Emails apparently reveal that an official at the Department of Health and Human Services tried to prevent the government’s chief infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci from highlighting the risks that coronavirus poses to children, reports POLITICO.
Paul Alexander, senior adviser to Michael Caputo, HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs, is suggested as dictating what Fauci should say during media interviews.
The emails cited by the outlet ostensibly show that Alexander instructs press officers and other staff at the National Institutes of Health on issues broached by Fauci, weighing in on the medical adviser’s planned responses to questions posed by media outlets like Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and the science journal Cell.
Purportedly couched as scientific arguments, Alexander’s messages are claimed to often contradict mainstream science in favour of promoting political positions espoused by the current US administration on anything ranging from COVID-19 treatments to schools reopening.
Accordingly, an email dated 27 August is made reference to, pertaining to a press-office summary of what Fauci intended to say in a Bloomberg interview. Alexander reportedly writes:
“I continue to have an issue with kids getting tested and repeatedly and even university students in a widespread manner…and I disagree with Dr. Fauci on this. Vehemently.”
In another email Alexander is suggested instructing Fauci’s press team ahead of an MSNBC interview.
“Can you ensure Dr. Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for children. There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did occur, the risk is essentially zero,” Alexander is said to have written.
POLITICO cites a statement attributed to Michael Caputo of the HHS as underscoring that Alexander “advises him on coronavirus pandemic policy”.
“Dr. Alexander … has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists… Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers. I hired Dr. Alexander for his expertise and not to simply resonate others’ opinions,” Caputo is cited as saying.
There has been no comment on the report from either Paul Alexander or NIH spokespeople.
Anthony Fauci, who has led NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades, responded to the report by dismissing claims someone told him what to say.
According to the outlet, he had not seen the purported emails and his staff had not urged him to downplay coronavirus risks to children or the need for them to wear masks.
“No one tells me what I can say and cannot say. I speak on scientific evidence,” said Fauci.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who also serves on the White House coronavirus task force, has been often criticized over his assessment of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US.
Donald Trump pushed back such an evaluation during an interview that aired Sunday on “Fox News Sunday.”
When questioned by Fox News in July about White House officials’ recent efforts to reportedly diminish Fauci’s credibility as an expert, Trump said that Fauci was “a little bit of an alarmist.” The president added that the medical adviser had “made some mistakes,” including his initial recommendation against wearing masks at the beginning of the pandemic.
