, 2020

"We Want Them Infected": Emails Reveal Trump Officials Wanted Millions Of Americans Deliberately Infected With Coronavirus ("If It Is Causing More Cases, Who Cares?")

"We Want Them Infected": Trump Appointee Demanded "Herd Immunity" Strategy, Emails Reveal
Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.
Dan Diamond, Politico, December 16, 2020
A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a "herd immunity" approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by a House watchdog and shared with POLITICO.

"There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

"Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…" Alexander added.

"[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected" in order to get "natural immunity…natural exposure," Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee's select subcommittee on coronavirus.

Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that "we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had...younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread."

Alexander was a top deputy of Caputo, who was personally installed by President Donald Trump in April to lead the health department's communications efforts. Officials told POLITICO that they believed that when Alexander made recommendations, he had the backing of the White House.

"It was understood that he spoke for Michael Caputo, who spoke for the White House," said Kyle McGowan, a Trump appointee who was CDC chief of staff before leaving this summer. "That's how they wanted it to be perceived." . . .

In his emails, Alexander also spent months attacking government scientists and pushing to shape official statements to be more favorable to President Donald Trump.

For instance, Alexander acknowledges in a May 30 email that a draft statement from the CDC about how Covid-19 was disproportionately affecting minority populations was "very accurate," but he warned HHS and CDC communications officials that "in this election cycle that is the kind of statement coming from CDC that the media and Democrat [sic] antagonists will use against the president." . . .

Alexander also appeared to acknowledge that the White House's own push to let states wind down their Covid-19 restrictions was leading to a spike in cases.

"There is a rise in cases due to testing and also simultaneously due to the relaxing of restrictions, less social distancing," Alexander wrote in a July 24 email. "We always knew as you relax and open up, cases will rise." . . .

"So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares?" Alexander wrote in a July 3 email to the health department's top communications officials. "If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares…as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life….who cares if we test more and get more positive tests."
Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist who taught for nearly three decades at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School and specializes in the treatment of borderline personality disorders.

In April 2020, he told Salon:
People such as Trump are malignant-narcissist sadists because they, at some deep level, are driven to cause harm to other people. Trump's life is proof of this. . . . Donald Trump is also a sexual sadist, who on some basic level enjoys and is aroused by watching people be afraid of him. . . .

If you look at human history there is one trait that all malignant narcissistic leaders have in common: They kill mass numbers of their own people. Why would Donald Trump be any different? . . .

It is probably not lost on Trump that the people who are being disproportionately killed by the coronavirus are people in Democratic blue states and cities: nonwhite people, poor people, other marginalized people in this society, working-class people. . .  .

In the course of a week, we literally had Trump's cultists, his spokespeople, saying, "People should sacrifice themselves for the economy." Literally go out and die. . . . Trump is willing to see people die to ensure — at least in his mind — that he will be re-elected. In many ways he is positioning himself as a god who demands human sacrifice. . . .

Malignant narcissists like Donald Trump view other human beings as kindling wood to be burned for their own personal enrichment and enlargement and expansion. . . .

Malignant narcissistic leaders kill many of their own people through wars and political terror, but also through willful incompetence. These types of leaders actively do things that will kill large portions of the population. Causing harm is a type of addiction for them. . . . Donald Trump is a human predator. That is what he does. He will not change. 
Is Donald Trump guilty of genocide?

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a)  Killing members of the group;

(b)  Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)  Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)  Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)  Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
According to an article on the United Nations' website:
The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. . . .

The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. . . . In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.

Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted – not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and "substantial."
It's only that last paragraph that raises doubt. Trump's allowance and facilitation of mass death in all 50 states (of the four categories, Americans would be considered a "national" group) sounds more like the killing of individuals as opposed to a specific group of people.

Then again, Trump is clearly guilty of killing and/or causing serious bodily and mental harm and/or deliberately altering the conditions of life in a way calculated to bring about death and destruction for at least part of the group known as Americans.

But, if not, there are myriad other charges that would concretely apply.

William Saletan's article for Slate from August remains the most damning account of Trump's negligent homicide. His article is a master class in meticulous research, showing exactly how Trump:
concealed the threat, impeded the U.S. government's response, silenced those who sought to warn the public, and pushed states to take risks that escalated the tragedy. He's personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.

This isn't speculation. 

All the evidence is in the public record. But the truth, unlike Trump's false narrative, is scattered in different places. It's in emails, leaks, interviews, hearings, scientific reports, and the president's stray remarks. This article puts those fragments together. It documents Trump's interference or negligence in every stage of the government's failure: preparation, mobilization, public communication, testing, mitigation, and reopening.

Trump has always been malignant and incompetent. As president, he has coasted on economic growth, narrowly averted crises of his own making, and corrupted the government in ways that many Americans could ignore. But in the pandemic, his vices—venality, dishonesty, self-absorption, dereliction, heedlessness—turned deadly. They produced lies, misjudgments, and destructive interventions that multiplied the carnage. The coronavirus debacle isn't, as Trump protests, an "artificial problem" that spoiled his presidency. It's the fulfillment of everything he is.
Is Joe Biden actually waffling about actively pursuing criminal charges against Trump and numerous administration officials?
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1 comment:

laura k said...

Is Joe Biden actually waffling about actively pursuing criminal charges against Trump and numerous administration officials?

You know too much about American history to ask this question.

Thursday, December 17, 2020 6:19:00 AM

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