Coronavirus

Trump Asks CDC To Cook The Books On Virus Deaths

Written by SK Ashby

The United States will cross 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the very near future and that itself is probably an undercount. There are reasons to believe we may actually already be at that number now but, even if that is an undercount, Trump would still like for the numbers to be counted even lower than they are today at soon-to-be 83,000.

The Daily Beast reports that the Trump White House is pressuring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to revise the way they count deaths to exclude more of them.

President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths. And they’re pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported, according to five administration officials working on the government’s response to the pandemic. [...]

The White House has pressed the CDC, in particular, to work with states to change how they count coronavirus deaths and report them back to the federal government, according to two officials with knowledge of those conversations. And Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the administration’s coronavirus task force, has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death-count reporting some of those individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it, according to three senior administration officials.

Yes, you read that right. They don't want to count some people who died even if they were sick with the virus.

The Trump regime has repeatedly pointed fingers at China and accused them of covering up the true extent of their outbreak and it's entirely plausible that China's ruling party did, but we're no better under Trump. The White House has refused to even consider a nationwide testing plan, in part, to keep our numbers lower than they truly are and now they want to exclude people who died with the virus.

Trump wishes he could cover up the severity of out outbreak to the extent that China probably has. He's jealous.

States' rights under the 10th Amendment is probably the only thing preventing Trump from doing it. Some Republican governors are making their own efforts to cover up their outbreaks, but Trump can't directly control all governors and states are free to release their own numbers.