Yesterday, the Attorneys General from 22 states issued a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar calling on him to rescind a recent directive that shifts the responsibility for COVID-19 reporting from the CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The letter urges Secretary Azar to “restore the CDC to its rightful role as the primary repository for and source of information about the nation’s public health data” and notes that the decision to “bypass the CDC” erodes trust in COVID-19 data, hinders state and local response efforts, and risks millions of lives.
The authors argue that any need to improve data reporting and analysis should be addressed by adapting existing CDC systems, including through the use of US$500 million designated by the CARES Act to update CDC data collection and reporting systems. They contend that the new mechanism “circumvent[s] our nation’s top public health experts.”
According to the letter, the new data reporting system is operated by private contractors rather than health experts employed by federal health agencies, and it separates data reported by hospitals from other sources, including nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
They are obviously trying to manipulate the numbers. I don’t think you can assume otherwise. I guess they think this will help Trump get re-elected which is worth the killing of vast numbers of Americans to achieve.