Donald Trump has been pushing the CDC to change their testing guidelines and recommendations for COVID based on his desire to lower the overall positive number of cases ahead of the election. So, the CDC did his bidding - on the exact day that Dr. Fauci was under anesthesia, having surgery for throat polyps.
CNN reports that the COVID Task Force meeting occurred on August 20th and during this meeting, they updated their guidelines to reflect the position that "asymptomatic people may not need to be tested for Covid-19, even if they've been in close contact with an infected person."
Dr. Fauci said:
As a reminder, the Washington Post reported that up to 40% of people with COVID are asymptomatic! And now the CDC doesn't want them tested at all, so they are literally going to walk around infecting everyone. This is NOT a good recommendation, unless you are trying to desperately win reelection and the only way you think you can do that is by lying to the entire country about the numbers of cases going down.
Just a reminder: the virus does not care about polls or testing. It will infect whoever it wants.
Dr. Fauci told Dr. Sanjay Gupta that the CDC was pressured "from the top down" to change the testing guidelines. When asked about this, Admiral Brett Giroir, the administration's newest coronavirus testing point person (aka paid liar) told reporters on Wednesday that "the new guidelines had the White House Coronavirus Task Force's stamp of approval."
Of course they do. Trump asked for them.
When asked if Dr. Fauci signed off on them, Giroir flat-out lied by saying: "Yes, all the docs signed off on this before it even got to the task force level. We worked on this all together to make sure that there was absolute consensus that reflected the best possible evidence, and the best public health for the American people."
The new guidelines were "quietly published on the CDC website on Monday", in an apparent effort to fly under the radar. But, the media caught on almost immediately. Many state officials, including Governor Cuomo (NY) and Governor Newsom (CA) have already publicly stated that they will not follow these guidelines.
Not testing doesn't mean the cases go away. It just means we won't know about them. And that does nothing to stop the spread of the virus.
