A 17-page document from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) providing specific guidance to states and local governments on how to safely transition away from stay-at-home policies has been shelved, officials at the agency said, and is likely to never be seen by those it was intended to help.
It’s been the standard in the past for the CDC to give such guidance during health crises. However, the Trump administration has attempted to control the messaging on its response to COVID-19 in a stricter fashion, including going so far as to restraining members of the coronavirus task force from appearing before a committee within the House of Representatives.
According to reporting from The Associated Press, the CDC document, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was scheduled to be released to the public last Friday, and gives detailed standards on how businesses, churches, schools and more could safely transition away from stay-at-home orders while at the same time reducing the possibility of spreading the coronavirus.
Among its many detailed recommendations, the document included advice for schools, such as keeping students’ desks six feet apart, curtailing school-wide assemblies, having lunch in classrooms and ending field trips. Restaurants were also encouraged, according to the report, to use single-use cutlery and condiments, and to set up sneeze guards at cash registers.
Although the CDC regularly receives calls from states and localities asking for guidance, the document, which could answer such questions in a more precise fashion, will likely “never see the light of day,” according to one CDC official who spoke with the AP. Rather than allow for the document’s release, it appears that the White House wants states to determine for themselves what standards should be used, without guidance from the CDC’s planned document to help them make the best science-based decisions.
A number of health experts have voiced criticism over the administration’s push for states to begin the process of easing stay-at-home orders across the nation, arguing that doing so risks spreading the disease even further (as of Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, more than 1.2 million individuals in the U.S. have been diagnosed with coronavirus, with close to 75,000 having died from it since the start of March).
Anthony Fauci, a prominent member of the White House coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has expressed his own concerns.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that when you pull back mitigation, you’re going to start seeing cases crop up here and there. If you’re not able to handle them, you’re going to see another peak, a spike, and then you almost have to turn the clock back to go back to mitigation,” Fauci has said.
Yet in spite of those worries from experts, President Donald Trump has suggested the net benefit from “reopening” states’ economies will outweigh the negatives that could come about.
“I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected, yes, will some people be affected badly — yes, but we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon,” Trump said to reporters on Tuesday about ending social distancing measures.
As states begin to ease stay-at-home orders, models aiming to predict the national death toll have shifted dramatically upward. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), for example, increased its projection this week, predicting 134,475 deaths due to COVID-19 by August, partially due to states winding back their social distancing rules.
The projection from IHME is a 60,000-count increase from what it had predicted in its previous report.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy