The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only found out after-the-fact about a sudden Trump administration decision to use a private contractor to collect COVID-19 data from hospitals. Until this month, the CDC had used its own system for tracking hospital data to keep tabs on COVID-19.
This is just a test.
If he gets away with it, he will have them count votes too.
Is “contractor” code for “Kushner”?
On a related topic.
REPORTER: Is there any concern that Herman Cain contracted Covid at the president’s rally in Tulsa? McENANY: “I will not politicize Herman Cain’s passing.”
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8:23 AM · Jul 31, 2020
I would hope that some fiscally conservative member of the committee asked Dr. Redfield the difference in cost of this data collection system. And for someone to have pressed our your doctors and researchers still getting the data in the same time frame as before? And sent out in the same format?
And since Semma Verma is in charge of nursing homes has she done anything with the data before and now?
Cooking the pandemic infection and death data while milking those hard earned tax payer’s dollars?
Genius at corruption!
But what will Trump MAL-admin do to hide the dead bodies?
No shock here, the entire point was to go around CDC so there was no reason to discuss it with them. This is something that Biden will reverse pronto, his administration will come in geared up to take on the pandemic the way it should have been from the beginning. And, hopefully, there will be a real investigation into how a firm with no real basis for taking this on was given the task, despite the CDC being the gold standard for doing it…if they really are cooking the books then someone will squeal about it to save their ass.
It’s still amazing to me that all Trump and Republicans had to do was manage the pandemic the way any administration would have (i.e. leave it to the scientists) and they would be gliding to victory in November after showing such “leadership”. I guess they have sucked up their propaganda so much that they figure they really do know better than the scientists…too bad Americans are dying to prove them wrong.
This should be the big story. It’s a lot more consequential than exactly how close Trump got to actually saying the n-word. Of the authoritarian things the administration is doing, stuff like this is the most Soviet in both flavor and substance. I recommend reading what Masha Gessen has been writing about this, they’ve been one of the most prescient and perceptive about the Trump administration.
I’ve been wondering about the testing delays; tests that take over a week to report their results are basically useless. So why are they doing them in huge numbers? One possibility that came to me is that they’re basically trying to game the test positivity ratio, which is the gate for “opening up” more. I’m not sure this is a conscious choice (it would be astonishingly short-sighted if so), but rather an alignment of incentives to produce a really dumb outcome. In other words, Soviet.
July 31, 2021 Headline
Has anyone reported on the fact that new daily cases immediately went from a steep incline to a flattened plateau exactly when this change was made? Is there any way to validate the quality of the data reporting before vs. after this change occurred? Just asking for a friend.
so, it was entirely political & payola
rump 2016: Things are bad, vote for me so I can fix them
rump 2020: Things are even worse, vote for me or else things will get much much worse
…not if all of the NAZI-GOPers are beheaded first !
Although Redfield himself is a pathetic weathervane – constantly calibrating to try and please his superiors – the broader CDC is still loaded with many outstanding professionals. If Trump and co had their way, I’m sure they’d do there what they did with the State Department and the Diplomatic Corps; drive much of the workforce into frustration-induced retirement. It’s not even part of a coherent strategy; just their thin skin, and scientist’s pesky habit of questioning the ridiculous.
Everyone knows you don’t switch data collection methodology or databases in the midst of something as huge as a pandemic - but it makes perfect sense if you assume that Trump has absolutely no interest whatsoever in accuracy or evidence based decisions. He only wants total control of every aspect of government he touches, which usually amounts to debasing whatever he is screwing with to the point where it is being led by an ignorant hack who is only interested in pleasing him.
Science and the GOP can no longer exist together in the same plane - there is no future where the Republicans will make evidence based decisions, because science is a natural enemy to ideology. They seem like they are dragging us back to the fifties, but they are actually trying to drag us back to the Middle Ages.
If Redfield had any integrity or professionalism he would resign. But, I crack up as I type…
Well, fiscally conservative Republicans are probably happy that we are paying a government agency that was built to do this job AND a private firm - makes perfect financial sense and is not a waste of taxpayer $.
If hospitals really cared about public health they would release their data to both agencies and make it available on their own websites.
You are forgetting that this is the party that cut taxes while we were fighting a war on two fronts.
Michael Zamagias is the Teletracking CEO. He’s a former real estate developer and gave money to the 2016 Trump campaign. That’s all you need to know.