We need the unfiltered truth on the pandemic
There’s so much going on in the news each day — the coronavirus out of control across more than half the country, the Trump administration removing key Nixon-era environmental oversight regulations, protests against systemic racism continuing into the summer, statues coming down, team names changing and more — it’s enough to make us grab our masks and head for the hills.
As troubling, and in some cases necessary, as all these news items are, the sheer volume can make it easy to overlook other important happenings. I suspect sometimes the powersthat-be want it that way.
But don’t overlook this: A new Trump administration policy that quietly went into effect Wednesday orders hospitals to stop sending coronavirus data — such as how many people are hospitalized with COVID-19, how many have died — to the National Healthcare Safety Network, the nation’s most widely used infection tracking system, and instead send it to, you guessed it, a department that is part of the administration.
That vitally important information now is going to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). When it went to the network, managed through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the information was public. Now it isn’t.
Let me repeat: Data of how many people died in this country on any given day now is controlled by the federal government and you can’t see it.
How crazy is that? Do you trust the federal government — that has been downplaying the severity of the pandemic from the beginning — to give the public full and accurate information? I sure don’t.
Journalists have a healthy skepticism, I admit. That enables us to poke into political statements and policies and find the holes, or spin, if you will.
But it doesn’t take a journalist to see the likely consequences of this new directive.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd, is ever vigilant and not afraid to speak out.
“HHS has been operating as a dangerous, political apparatus and cannot be trusted to share accurate hospital information with Congress and the American public,” DeLauro said. Referring to the president, she added, “He can try to intentionally hide the exploding number of cases, but the people will not be fooled.” I hope not. Consider the context. More than 138,000 people have died in this country from the coronavirus and the numbers of positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are growing exponentially every day in states such as Florida, Texas and California. The administration has moved away from focusing on the pandemic and switched to reopening the country (which has led to the virus surge) and pushed for in-person classes in schools — some in the South are scheduled to open mid-August.
Recently, the administration has tried to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, asserting he made mistakes early in the pandemic. (Among the criticism, Peter Navarro, an assistant to the president as a trade adviser, wrote an op-ed published in USA Today Tuesday, and later retracted by the newspaper for not meeting standards, asserting that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.” The White House said it didn’t clear Navarro to write that op-ed.)
A Quinnipiac University poll reported Wednesday that 65 percent of Americans trust Fauci on coronavirus information; only 30 percent trust what the president is saying on the pandemic.
“He may be out of the loop and in disfavor with the White House, but it’s clear from the numbers, voters would like Dr. Fauci back on call,” Quinnipiac Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in releasing the results.
In the same poll, roughly 61 percent say they trust the information the CDC is providing; make that was providing.
Could there be a good reason for the policy change? Journalists try to be fair and understand issues, so I looked further.
The administration said the change is necessary to streamline the process, to collect the data more quickly and completely.
HHS spokesman Michael Caputo said the CDC had a one-week lag in reporting hospital data.
“The President’s Coronavirus Task Force has urged improvements for months, but they cannot keep up with this pandemic,” Caputo said in a Connecticut Mirror story Wednesday. “Today, the CDC still provides data from only 85 percent of hospitals — the president’s COVID response requires 100 percent to report.”
OK, a 100-percent response with no delay in reporting is desirable. But couldn’t the CDC system have been fixed instead of the government investing in a new one?
The information the HHS is seeking from hospitals is comprehensive. Among the 32 categories are questions on the numbers of beds, ventilators and types of personal protection equipment that are available, and a breakdown of patients by age (but not race).
I wondered about the impact on the 27 public hospitals in Connecticut of reporting such detail every day.
“Not much will change for us in how we report,” said Andrea Rynn, director of public and government relations for Nuvance Health, which operates hospitals in Danbury, Norwalk, New Milford, and Sharon as well as some in eastern New York.
The system has been for hospitals to send COVID-19 data to the Connecticut Hospital Association, which collates it and shares it with the required state and federal entities.
“We’ve also been advised that if data is now going to HHS, we will still be able to access any data reported,” she said.
For Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont reports to the public every afternoon on pandemic numbers — including the changes in daily positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths. It has been comforting to see the numbers inch lower. The first time zero deaths were reported, I whooped out loud at the news.
These helpful reports from the governor will continue.
“The Trump administration’s order will have no impact on the public reporting of COVID-19 data here in Connecticut,” Lamont spokesman David Bednarz said Thursday in answer to my question. “Through a partnership with the Connecticut Hospital Association, our state’s hospitals will continue to report data directly to the Department of Public Health and we will continue to provide that information to the public on the state’s website.”
Once again, I am grateful to live in a state where accountability to the public is valued.
Tell your Congressional members that we also need an accurate — unfiltered — picture of the pandemic’s path nationally.