Growing friction between White House, CDC hobbles pandemic response

WASHINGTON — The meager guidelines for safely reopening the country released this week are the latest sign of the Trump administration’s efforts to sideline the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the increasing tension between the White House and the world-renowned public health agency.

With Americans waiting for expert advice on how to resume a semblance of normal life during the pandemic, the CDC released just six short “decision trees” Thursday while the rest of its lengthy proposal remains under review at the White House, where it has been for weeks.

Instead of assuming its traditional lead role in a public health crisis, the 74-year-old agency has become just one of many voices providing often contradictory instructions to a confused and imperiled public.

“Punishing the agency by marginalizing and hobbling it is not the solution,” the venerable British medical journal The Lancet noted Friday in a stinging editorial that called the U.S. response “inconsistent and incoherent.”

“Only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency.”

Increased friction between the White House and the CDC was predictable as President Donald Trump, who often takes a dim view of scientific expertise, campaigns to revive the moribund economy.

But White House officials also said they are frustrated by what they consider the agency’s balky flow of data and information, the leak of an early version of the CDC’s reopening recommendations and the agency’s crucial early failure to create and roll out a test for the virus, according to three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal disagreements.

Last month, the government awarded an unusual $10.2 million contract to a Pittsburgh information technology company, TeleTracking Technologies, to collect data on available hospital beds, hospital capacity, COVID-19 patients and deaths caused by the coronavirus — information it already receives from the CDC.

The White House-led task force also is sparring with public health experts, both inside and outside the CDC, about whether COVID-19 death counts collected and disseminated by the CDC are inflated.

Some in the White House, including coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, have begun to take aim at the leadership and communication skills of the CDC’s director, Robert Redfield.

“We should be thought partners,” one official said. “The CDC is not fulfilling requests, they’re not collaborating and they’re disorganized. They’re not speaking with one voice.”

One senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss these problems, said the soft-spoken, deeply religious Redfield has few allies in the roughand-tumble internal politics of the Trump administration. During a task force meeting last week, he apologized for the leak of the reopening recommendations from his agency, an earnest gesture seen by others as a sign of weakness.

“He just has no power over his agency. He has no loyal politicals. He is a man on an island,” that person said.

Redfield did himself no favors with Trump’s inner circle when he told The Washington Post on April 21 that a second wave of COVID-19 disease this winter could be more challenging than the first because it will coincide with flu season. Redfield was forced to appear at a White House briefing that day to soften his remarks, after Trump surprised the agency by publicly demanding a new statement.

A spokeswoman for the CDC declined to answer questions for this story. Most officials who agreed to discuss the tensions between the White House and the agency asked for anonymity to address sensitive relations between government agencies.

Trump spokesman Judd Deere said “the White House and CDC have been working together in partnership since the very beginning of this pandemic to carry out the president’s highest priority: the health and safety of the American public. The CDC is the nation’s trusted health protection agency and its infectious disease and public health experts have helped deliver critical solutions throughout this pandemic to save lives.”

In task force meetings, however, Birx has questioned whether the CDC death count is inflated. In early April, the agency revised its methodology to include deaths probably attributable to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, along with fatalities confirmed by laboratory tests. Supporters of the president have publicly expressed the same doubts.

During a task force meeting early this month, a heated discussion broke out between Birx and Redfield over the CDC’s system for tracking virus data, according to four people present for the discussion or later briefed on it.

“There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” Birx said, according to two of the people.

Experts such as Anthony Fauci, the task force’s top infectious disease specialist, have said the number of COVID-19 fatalities is likely undercounted.