“Suffer the little children” appears to be Trump policy
By Andrea Germanos, staff writer
for Common
Dreams
 |
| CBS News |
Reporting from Politico Wednesday
revealed that a Trump-allied official within the Department of Health and Human
Services tried to censor Dr. Anthony Fauci from communicating to the press
dangers the coronavirus may pose to school children.
According to Politico, the
messaging directives came from Paul Alexander, a Trump administration appointee
at the Department of Health and Human Services. Alexander is a senior adviser
to Michael Caputo, a Trump ally and assistant HHS secretary for public affairs.
Politico obtained multiple emails from Alexander
that reflect his responses to what Fauci—director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)—planned on telling outlets
including Bloomberg and HuffPost. They included
messages that "are couched as scientific arguments" but "often
contradict mainstream science," according to the reporting.
The outlet cited as
one example an Aug. 27 email in which Alexander wrote that he continues
"to have an issue with kids getting tested and repeatedly and even
university students in a widespread manner…and I disagree with Dr. Fauci on
this. Vehemently."
In another email from Tuesday, Alexander suggested children have "essentially zero" risk if they are exposed to the coronavirus and pushed Fauci's press team to make sure Fauci told MSNBC that children should not wear masks at school. From Politico:
"Can you ensure
Dr. Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for
children," Alexander wrote. "There is no data, none, zero, across the
entire world, that shows children especially young children, spread this virus
to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did
occur, the risk is essentially zero," he continued — adding without
evidence that children take influenza home, but not the coronavirus.
Alexander's repeated
efforts at push Fauci to parrot the adminsitration's anti-science line,
however, may have been for naught.
"No one tells me
what I can say and cannot say," Fauci said. "I speak on scientific
evidence."
It did not, however,
mark Alexander's first attempts at controlling the narrative from federal
health experts.
The Washington
Post reported in July that he made similar
efforts with CDC officials. In a June email to CDC officials, Alexander wrote
that the agency's warning about Covid-19 impacts on women "reads in a way
to frighten women . . . as if the President and his administration can't fix
this and it is getting worse."
Virologist Dave
O'Connor weighed in on the new reporting on Twitter, writing, "This sort of story will be
recalled years from now as an example of the government interfering with
science, with predictably disastrous results."
Shannon Watts, founder
of gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, also shared Politico's
new reporting, and had harsh words for the Trump administration.
"They don't care
if our kids die. They don't care if we die," wrote Watts. "They just want
power."
