Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Trump's mob: Not contact tracing the Rose Garden-Barrett meet. And CDC virtually,
if not all, excluded from the minimum of contact tracing done around Trump cluster.

White House Is Not Tracing Contacts for ‘Super-Spreader’ Rose Garden Event

Since President Trump’s Covid diagnosis, numerous associates have tested positive, but the White House has not aggressively investigated the outbreak.


Despite being linked to seven coronavirus infections, the White House is not tracing contacts of those who attended the celebration for Judge Amy Coney Barrett
on Sept. 26. Al Drago for The New York Times

By Apoorva Mandavilli and Tracey Tully

Oct. 5, 2020

Despite almost daily disclosures of new coronavirus infections among President Trump’s close associates, the White House is making little effort to investigate the scope and source of its outbreak.

[...]

Any of the closely packed guests and staff members at the Rose Garden ceremony could have gone on to transmit the virus to many others, so the White House’s decision not to investigate the cluster of infections, and pinpoint the source, has potentially devastating consequences for hundreds of people, several experts warned.

“This is a total abdication of responsibility by the Trump administration,” said Dr. Joshua Barocas, a public health expert at Boston University, who has advised the City of Boston on contact tracing. “The idea that we’re not involving the C.D.C. to do contact tracing at this point seems like a massive public health threat.”

The White House official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said that the administration was following C.D.C. guidelines that recommend focusing on contacts within a two-day window from diagnosis. But public health experts said it was irresponsible to ignore the earlier gathering at the Rose Garden.

“You cannot argue against the fact that five or six people who attended that event all got infected, unless you argue that that was all random chance,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an epidemiologist and contact tracing expert. “There were a lot of people working at that event, and so they need to be contact tracing that whole event.”

[...]

After Mr. Trump’s illness was diagnosed, an internal C.D.C. email on Friday asked the agency’s scientists to be ready to go to Washington for contact tracing, but a request from the White House for assistance never came, according to two senior C.D.C. scientists.

Instead, the tracing efforts are being run by the White House Medical Unit, a group of about 30 doctors, nurses and physician assistants, headed by Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, who has been the public spokesman for Mr. Trump’s doctors.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said that a “robust contact tracing program” was underway “led by the White House Medical Unit with C.D.C. integration.” The “integration” refers to an epidemiologist from the C.D.C. who has been detailed to the unit since March, according to a White House official.

But the White House declined to name the scientist. And the C.D.C. referred queries back to the White House. Two senior C.D.C. scientists, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak, said they were unaware of such a role within the White House.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said in an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he had spoken to several officials who attended the event in the Rose Garden and that they had not been contacted by anyone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/health/contact-tracing-white-house.html