Thread by @DrEricDing

NEW—Trump WH/Homeland knew that the airport #COVID19 screening program was ineffective & dangerous from its earliest days. Former WH official says 3-4-dozen DHS workers infected by end of May. Yet the WH chose not to dismantle—to avoid worrying public. cnbc.com/2020/12/21/whi…

2) “The goal of the screening program was to identify and isolate sick travelers who were bringing the virus into the country, in hopes that it would thwart any possible community spread.”

3) Omar Palmar, DHS worker, contracted the virus at the airport, and died in early May after a monthlong stay in intensive care.

Palmer was among hundreds of federal personnel assigned to evaluating the health of passengers arriving from overseas.

4) “Publicly, the Trump admin attempted to foster confidence in the strategy, sending the country's top health officials to the WH briefing room to field questions from reporters. But behind the scenes, early data showed the program was not doing what it purported to do.”

5) “we were finding, like, zero people," said Joe Grogan, former director of WH Domestic Policy Council until May. "It became pretty clear relatively quickly that it was, from a public health perspective, as far as identifying people who were Covid positive, it was a failure."

6) “The numbers were indeed near zero. According to CDC data, screeners evaluated 776,044 passengers from mid-January to mid-September. Only nine positive cases of coronavirus resulted from the screens, or 0.001%.”

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1328354678569132032

7) Holy crap—and WH knew screeners “were getting sick”!!! 👀

Yet they declined to take action, despite ineffective, because “it didn’t cost a lot”....

🔥 ummm, dead minority DHS airport workers don’t count??? 😡