From://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/11/exclusive-trump-officials-interfered-with-cdc-reports-on-covid-19-412809
     卫生部政治任命的通讯助手要求有权审查和寻求对疾病控制和预防中心(Center For Disease Control And Prevention)每周科学报告的修改，这些报告记录了这场冠状病毒大流行的进展情况。官员们称，这是一种恐吓报告作者的企图，并削弱了他们与卫生专业人员的沟通。 6park.com
     据Politico和三位知情人士审阅的邮件显示，在某些情况下，给CDC主任罗伯特·雷德菲尔德(Robert Redfield)和其他高级官员的通信助手的电子邮件公开抱怨说，该机构的报告会破坏唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)总统对疫情的乐观信息。
三位知情人士表示，疾控中心官员对最广泛的改革进行了反击，但越来越多地同意允许政治官员审查这些报告，并在少数情况下在措辞上做出妥协。通讯助理们在整个夏天都在努力改变疾病控制中心报告中的语言，直到周五下午才停止。 6park.com
     卡普托的团队还试图阻止一些CDC报告的发布，包括推迟提交一份报告，内容涉及医生如何开羟氯喹，尽管证据不足，但特朗普仍将其视为一种冠状病毒疗法。羟氯喹是特朗普青睐的一种疟疾药物。在卡普托的团队对其作者的政治倾向提出质疑后，这份报告举行了大约一个月。该报告终于在上周发表。它说，“这些药物的潜在好处并不超过它们的风险。” 6park.com
     在一次冲突中，卡普托的一名助手指责CDC的科学家试图利用这些报告“伤害总统”，这封邮件是8月8日发给疾控中心主任罗伯特·雷德菲尔德(Robert Redfield)和其他官员的，该邮件在部门内广为传阅，并由Politico获得。 6park.com
     被任命的保罗·亚历山大(Paul Alexander)写道：“在我看来，疾控中心似乎在为政府写热门文章。”他呼吁雷德菲尔德修改两份已经发表的报告，称亚历山大错误地夸大了儿童感染冠状病毒的风险，并破坏了特朗普重启学校的努力。“疾控中心试图报告说，一旦孩子们聚在一起，就会蔓延开来，这将影响学校的重新开放……疾病预防控制中心对学校的误导和羞辱。他们的目标是明确的。” 6park.com
      亚历山大还呼吁雷德菲尔德停止所有未来的MMWR报告，直到该机构修改其多年的出版过程，以便他可以亲自审查整个报告发表之前，而不是一个简短的概要。亚历山大是多伦多附近的麦克马斯特大学(McMaster University)的健康研究助理教授，卡普托今年春天聘请他担任他的科学顾问。他补充说，CDC需要允许他编辑行--并要求“[tr]立即停止[tr]“在此期间的报告。 6park.com
      亚历山大对雷德菲尔德和其他官员说：“这些报告必须由疾控中心以外的人来阅读，就像我一样，我们不能让报道继续进行下去，因为这是令人无法容忍的。它太疯狂了。”“除非我阅读并同意他们对疾病预防控制中心的研究结果，否则没有什么可走的。我对它进行了修改，以确保它是公平、平衡和‘完整’的。”
据三名知情人士透露，CDC官员一直在努力追溯更改报告，但越来越多地允许卡普托和他的团队在发布之前对报告进行审查。两名人士补充称，卡普托上月还帮助疾控中心临时幕僚长的就职，确保了卡普托本人在该机构的知名度，该机构在流感大流行期间经常与HHS政治官员发生冲突。 6park.com
      疾控中心发病率和死亡率周刊报告[tr]由职业科学家撰写，是该机构向医生、研究人员和公众通报新冠肺炎如何传播以及谁面临风险的主要工具。几位长期担任卫生部官员的官员表示，此类报告在历史上很少大张旗鼓地发表，也没有受到任何政治干预，几十年来一直被视为国家公共卫生工作的基石。
但自从迈克尔·卡普托，一位没有医学或科学背景的前特朗普竞选官员四月安装[tr=rgb(247, 238, 255)]作为卫生和公共服务部(Health And Human Services Department)的新发言人，已经做出了大量努力，以使这些报告与特朗普的声明保持一致，包括总统声称对疫情爆发的担忧被夸大了，或者完全停止了这些报道。 6park.com
      知情人士透露，卡普托和他的团队试图在CDC的调查结果中加入一些警告，包括追溯性地改变该机构的报告。他们表示，这些报告错误地夸大了新冠肺炎的风险，他们应该明确表示，感染该病毒的美国人可能是因为他们自己的行为而感染的。 6park.com
      当政治人物问到为什么他和他的团队要求改变疾病预防控制中心的报告时，卡普托称赞亚历山大是一位“受过牛津教育的流行病学家”，擅长“分析其他科学家的工作”，尽管他没有让他接受采访。 6park.com
     卡普托在一份声明中表示：“亚历山大博士就大流行政策向我提供建议，并鼓励他与其他科学家分享自己的观点。和所有科学家一样，他的建议被同行听取、采纳或拒绝。”
      卡普托还说，HHS正在适当地审查疾控中心的报告。他说：“我们的目的是确保证据、基于科学的数据推动这一流行病的政策--而不是隐藏在疾病预防控制中心的深层动机。”
      卡普托的团队花了几个月的时间与整个政府的科学专家发生冲突。亚历山大这个星期试图压制传染病专家安东尼·福奇从谈到冠状病毒对儿童的风险，和华盛顿邮报报告在七月，亚历山大批评了疾病预防控制中心的方法和发现。
       但公共卫生专家告诉Politico，他们对CDC的报告可能面临政治干预感到特别震惊，他们称赞MMWRs对于抗击这一流行病至关重要。
       凯撒家庭基金会全球卫生工作负责人詹妮弗·凯茨(Jennifer Kates)说：“这是公共卫生界获取经过科学审查的信息的好去处。”在接受Politico采访时，Kates列举了十几个MMWR报道的例子，她和其他研究人员依靠这些报告来确定新冠肺炎是如何传播的，谁是风险最高的，包括关于该病毒如何在疗养院、教堂和儿童中传播的报道。
        “它们是如此重要，CDC已经做了这么多，”凯茨说。
修改疾控中心报告的努力是在五月之后认真开始的。报告由疾控中心高级官员安妮·舒哈特(AnneSchuchat)撰写，该书回顾了新冠肺炎在美国的传播情况，并在卫生部内部引发了重大冲突。两名知情人士表示，包括国务卿亚历克斯·阿扎尔(Alex Azar)在内的HHS官员认为，舒哈特暗示特朗普政府对疫情反应太慢。
       知情人士表示，HHS的批评令CDC官员感到困惑，他们认为Schuchat只是在叙述事态，而不是对回应做出判断。自撰写这份报告以来，Schuchat几乎没有公开露面。

Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19 6park.com
    The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.
  In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.
  CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.
  The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.
  But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.
  Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.
  Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."
  In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.  "CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."
  Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at McMaster University near Toronto whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.
  "The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"
  CDC officials have fought the efforts to retroactively change reports but have increasingly allowed Caputo and his team to review them before publication, according to the three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Caputo also helped install CDC’s interim chief of staff last month, two individuals added, ensuring that Caputo himself would have more visibility into an agency that has often been at odds with HHS political officials during the pandemic.
  Asked by POLITICO about why he and his team were demanding changes to CDC reports, Caputo praised Alexander as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist" who specializes "in analyzing the work of other scientists," although he did not make him available for an interview.
"Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists. Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement.
Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," he said.
Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Alexander this week tried to muzzle infectious-disease expertAnthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of the coronavirus to children, and The Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had criticized the CDC's methods and findings.
But public health experts told POLITICO that they were particularly alarmed that the CDC's reports could face political interference, praising the MMWRs as essential to fighting the pandemic.
"It's the go-to place for the public health community to get information that's scientifically vetted," said Jennifer Kates, who leads the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health work. In an interview with POLITICO, Kates rattled off nearly a dozen examples of MMWR reports that she and other researchers have relied on to determine how Covid-19 has spread and who's at highest risk, including reports on how the virus has been transmitted in nursing homes, at churches and among children.

"They're so important, and CDC has done so many," Kates said.
The efforts to modify the CDC reports began in earnest after a May reportauthored by senior CDC official Anne Schuchat, which reviewed the spread of Covid-19 in the United States and caused significant strife within the health department. HHS officials, including Secretary Alex Azar, believed that Schuchat was implying that the Trump administration moved too slowly to respond to the outbreak, said two individuals familiar with the situation.
The HHS criticism was mystifying to CDC officials, who believed that Schuchat was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response, the individuals familiar with the situation said. Schuchat has made few public appearances since authoring the report.

CDC did not respond to a request for comment about Schuchat’s report and the response within the department.
The close scrutiny continued across the summer with numerous flashpoints, the individuals added, with Caputo and other HHS officials particularly bristling about a CDC report that found the coronavirus spread among young attendees at an overnight camp in Georgia. Caputo, Alexander and others claimed that the timing of the August report was a deliberate effort to undermine the president's push on children returning to schools in the fall.
Most recently, Alexander on Friday asked CDC to change its definition of “pediatric population” for a report on coronavirus-related deaths among young Americans slated for next week, according to an email that Caputo shared with POLITICO.

“[D]esignating persons aged 18-20 as ‘pediatric’ by the CDC is misleading,” Alexander wrote, arguing that the report needed to better distinguish between Americans of different ages. “These are legal adults, albeit young.”

Caputo defended his team’s interventions as necessary to the coronavirus response. “Buried in this good [CDC] work are sometimes stories which seem to purposefully mislead and undermine the President’s Covid response with what some scientists label as poor scholarship — and others call politics disguised in science,” Caputo told POLITICO.
The battles over delaying or modifying the reports have weighed on CDC officials and been a distraction in the middle of the pandemic response, said three individuals familiar with the situation. "Dr. Redfield has pushed back on this," said one individual. "These are scientifically driven articles. He's worked to shake some of them loose."
Kates, the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health expert, defended the CDC's process as rigorous and said that there was no reason for politically appointed officials to review the work of scientists. “MMWRs are famously known for being very clear about their limitations as well as being clear for what they've found," she said.
Kates also said that the CDC reports have played an essential role in combating epidemics for decades, pointing to an MMWR posted in 1981 — the first published report on what became the HIV epidemic.

“Physicians recognized there was some kind of pattern and disseminated it around the country and the world,” Kates said. “We can now see how important it was to have that publication, in that moment.”