Maddow CDC Disease Detectives Scandal

Rachel Maddow Blows The Lid Off Trump’s Scheme To Kneecap CDC Disease Detective Teams

On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow blew the lid off Donald Trump’s scheme to kneecap CDC disease detective teams in the middle of a pandemic.

The MSNBC host pointed to an incident in April when the the CDC sent one of its teams to a meatpacking plant to study what was one of the world’s worst outbreaks at the time.

When the team filed its original report on the outbreak, which included measures meatpacking plants needed to take to remain in operation, it was immediately watered down.

“We just obtained the real version of what those CDC disease detectives actually found and recommended to stop that outbreak at that plant,” Maddow reported. “Their real report before it was spiked and replaced with the one that told the meatpacking plant they didn’t actually have to do anything if they didn’t want to.”

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The watered down copy, Maddow noted, “took out all the stuff the meatpacking plants were being told to do” by CDC disease detectives.

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Maddow reported:

We have been trying to get those answers since April. What happened to the CDC investigation of that huge outbreak and why did CDC go all pudding mouthed and indirect and make all their recommendations sound like just some ideas you guys might want to consider instead of the way the CDC has always done these things before? Well, we figured it out. It took us this long, but we frigging, fracking finally figured it out, because we just obtained the real CDC advice for that meatpacking plant. We just obtained the real version of what those CDC disease detectives actually found and recommended to stop that outbreak at that plant. Their real report before it was spiked and replaced with the one that told the meatpacking plant they didn’t actually have to do anything if they didn’t want to. We now have both versions. We obtained the real report, the first undoctored version of the report from the House Education and Labor Committee. It has never before been made public, but here it is. And with this, you can see what used to be your CDC, what used to be the world’s gold standard public health agency, having its legs cut out from under them in the middle of this epidemic at the time we needed them most while they were evaluating what at the time was the worst outbreak in the country. The original version that we have just obtained is dated April 21st. This is the one that was disappeared until now. It was replaced with a new version that came out one day later, on April 22nd. The new version on April 22nd took out all the stuff the meatpacking plants were being told to do.

Trump has destroyed the reputation of the CDC

As the pandemic rages on and the body count swells past 200,000, the CDC has buckled under political pressure from Donald Trump.

The agency seems to be in a constant battle between providing accurate, life-saving information to the American people – and helping Trump’s reelection bid.

As a result, the CDC – an organization that was, as Maddow pointed out, a gold standard public health agency – can no longer be trusted.

In just over 40 days, voters will have the opportunity to elect a president who will restore trust in life-saving agencies like the CDC, or a president who will destroy it once and for all if he’s given a second term.

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