We've long known that Trump-regime health officials conspired to alter scientific reports to make the state of the coronavirus pandemic look better than it really was, but I can't say we've had this close of a look at them actively celebrating it.
House Democrats investigating the regime's handling of the pandemic uncovered emails between department officials that make it clear they actively coordinated to suppress scientific consensus and expressed glee when they were successful.
Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.
Pointing to one change — in which CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about the spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them — Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”
I cannot say I've ever legitimately and unironically said 'yippee' to celebrate anything but, if I did, I certainly wouldn't use the word to celebrate the manipulation of scientific reports that ultimately got people killed.
I don't know if any of this was criminal, but I feel like it should be. Whatever the findings of the select House committee on the coronavirus are, I hope it will lead to a tangible proposal for enforceable ethics reform. Even beyond the Trump regime's handling of the pandemic, our collective experience from the last four years tells us you can write all the ethics rules in the world and none of it will matter if it's not criminally enforceable.
People died because of this.