Despite reports of detailed documents on reopening prepared by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency on Thursday released guidance in the form of six one-page guides, so-called “decision tools” for workplaces, restaurants and bars, schools, childcare centers, camps, and mass transit systems considering reopening during the pandemic. As the Associated Press reports, the guides—laden with traffic signs and other flowchart-like graphics—are an edited version of a 17-page document drafted by the agency more than a month ago, and initially shelved by the Trump administration. The report offered specific advice to local authorities for how and when to reopen public places, but the AP reported last week that CDC scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to an agency official. And the AP notes that there’s even more guidance that the agency has authored—about 57 pages—that has not been posted, even as health experts and political officials push for the CDC to release as much instruction as possible for organizations deciding their next step.
“America needs and must have the candid guidance of our best scientists unfiltered, unedited, uncensored by president Trump or his political minions. The CDC report on reopening the country is an important piece of that guidance,” said Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who on Wednesday failed to pass a resolution calling for the CDC to release all documents.
While earlier versions of the guidance included advice for churches and other religious facilities wanting to resume in-person gatherings, there was no “decision tool” for faith leaders posted on Thursday. According to government emails obtained by the AP and an anonymous source inside the CDC, religious institutions’ guidelines were also made more lenient after the White House expressed concerns “about the propriety of the government making specific dictates to places of worship.” The faith-related advice that was removed included the suggestion of maintained distance between parishioners and limiting the size of gatherings. The AP notes that President Donald Trump “has championed religious freedom as a way to connect with conservative evangelical voters,” meeting with faith leaders in April about a phased-in return to in-person gatherings.
The dumbed-down guidance released by the CDC is almost painfully fitting for an administration whose president prefers to consume information through visuals like maps, charts, and—as then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo put it to the Washington Post in 2017—“killer graphics.” But still, the “decision tools” allow Trump to get in the way of public health and safety once again, as the AP notes many of the changes made to the document allow for more leniency, such as the addition of “as feasible” to the end of the guideline recommending those who run childcare centers “checking for signs and symptoms of children and staff.”
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