Political Interference in the Spotlight at House Pandemic Hearing

 House Republicans and Democrats each criticized their opponents' political interference in COVID-19 policy during a hearing Wednesday on the future of the coronavirus pandemic.

"President Biden's CDC discarded historical practices to allow a radical teachers' union that just so happens to be a major supporter of Democrats to bypass agency norms and directly change official CDC guidance" on keeping schools open, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), ranking member of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said during the hearing. "The damaging edits by union bosses effectively kept thousands of schools shuttered across the country, which locked millions of children out of their classrooms. The Biden administration abandoned medical science and replaced it with political science."

Committee member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) begged to differ. "It is not in any way unusual or improper for the CDC to engage with stakeholders about how guidelines will be implemented in practice," he said. "While Republicans accuse the Biden administration of trying to keep schools closed, the reality is exactly the opposite. Today under the Biden administration's leadership virtually every school is open ... Hearing input from teachers on how to best achieve this is not improper. What is improper is having political appointees routinely apply pressure to career scientists to impact public health guidance."

Krishnamoorthi noted that "multiple witnesses, including Dr. Deborah Birx," a member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, told the subcommittee staff that "CDC's testing guidelines were altered in August 2020 specifically to reduce the amount of testing being conducted at a time when no vaccines and few treatments were available ... Why did the Trump administration do this? Not because it was sound scientifically, but because they thought that the high number of cases was making them look bad politically."

Questions About Conflicts of Interest

Republicans also asked why the CDC didn't include a "conflict of interest" statement noting that the teachers' unions had had input into the school-related guidance. "As physicians, as published authors, medical doctors, we publish in medical journals and as you all know firsthand, there's a requirement for disclosures of financial interest, and also disclosures of any conflicts of interest," Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, MD (R-Ind.), an ophthalmologist, said to the two physicians on the witness panel. "Dr. Walensky, I just wanted to ask if the CDC, when they published their February 2021 [school opening] guidance, did you think to put a footnote to the teachers' union or think to disclose that there was a conflict of interest in getting information almost verbatim from the teachers' union?"

"I think our guidance and recommendations are a bit different than publication in a medical journal," said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD. "We do, by standard practice, get feedback from many different organizations, from many different stakeholders, not just in our school guidance, but in other guidances as well. And so we don't necessarily list who we speak with to receive that feedback." She volunteered to supply a list of the stakeholders CDC had talked with to formulate the guidance.

Republicans also were unhappy that Anthony Fauci, MD, President Biden's chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was not at the hearing. Scalise said that although subcommittee Republicans invited him to appear, "regrettably, he sent this letter that he was unable to attend, because he would need to be invited by the chairman with permission from the Biden administration. So Mr. Chairman, hopefully, you will invite Dr. Fauci; I think we all want to hear from him."

In response, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the subcommittee chair, noted that "It is very clear that there have been several political attacks made against Dr. Fauci," and that he didn't want such attacks to continue at the current hearing. He added, "It is my understanding that the [Republican] minority was made aware of who our intended witnesses were going to be, but no request was made to me to invite Dr. Fauci."

Progress of the Vaccination Campaign

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, one of the witnesses at the hearing, about the administration's progress on the campaign to get all eligible Americans vaccinated. "We have been able to develop, produce, and distribute vaccines at a scale that is truly historic for our country, and the impact of that has been literally life-saving," Murthy said. "We have now 217 million plus people who have been vaccinated in the United States ... We have saved during this vaccination campaign -- over the last year plus -- over 1 million lives, and have prevented over 10 million hospitalizations."

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said it was "infuriating" that New York City mayor Eric Adams (D) has told some of the city's professional athletes that they don't need to be vaccinated against COVID-19, while 1,500 city employees have been fired for failing to comply with the city's vaccine mandate. She asked Walensky what science was being followed in that instance. Walensky responded that the CDC's guidance was made on a national level, and it was up to local leaders to apply it to their local jurisdictions. "This is critically important because this disease is local -- what is happening with disease in your county, in your jurisdiction" is what matters, she said.

Future of COVID Funding

The ending of available federal funding to pay for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments was also discussed by committee members on both sides of the aisle. Rep. Malliotakis told Walensky that although Democrats in Congress are trying to pass more COVID funding, "my concern is that there have been billions of dollars in fraud involving the Paycheck Protection Program and unemployment insurance fund ... Have you had any conversations with your colleagues in the administration on how to ensure that this money that was fraudulently taken from the taxpayers is returned to the treasury? Because I am hesitant to support any type of additional funding if we are not going to have accountability."

"We're at a critical juncture right now where we are low on funds in the federal government in order to not only purchase vaccines, boosters, tests, and therapeutics, but to deliver them and administer them to the American people," Walensky replied. "We are concerned about our ability to look at vaccine effectiveness studies" as well as studies of long COVID.

Although the country has begun to emerge from the pandemic, "if we want to sustain and build on this progress, Congress must provide the necessary funding to execute President Biden's National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan," Clyburn said as the hearing came to a close. "This plan, if fully funded, will equip our nation to protect against and treat the coronavirus, prepare for new variants, ensure schools and businesses stay open safely, and continue leading a global vaccination effort. If Congress fails, we increase the risk that the coronavirus will become a crisis once again."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/97968