Dear fellow MoveOn member,

On July 10, the Trump administration ordered hospitals to bypass the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and send all COVID-19 data to a central
database at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).^1 

The Trump administration’s new order means that information vital to
tracking the COVID-19 pandemic, including daily reports about patients and
the number of available ventilators, will no longer go to the CDC—a
federal agency with the expertise to collect this data—but to a new
centralized system managed by the health data firm TeleTracking, which
received a “noncompetitive, multimillion-dollar contract” for this
“duplicative health data system.”^2

[ [link removed] ]Tell Congress we must continue sending COVID-19 data to the CDC, as it
is the agency best positioned to help our country emerge from the pandemic
as safely as possible.

Unlike the CDC database, the HHS database is not open to the public, which
undermines researchers, health officials, and others who depend on this
data to conduct research and make crucial public health decisions, and
hinders the efforts to curtail our nation’s surging COVID-19 cases. And if
the Trump administration wanted to withhold or skew data, with this new
database, they could do so with impunity.

We are calling on Congress to immediately step in to revoke the Trump
administration’s order to make hospitals report vital COVID-19 data not to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but to the Department of
Health and Human Services.

[2]Sign Eric's petition

Four of the CDC’s former directors, from both Republican and Democratic
administrations, wrote a joint letter commending the CDC’s commitment to
providing sound public health guidance and condemning politicians who are
attempting to undermine the agency.

“The CDC is home to thousands of experts who for decades have fought
deadly pathogens such as HIV, Zika and Ebola,” CDC’s former directors
wrote. “These are the people best positioned to help our country emerge
from this crisis as safely as possible. Unfortunately, their sound science
is being challenged with partisan potshots, sowing confusion and mistrust
at a time when the American people need leadership, expertise and
clarity.”^3

This move by the Trump administration is yet another dangerous,
politically-driven decision in its mishandling of the coronavirus crisis,
and Congress must immediately step in to revoke the Trump administration’s
order to make hospitals report COVID-19 data not to the CDC but to the
non-transparent, politicized, and untrustworthy database at the Department
of Health and Human Services.

[ [link removed] ]Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to
your friends.

Thanks!

—Eric Williams

Sources:

1. “Trump Administration Strips C.D.C. of Control of Coronavirus Data,”
The New York Times, July 14, 2020
[link removed]

2. Ibid.

3. “We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way
Trump has.” The Washington Post, July 14, 2020
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