“Dr. Scott Atlas, a science adviser to President Donald Trump who was skeptical of measures to control the coronavirus outbreak, is leaving his White House post.” https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/30/trump-science-adviser-atlas-resign-covid-coronavirus/115076788/
“A White House official confirmed that the Stanford University neuroradiologist, who had no formal experience in public health or infectious diseases, resigned at the end of his temporary government assignment. Atlas confirmed the news in a Monday evening tweet.
Atlas joined the White House this summer, where he clashed with top government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, as he resisted stronger efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 267,000 Americans.
Atlas has broken with government experts and the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community to criticize efforts to encourage face covering to slow the spread of the virus. Just weeks ago on Twitter he responded to Michigan’s latest virus restrictions by encouraging people to “rise up” against the state’s policies.”
Coincidentally, members of a paramilitary militia group that was plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, and otherwise violently overthrow the state government, were subsequently arrested by the FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot
First lady Melania Trump’s office announced Monday the finalization of the White House Tennis Pavilion — a tone deaf accomplishment to trumpet amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and as the federal government remains locked on providing further economic relief to millions of suffering Americans. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/melania-trump-tennis-pavilion/index.html
The backlash was swift and prompted a rare public defense from Trump two days later: “I encourage everyone who chooses to be negative (and) question my work at the @WhiteHouse to take time and contribute something good (and) productive in their own communities.”
The tennis pavilion is not open to the public and is not a community project. According to the first lady it is meant to be used solely by first families for “leisure time.”
“The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday published a sweeping new report on the state of the U.S. Covid-19 outbreak, releasing data that was previously available only to government employees.” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/18/hhs-releases-sweeping-new-report-on-us-covid-outbreak-in-move-toward-transparency.html
Jose Arrieta, who served as chief information officer for HHS when the government launched HHS Protect, the agency’s warehouse for Covid-19 hospital data, said the new report is “certainly a step in the right direction” toward transparency. Arrieta resigned in August.
“A number of folks within the agency, including myself when I was there, were pushing for transparency,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “I certainly applaud the fact that the data is being shared.”
Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show
Political appointees also tried to blunt scientific findings they deemed unfavorable to Trump, according to new documents from House probe. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/cdc-covid-political-interference/
Trump appointees in the Health and Human Services department last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then-President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators. https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/trump-administration-cdc-coronavirus-reports-20210409.html
“The Plague Year : The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy.” (The New Yorker, December 28, 2020) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year
“At the current rate of daily fatalities, the US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic may surpass 400,000 before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Wednesday.
Another 14,400 Americans are projected to die from the virus over the next six days, according to an ensemble forecast published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This comes as the nation’s health care system scrambles to keep up with the influx of new patients, with more than 128,000 people hospitalized across the country, according to the COVID Tracking Project. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html
Post-COVID lungs worse than the worst smokers’ lungs, surgeon says” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-lungs-scarring-smokers-lungs/
“With mere days left in office, President Donald Trump has proposed $27.4 billion in brutal budget cuts—including clawing back 5.1 billion from global public health amid a raging pandemic. Of the proposed health cuts, $4 billion would be slashed from a vaccine alliance playing a central role in helping to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/trump-tries-to-claw-back-billions-from-covid-vaccine-distributor/
“Trump wants billions cut from global Covid vaccine distributor : The White House has asked Congress to cut $27 billion from a recent spending bill. Among the cuts: $4 billion for a group helping with the international Covid fight.” https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/14/trump-billions-cut-covid-vaccine-distributor-459496
“The $27.4 billion in proposed cuts is known as a rescission request — a largely symbolic package of spending claw-backs that the White House presents to Congress. There is no chance that Congress actually acts on the request. But the inclusion of $4 billion in funding for GAVI, a public-private partnership promoting vaccination in low-income countries, will likely fuel more criticism of the president’s approach to global health efforts in general and the Covid pandemic in particular.”
“Los Angeles County has temporarily suspended air quality rules in order to allow covid-19 victims to be cremated, according to an executive order passed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District over the weekend. The rules will be suspended for 10 days as the region works through a “backlog” of people who have died from the coronavirus pandemic, which is still uncontrolled in many parts of the country.
Los Angeles County has 28 crematoriums, though those facilities are prohibited by law from running at full capacity in order to cut down on air pollution. But with over 2,700 bodies currently sitting in cold storage due to an influx of dead patients from the covid-19 crisis, local authorities have decided that dirtier air is the price Angelenos will have to pay if the backlog is ever going to be cleared.” https://earther.gizmodo.com/l-a-suspends-air-quality-rules-to-cremate-backlog-of-c-1846083617
“U.S. expected to hit 500,000 COVID-19 deaths by February, CDC warns” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-expected-to-hit-500000-covid-19-deaths-by-february-cdc-warns/ar-BB1cS8iB
“More than 60% of all US Covid-19 cases were reported since Election Day. Now experts warn a variant could further fuel spread” https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html “about a year since the first Covid-19 case was reported in the US, the country’s death toll is fast approaching 400,000 — more than the number of Americans who died in World War I, the Vietnam War and the Korean War combined and nearly as many Americans who died in World War II.”
“Departing CEO paid $5.2 million ‘retention’ bonus by one of America’s largest nursing home chains where 2,800 residents died
Genesis HealthCare approved the payment in October for its chief executive. This month he retired and received another bonus.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/20/genesis-nursing-homes-ceo-bonus/
(July 22, 2020) “In “Pandemic Profiteers Exposed”, Oxfam found that 17 of the top 25 most profitable US corporations, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Pfizer, and Visa, are expected to make almost $85 billion more in 2020 than in previous years.
Oxfam is calling for a resurrection of the World War II-era excess profits tax, which could raise much-needed funds for COVID relief and recovery, such as providing ongoing benefits including COVID-19 testing and vaccines for every person on the planet.” https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/who-profits-covid-19-and-how-can-we-use-money-help-us-get-vaccine/
Several top doctors in the Trump administration offered their most pointed and direct criticism of the government response to the coronavirus last year, with one of them arguing that hundreds of thousands of covid-19 deaths could have been prevented.
They also admitted their own missteps as part of a CNN special that aired Sunday night, saying that some Trump administration statements the White House fiercely defended last year were misleading or outright falsehoods. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/29/trump-officials-tell-all-coronavirus-response/
CNN: “Autopsy of a pandemic: 6 doctors at the center of the US Covid-19 response” https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/health/covid-war-doctors-sanjay-gupta/index.html
As the coronavirus ripped across the country in early 2020, members of the Trump administration repeatedly interfered with the CDC’s efforts to get the word out and protect the public, six current and former health officials told congressional investigators. One of the agency’s former top experts, Nancy Messonnier, said she was reprimanded by then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for saying the virus’s spread was inevitable. Other officials described how the White House curtailed the CDC’s media requests and pressured the agency to present more optimistic messaging in weekly reports. The new information, including statements from former White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx, confirms prior reporting and sheds new light on how the Trump administration undermined those in government who were best equipped to manage the nation’s response during the pandemic’s critical early stages. (Washington Post) https://news.yahoo.com/messonnier-birx-detail-political-interference-210639971.html?fr=sychp_catchall
“While one congressional committee seems to be grabbing all the headlines recently, other investigations of the Trump administration have continued in the background. One of them [link] is trying to determine how the US’s response to the coronavirus pandemic went so wrong that the country ended up with over a million deaths and one of the worst per-capita death rates in the world. In its own words, the committee’s goal is “to ensure the American people receive a full accounting of what went wrong and to determine what corrective steps are necessary to ensure our nation is better prepared for any future public health crisis.”
In its latest report, released on Tuesday, the committee details the White House career of Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no infectious disease experience. Atlas’ hiring by the White House was expected to be so controversial that he was initially instructed to hide his staff ID from the actual government public health experts. Yet he quickly became a driving force for the adoption of policies that would achieve herd immunity by allowing most of the US population to be infected—even as other officials denied that this was the policy.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/new-report-on-how-scott-atlas-made-herd-immunity-an-unofficial-us-policy/
“New Select Subcommittee Report Reveals Full Scope of Trump Administration’s Embrace of a Dangerous and Discredited Herd Immunity via Mass Infection Strategy” Jun 21, 2022 Press Release
Report is the first in a series on the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the Trump Administration’s political interference with the federal coronavirus response https://coronavirus.house.gov/news/press-releases/clyburn-trump-atlas-birx-redfield-herd-immunity-report
Eideard 
“Dr. Scott Atlas, a science adviser to President Donald Trump who was skeptical of measures to control the coronavirus outbreak, is leaving his White House post.” https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/30/trump-science-adviser-atlas-resign-covid-coronavirus/115076788/
“A White House official confirmed that the Stanford University neuroradiologist, who had no formal experience in public health or infectious diseases, resigned at the end of his temporary government assignment. Atlas confirmed the news in a Monday evening tweet.
Atlas joined the White House this summer, where he clashed with top government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, as he resisted stronger efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 267,000 Americans.
Atlas has broken with government experts and the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community to criticize efforts to encourage face covering to slow the spread of the virus. Just weeks ago on Twitter he responded to Michigan’s latest virus restrictions by encouraging people to “rise up” against the state’s policies.”
Coincidentally, members of a paramilitary militia group that was plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, and otherwise violently overthrow the state government, were subsequently arrested by the FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot
First lady Melania Trump’s office announced Monday the finalization of the White House Tennis Pavilion — a tone deaf accomplishment to trumpet amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and as the federal government remains locked on providing further economic relief to millions of suffering Americans. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/melania-trump-tennis-pavilion/index.html
The backlash was swift and prompted a rare public defense from Trump two days later: “I encourage everyone who chooses to be negative (and) question my work at the @WhiteHouse to take time and contribute something good (and) productive in their own communities.”
The tennis pavilion is not open to the public and is not a community project. According to the first lady it is meant to be used solely by first families for “leisure time.”
“The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday published a sweeping new report on the state of the U.S. Covid-19 outbreak, releasing data that was previously available only to government employees.” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/18/hhs-releases-sweeping-new-report-on-us-covid-outbreak-in-move-toward-transparency.html
Jose Arrieta, who served as chief information officer for HHS when the government launched HHS Protect, the agency’s warehouse for Covid-19 hospital data, said the new report is “certainly a step in the right direction” toward transparency. Arrieta resigned in August.
“A number of folks within the agency, including myself when I was there, were pushing for transparency,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “I certainly applaud the fact that the data is being shared.”
COVID-19 Community Profile Report https://beta.healthdata.gov/National/COVID-19-Community-Profile-Report/gqxm-d9w9
“CDC insiders detail Trump-era political control, dismissal of science : The former CDC chief of staff said it will “take years to undo” the damage done to the agency under Donald Trump.” https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cdc-insiders-detail-trump-era-political-control-dismissal-science-n1251420
‘Like a Hand Grasping’: Trump Appointees Describe the Crushing of the C.D.C.
Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, go public on the Trump administration’s manipulation of the agency. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/us/politics/cdc-trump.html
“Political Appointees Meddled in C.D.C.’s ‘Holiest of the Holy’ Health Reports : Trump loyalists at the Health and Human Services Department have been exerting influence on the Centers for Disease Control’s weekly reports on all disease outbreaks, the coronavirus and beyond. (9/12/20) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-politics-cdc.html
8AM MST, tomorrow morning, 20th
Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show
Political appointees also tried to blunt scientific findings they deemed unfavorable to Trump, according to new documents from House probe. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/cdc-covid-political-interference/
Trump appointees in the Health and Human Services department last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then-President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators. https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/trump-administration-cdc-coronavirus-reports-20210409.html
“The Plague Year : The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy.” (The New Yorker, December 28, 2020) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year
“At the current rate of daily fatalities, the US death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic may surpass 400,000 before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Wednesday.
Another 14,400 Americans are projected to die from the virus over the next six days, according to an ensemble forecast published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This comes as the nation’s health care system scrambles to keep up with the influx of new patients, with more than 128,000 people hospitalized across the country, according to the COVID Tracking Project. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html
Post-COVID lungs worse than the worst smokers’ lungs, surgeon says” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-lungs-scarring-smokers-lungs/
8AM MST, tomorrow morning, 16th
“With mere days left in office, President Donald Trump has proposed $27.4 billion in brutal budget cuts—including clawing back 5.1 billion from global public health amid a raging pandemic. Of the proposed health cuts, $4 billion would be slashed from a vaccine alliance playing a central role in helping to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/trump-tries-to-claw-back-billions-from-covid-vaccine-distributor/
“Trump wants billions cut from global Covid vaccine distributor : The White House has asked Congress to cut $27 billion from a recent spending bill. Among the cuts: $4 billion for a group helping with the international Covid fight.” https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/14/trump-billions-cut-covid-vaccine-distributor-459496
“The $27.4 billion in proposed cuts is known as a rescission request — a largely symbolic package of spending claw-backs that the White House presents to Congress. There is no chance that Congress actually acts on the request. But the inclusion of $4 billion in funding for GAVI, a public-private partnership promoting vaccination in low-income countries, will likely fuel more criticism of the president’s approach to global health efforts in general and the Covid pandemic in particular.”
“Los Angeles County has temporarily suspended air quality rules in order to allow covid-19 victims to be cremated, according to an executive order passed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District over the weekend. The rules will be suspended for 10 days as the region works through a “backlog” of people who have died from the coronavirus pandemic, which is still uncontrolled in many parts of the country.
Los Angeles County has 28 crematoriums, though those facilities are prohibited by law from running at full capacity in order to cut down on air pollution. But with over 2,700 bodies currently sitting in cold storage due to an influx of dead patients from the covid-19 crisis, local authorities have decided that dirtier air is the price Angelenos will have to pay if the backlog is ever going to be cleared.” https://earther.gizmodo.com/l-a-suspends-air-quality-rules-to-cremate-backlog-of-c-1846083617
“U.S. expected to hit 500,000 COVID-19 deaths by February, CDC warns” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-expected-to-hit-500000-covid-19-deaths-by-february-cdc-warns/ar-BB1cS8iB
“Another New Covid-19 Variant Discovered In L.A. Might Be Vaccine Resistant, Researcher Says; Strain First Identified In Denmark” https://deadline.com/2021/01/another-new-covid-19-variant-in-l-a-vaccine-resistant-denmark-1234675834/
“More than 60% of all US Covid-19 cases were reported since Election Day. Now experts warn a variant could further fuel spread” https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html “about a year since the first Covid-19 case was reported in the US, the country’s death toll is fast approaching 400,000 — more than the number of Americans who died in World War I, the Vietnam War and the Korean War combined and nearly as many Americans who died in World War II.”
Total U.S. Civilian and Military Deaths during WW II: 418,500 (416,800 military deaths) The National WWII Museum https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war
“Departing CEO paid $5.2 million ‘retention’ bonus by one of America’s largest nursing home chains where 2,800 residents died
Genesis HealthCare approved the payment in October for its chief executive. This month he retired and received another bonus.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/20/genesis-nursing-homes-ceo-bonus/
(July 22, 2020) “In “Pandemic Profiteers Exposed”, Oxfam found that 17 of the top 25 most profitable US corporations, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Pfizer, and Visa, are expected to make almost $85 billion more in 2020 than in previous years.
Oxfam is calling for a resurrection of the World War II-era excess profits tax, which could raise much-needed funds for COVID relief and recovery, such as providing ongoing benefits including COVID-19 testing and vaccines for every person on the planet.” https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/who-profits-covid-19-and-how-can-we-use-money-help-us-get-vaccine/
“Trump’s Plan for COVID-19 Vaccines Was No Plan at All : Biden’s Inherited Disaster—Not Enough Doses, Not Enough Equipment, No Distribution Network” (1/29/21) https://www.dcreport.org/2021/01/29/vaccine-distribution-trumps-plan-was-no-plan-at-all/
“There’s an old saying that Republicans claim government doesn’t work, and then when they take control they set about to prove it.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/06/21/how-the-trump-administration-is-weaponizing-government-bureaucracy-against-those-it-doesnt-like/
Americans going through dumpsters to get COVID-19 vaccinations https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/us/vaccine-hunters-covid-trnd/index.html
“Rachel Maddow reviews the case of a contractor awarded tens of millions of dollars in contracts with the Trump administration to procure N95 masks without anyone checking into whether he could fulfill that charge (he couldn’t) or even if his claims of having been a U.S. Marine were true (they weren’t).” https://news.yahoo.com/trump-admin-paid-scammer-millions-054209590.html
See also seperate case (June 23, 2020) “Report: Trump fundraiser tried to cash in on N95 masks” https://www.massdevice.com/report-trump-fundraiser-tried-to-cash-in-on-n95-masks/
Several top doctors in the Trump administration offered their most pointed and direct criticism of the government response to the coronavirus last year, with one of them arguing that hundreds of thousands of covid-19 deaths could have been prevented.
They also admitted their own missteps as part of a CNN special that aired Sunday night, saying that some Trump administration statements the White House fiercely defended last year were misleading or outright falsehoods. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/29/trump-officials-tell-all-coronavirus-response/
CNN: “Autopsy of a pandemic: 6 doctors at the center of the US Covid-19 response” https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/health/covid-war-doctors-sanjay-gupta/index.html
Top Trump adviser warned then-president on virus supply shortage, then pursued controversial deals
Democrats probe more than $1 billion in ‘haphazard’ supply contracts arranged by Peter Navarro, citing new documents https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/31/navarro-pandemic-supply-contracts-trump/
Memo obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak. https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/PHLOW_SSCC_0017388_Redacted.pdf
“600,000 dead: With normal life in reach, COVID’s late-stage victims lament what could have been” https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2021-06-12/With-normal-life-in-reach-COVID-late-stage-victims-lament-what-could-have-been-1681990.html
US settles with Trump admin whistleblower who exposed botched COVID response : Rick Bright warned US wasn’t ready for COVID. He was demoted and Trump called him a “creep.” https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/us-settles-with-trump-admin-whistleblower-who-exposed-botched-covid-response/
Bright is an immunology expert who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) until he says he was forced out of his position in April 2020. Ars Technica provided a detailed summary of the whistleblower complaint he filed shortly after. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/whistleblower-complaint-how-denial-cronyism-steered-trump-pandemic-response/
As the coronavirus ripped across the country in early 2020, members of the Trump administration repeatedly interfered with the CDC’s efforts to get the word out and protect the public, six current and former health officials told congressional investigators. One of the agency’s former top experts, Nancy Messonnier, said she was reprimanded by then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for saying the virus’s spread was inevitable. Other officials described how the White House curtailed the CDC’s media requests and pressured the agency to present more optimistic messaging in weekly reports. The new information, including statements from former White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx, confirms prior reporting and sheds new light on how the Trump administration undermined those in government who were best equipped to manage the nation’s response during the pandemic’s critical early stages. (Washington Post) https://news.yahoo.com/messonnier-birx-detail-political-interference-210639971.html?fr=sychp_catchall
7AM MT, tomorrow morning, 13th
“While one congressional committee seems to be grabbing all the headlines recently, other investigations of the Trump administration have continued in the background. One of them [link] is trying to determine how the US’s response to the coronavirus pandemic went so wrong that the country ended up with over a million deaths and one of the worst per-capita death rates in the world. In its own words, the committee’s goal is “to ensure the American people receive a full accounting of what went wrong and to determine what corrective steps are necessary to ensure our nation is better prepared for any future public health crisis.”
In its latest report, released on Tuesday, the committee details the White House career of Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no infectious disease experience. Atlas’ hiring by the White House was expected to be so controversial that he was initially instructed to hide his staff ID from the actual government public health experts. Yet he quickly became a driving force for the adoption of policies that would achieve herd immunity by allowing most of the US population to be infected—even as other officials denied that this was the policy.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/new-report-on-how-scott-atlas-made-herd-immunity-an-unofficial-us-policy/
“New Select Subcommittee Report Reveals Full Scope of Trump Administration’s Embrace of a Dangerous and Discredited Herd Immunity via Mass Infection Strategy” Jun 21, 2022 Press Release
Report is the first in a series on the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the Trump Administration’s political interference with the federal coronavirus response https://coronavirus.house.gov/news/press-releases/clyburn-trump-atlas-birx-redfield-herd-immunity-report