On July 10, the White House updated their guidance for health institutions treating or studying COVID-19. The public memorandum, while not widely propagated initially, drew many concerns. Specifically, as The New York Times first reported, the “Trump Administration Strips C.D.C. of Control of Coronavirus Data”. Stipulation scrutinized this claim and found such reports to be largely verified and UNBIASED.
Context
After the coronavirus (COVID-19) struck the United States in mid-March, the Federal government rushed into action. Their main goals were to treat those infected, slow the spread of the disease, and equip essential personnel with personal protective equipment.
The Trump Administration has been the chief governmental apparatus handling the the United States’ coronavirus response. In late January, the White House established a Coronavirus Task Force; Vice President Mike Pence became the Chair of the group in February, and remains in that role today. While the task force is largely made up of different White House officials from several departments, there are also members from other agencies. Specifically, administrators from Health and Human Services (HHS), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
After some success in June, reported cases began to uncontrollably spike once again. The US is among the global leaders in cumulative coronavirus cases and COVID-19 related deaths per capital.
The United States is undeniably worse off in every relevant metric when it comes to their coronavirus response. As such, this reality might have prompted the Trump Administration to make the change in reporting protocols.
Data Reporting Change
In the updated guidelines, the agency made clear that COVID-related data from hospitals should be reported directly to HHS. This is a change from previous months in which relevant data was routed from hospitals and labs to the CDC, then the CDC would share the information amongst other federal government agencies. As the Times pointed out, historically, data from infectious diseases are first directed to the CDC.
In the memorandum, it is suggested the change was made to improve reporting efficiency. “As information is received on a complete, and daily basis, HHS and the Administration can turn to moving away from a manual entry process and toward an automated one to ultimately reduce the burden on data collection.”
When asked for additional justification, HHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Michael Caputo, wrote in a statement that “the CDC’s old data gathering operation once worked well monitoring hospital information across the country, but it’s an inadequate system today”.
The concern of many health experts is that if data is not made public in a reasonable time frame – or if the veracity of the data cannot be trusted due to political interests – the work of researchers and health officials will be severely hampered. Moreover, if the White House is hiding data, the thinking goes, the effects of COVID-19 would be far worse than expected. This change also comes on the heels of President Trump saying that less testing would reduce the number of COVID cases.
It is important to note, however, that it’s highly unlikely the CDC will be completely devoid of coronavirus-related data. Though they will not be the first agency to receive crucial statistics, it is inconceivable to think that pertinent COVID facts and figures would be kept from the CDC.
Who Reported It?
As has been the case for several months, the coronavirus has been the main story around the world. Multiple outlets have daily updates on the virus, as well as how countries are responding. For the US, this report is most noteworthy do to the country’s lackluster containment of COVID-19. As such, a lion’s share of the outlets who ran this story came from the US. They include:
How Biased Is The Report?
While the response to the coronavirus is sure to change over the coming months, this report is clearcut and verified. Though not widely propagated, the guidance is publicly available. Likewise, the Administration has been openly confirmed the change in reporting protocol. The inference that the CDC would not be privilege to any data is the only part that lacks context. As mentioned before, that is unlikely the case.
After sourcing +30 suggested news outlets, we concluded the report that the CDC was stripped of COVID data to be UNBIASED. Additionally, the report received an ABS of 63.46. While we concluded many outlets did not publish stories on the report, only Breitbart News contradicted the initial New York Times framing of the report.