The American magazine The Lancet - one of the most respected medical publications in the world - published an article entitled "The Revival of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."    

The material notes that the United States has developed an unfavorable epidemiological situation. The authors of the article note that against this background, the role of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is gradually decreasing. This federal agency of the American Ministry of Health was created just to prevent possible epidemics and outbreaks of infectious diseases. However, the authors of The Lancet believe that during the Trump administration, this service was relegated to the background.   

“The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country's main public health agency, has been confronted with its role being minimized and has become an ineffective structure with only nominal advisory functions in response to control with the spread of the virus, ”- noted in the material.   

The article states that the Trump administration has further reduced the ability of the CDC to fight infectious diseases. Similar cuts occurred in 2019, just before the COVID-19 epidemic.    

“The CDC staff in China was reduced, the last specialist of the agency was recalled from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in July 2019, due to which there was a lack of valuable information at the time COVID-19 appeared,” the authors of the article emphasize.   

The White House also suspended the work of specialists who broadcast information inconvenient for the administration, the authors of the article note.  

An example is the case of Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s Immunology and Respiratory Diseases Agency.

During a February 25 press conference, she warned Americans that they should prepare for the serious consequences of the epidemic, which will make significant changes in everyday life and limit freedom of movement. From that moment, she was no longer involved in briefings at the White House on the situation with COVID-19.

Earlier, Trump's adviser Peter Navarro said the CDC, which had confidence before the epidemic, “failed the country.”

Controversial Data  

The American media has repeatedly reported a conflict atmosphere between the White House and the medical community over the situation of the pandemic of the corona virus.     

Thus, the CDC is increasingly criticized by the coordinator of the presidential working group on coronavirus, Dr. Deborah Burks. Trump administration officials told The Washingon Post and CNN that Burks did not hide her disappointment at the Center, where she herself worked in the past as director of HIV and AIDS.  

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Burks claims that the data collection methods used by the CDC are outdated. This leads to discrepancies and delays in accounting for the number of patients who have died and died from coronavirus.  

According to sources, in a recent meeting, Burks quarreled with his former colleague, CDC director Robert Redfield. The presidential working group coordinator blamed Redfield for the fact that due to an outdated counting system, a number of statistical indicators for morbidity - such as mortality and the number of cases of infection - were supposedly overestimated by as much as 25%.  

“I can’t trust anything that comes from the CDC,” the Washington Post quoted Deborah Burks as saying.   

According to Johns Hopkins University on May 19, more than 1.5 million people have been infected with the coronavirus since the beginning of the epidemic in the United States, more than 90 thousand have died. The number of people who recovered after infection exceeded 283 thousand.    

The White House will in every way challenge the data of federal departments that do not support the picture of success in the fight against coronavirus, political analyst Alexander Asafov said in a conversation with RT.  

“This situation demonstrates that Trump decided to focus on saving the economy at all costs. Therefore, of course, all the data that will contradict the policy of lifting quarantine restrictive measures will be criticized, ”the expert noted.  

Lower threshold  

While media reports have reported that the White House has accused the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of overstatement of mortality and morbidity, representatives of the American healthcare sector believe that these figures may be even higher.   

So professor of medicine at Boston University Thomas Perls in an interview with RT suggested that the number of deaths from infection in New York could be underestimated by half. Professor Perls states that official statistics do not take into account the deaths of older people who, when a disease is detected, refuse hospitalization and remain in nursing homes.

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“In the United States, about 1.3 million people live in such centers, and about a third of them are over 85 years old. ... If we talk only about New York, where about 30 thousand people died from COVID-19, then with a more accurate calculation of the deaths from coronavirus in nursing homes, the total number of victims will increase to 60 thousand, ”says Perls.    

In turn, an American pediatrician with a 17-year experience Margaret Flowers told RT that shortcomings in the US healthcare system led to this situation.   

“Our healthcare system is based not so much on helping people, but on making a profit. If we were guided by common sense, then we would immediately organize testing and arrange the supply of people and medical staff with everything necessary. Instead, we see several corporations competing among themselves, as if to extract more profit from this situation, ”the doctor emphasized.  

Experts do not exclude that in reality the number of victims of a pandemic may exceed the official figures released today.

“US authorities are not interested in revealing real numbers, so the number of victims from coronavirus may be greater,” Alexander Asafov emphasizes.

Guilty Appointment 

HSE professor Dmitry Evstafiev described a similar situation as the destruction of the principle of trust in state institutions and in the transparency of their information.  

“Doubt about the correctness of the methodology, the correctness, legitimacy of calculating losses from the coronavirus is now an absolutely fundamental question of the entire political situation in the USA, especially in the context of the election campaign. ... In this situation, we will receive conflicting information, since each side will give its numbers, ”the expert noted.  

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This trend is rather dangerous, since subsequently the official information system in the USA can be completely destroyed, Dmitry Evstafiev emphasized.  

Experts noted that the White House is looking for the guilty in a variety of places, blaming China for the spread of the coronavirus and unjustifiably questioning Russian disease statistics.

The US authorities will never admit that the grave consequences of the spread of coronavirus in the country may be to blame for their own unpreparedness for the epidemic or deficiencies in the health care system, Alexander Asafov said.   

“The main culprit in the situation has already been assigned - WHO and China ... Of course, the need for medical insurance and other aspects related to the specifics of the American health care system have affected both mortality and the growth of patients. For example, among the poor, including African Americans and Hispanics. People refused hospitalization, fearing that they would not be able to pay for the services rendered to them for the treatment of coronavirus infection, ”the political scientist recalled.