Thread by @JJohnsonLaw

Dr. Anne Schuchat, a 32-year veteran of the C.D.C. and its principal deputy director, had appealed to Americans to wear masks and warned, “We have way too much virus across the country.” nytimes.com/2020/09/18/us/…

Dr. Alexander, a part-time assistant professor of health research methods, wrote: “Her aim is to embarrass the president.”

“She is duplicitous,” he wrote in an email to his boss, Michael R. Caputo, the Health and Human Services spokesman. He asked Mr. Caputo to “remind” Dr. Schuchat that during the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009, thousands of Americans had died “under her work.”

Of Dr. Schuchat’s assessment of Covid-19’s dangers, he fumed, wrongly, “The risk of death in children 0-19 years of age is basically 0 (zero) … PERIOD … she has lied.”
Dr. Alexander’s point-by-point assessment, broken into seven parts and forwarded by Caputo to Dr. Redfield.

Mr. Caputo moved to punish the C.D.C.’s communications team for granting interviews to NPR and attempting to help a CNN reporter reach him about a public-relations campaign. Current and former C.D.C. officials called it a five-month campaign of bullying and intimidation.

Caputo & Alexander worked to revise and delay the C.D.C.’s closely guarded and internationally admired health bulletins, called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, in an effort to paint the administration’s pandemic response in a more positive light.

One C.D.C. official became worried about Caputo’s threat & wrote to senior staff asking how to reply, because she was “uncomfortable turning over our employee’s name to Mr. Caputo, given the hostility of the message.”

In another email to agency communications officer who had directed CNN reporter to contact Caputo about a vaccine public relations campaign, Caputo shot back, “In what world did you think it was your job to announce an administration public service announcement campaign to CNN?”

Alexander on Schuchat’s accurate chain on whether children were vulnerable. “It also causes no symptoms as it is so mild … you don’t even know you have it. Many people never knew they had it. Not one indication. It is very false her statement that it causes death in children.”

Alexander appeared to endorse the largely rejected strategy of “herd immunity.” “Importantly, having the virus spread among the young & healthy is one of the methods to drive herd immunity.... all must be on deck now and it is contributing positively at some level.”

This week Trump contradicted testimony Redfield’s that a vaccine might not be widely available to the public until the middle of 2021. “I think he made a mistake when he said that. It’s just incorrect information.... under no circumstance will it be as late as the doctor said.”

P.S. Trump’s claim contradicts the CDC and NIH and is not supported by any medical expert or drug manufacturer.