If all you did was look at the coronavirus figures in the U.S.—more than 16.9 million infected, over 306,000 dead, more deaths than 9/11 on three separate days in the course of a single week, the possibility of 450,000 lives lost by February 1—you might think that the Trump administration’s policy was to just sit back and let everyone get this highly contagious, very scary disease. And you wouldn‘t be wrong! In addition to the White House chief of staff literally telling CNN in October, “We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Donald Trump has spent the last year ignoring COVID-19 guidelines, encouraging insurgency in states where local governments have tried to stop the spread of the virus, and undermining scientists actually trying to prevent people from getting sick with a disease that can very much kill you if you’re not lucky enough to have a team of doctors and the best drugs in the world at your disposal. Still, it would be crazy—not to mention unconscionable and monstrous—to learn that a Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to purposely infect millions of Americans with the coronavirus, which of course is reportedly exactly what happened.
According to Politico, internal emails show that Paul Alexander, a Health and Human Services adviser until his departure this past fall, wrote to the head of the department on July 4: “We need to establish herd [immunity], and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD. Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk…so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected.” A few weeks later, he emailed Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn and nine other officials to say: “[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected” in order to reach “natural immunity…natural exposure.”
In a separate email to HHS’s top communications officials, Alexander wrote: “So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares? If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares…as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life….who cares if we test more and get more positive tests.” Not surprisingly, Alexander argued that colleges should remain open for the express purpose of causing infections to spread, telling Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield in a July 27 email: “We essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had…younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread.”
Nowhere in the emails does Alexander appear to note that in order to achieve “herd immunity” in the United States, more than 2 million people might have to die, according to an August analysis by the Washington Post. Nor does he seem to acknowledge that young, asymptomatic people can pass the disease onto more vulnerable members of the population. Or that, as of late September, roughly 40,000 people under the age of 65 had died from COVID-19. He does, however, concede that the virus disproportionately affects minority populations—and then seems to suggest that health agencies should keep that information to themselves so as not to hurt Trump’s reelection chances, while claiming that statistics (like Black people being three times as likely as white people to get the coronavirus) are Democrats’ fault.
While the administration has taken pains to distance itself from Alexander since his departure, with a senior administration official claiming to Politico that “his rants had zero impact on policy and communications,” others say that‘s not the case. According to Kyle McGowan, the CDC’s chief of staff until he left over the summer, “It was understood that he spoke for Michael Caputo, [then assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for public affairs], who spoke for the White House.” McGowan maintains that Alexander was able to delay weekly reports and water down guidance coming out of HHS. He also reportedly tried to prevent Anthony Fauci from speaking out about the risks of COVID-19 to children.
Alexander did not respond to Politico’s request for comment. In a statement, an HHS spokesperson insisted that Alexander’s demands for herd immunity “absolutely did not” impact department policy, adding, “Dr. Paul Alexander previously served as a temporary Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and is no longer employed at the Department.” Politico notes that senior Trump officials have repeatedly claimed that herd immunity has never been under consideration by the White House, though it literally hired an adviser who advocated such a strategy.
Responding to Alexander’s emails, Representative Jim Clyburn, who chairs the House’s coronavirus subcommittee, said the documents “Show a pernicious pattern of political interference by Administration officials. As the virus spread through the country, these officials callously wrote, ‘who cares‘ and ‘we want them infected.’ They privately admitted they ‘always knew’ the President’s policies would cause a ‘rise’ in cases, and they plotted to blame the spread of the virus on career scientists.”