Health agencies’ credibility at risk after week of blunders

The credibility of two of the nation’s leading public health agencies was under fire this week after controversial decisions that outside experts said smacked of political pressure from President Trump as he attempts to move past the devastating toll of the coronavirus ahead of the November election.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration grossly misstated, then corrected, claims about the life-saving power of a plasma therapy for COVID-19 authorized by his agency. Then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly updated its guidelines to suggest fewer Americans need to get tested for the coronavirus, sparking outrage from scientists.

Trump’s own factual misstatements about COVID-19 are well documented, but the back-to-back messaging blunders by public health officials could create new damage, eroding public trust in front-line agencies. That’s already raising concerns about whether the administration will be forthcoming with critical details about upcoming vaccines needed to defeat the pandemic.

“I do worry about the credibility of the FDA and CDC, especially at a time when the capacity of the federal government to advance public health should be a priority for all policymakers,” said Daniel Levinson, former longtime inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees both the FDA and the CDC.

On Friday, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn removed a conservative public relations official involved in the botched plasma announcement, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move came less than two weeks after the White House tapped Emily Miller for the role. Miller previously worked as a reporter for the right-wing One American News Network and as a staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz’s re-election campaign. She did not return calls seeking comment.

Trump administration officials said Wednesday that the CDC testing guidance was revised by the White House virus task force “to reflect current evidence,” but did not detail what that was. The new recommendations say it’s not necessary for most people who have been in close contact with infected people, but don’t feel sick, to get tested. Outside experts said that flies in the face of the scientific consensus that wide-scale testing is needed to stamp out new infections.

The week began with Hahn forced to apologize for using an erroneous statistic describing the effectiveness of the blood plasma therapy granted emergency use for COVID-19, as Trump twisted the facts and inflated the significance of the move.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3b8f491