Ex-federal officials demand science in handling of virus
WASHINGTON — Fiftyseven former government scientists and public health officials of both parties called on Monday for a science-based approach to the coronavirus pandemic and criticized the Trump administration for marginalizing science and expertise in its response.
Officials from the Trump, Obama and George W. Bush administrations all signed the statement, underscoring the widespread concern over Trump’s response to a pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 127,000 Americans so far. Much of the country has experienced a resurgence of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, and new daily infections surpassed 50,000 for the first time last week.
“Sidelining science has already cost lives, imperiled the safety of our loved ones, compromised our ability to safely reopen our businesses, schools, and places of worship, and endangered the health of our democracy itself,” the officials wrote.
The statement’s signatories include Luciana Borio, acting chief scientist under Barack Obama and Trump who left the administration in 2019; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration; Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Bush; Peter Lurie, associate commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under Obama and Trump; and Christine Todd Whitman, Environmental Protection Agency administrator under Bush.
While the officials do not criticize specific policies, they call for actions to guide the response. Among those is that research and data detail production and allocation decisions for personal protective equipment and ventilators, and release of data on new cases, deaths and hospitalizations that would be easy for experts to use and analyze.
The statement also calls on Congress to conduct more rigorous oversight of the pandemic response and “any attempts at political (interference) in scientific decision-making.” It states that inspectors general must be able to do their jobs without fear of retaliation, that data collection methods from agencies must be more transparent and easily accessible to outside experts and that federal employees who speak about interference in science must be better protected.
The officials also appear to express concern over Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization by arguing that “scientists must be free to coordinate with their peers around the world.”
“To the federal employees working on the front lines of this pandemic, preparing our country for any resurgence of COVID-19, we say: keep speaking out. We support you,” the officials write.