Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar appeared before the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, for a hearing to “examine the Trump Administration’s unprecedented political interference in the work of scientists and public health experts… the Administration’s refusal to provide accurate and clear public health information, and the failure of the Administration to develop and implement a comprehensive national plan to contain the coronavirus….” Democratic Chairman James Clyburn laid 207,000 deaths at Trump’s door.
Ranking member Steve Scalise responded by outlining the national Covid plan, accusing those who denied such a plan as simply not willing to read it. He reviewed various initiatives: Project Airbridge, launched early on, for obtaining needed PPE, which included use of the Defense Production Act; the March 16, 2020 act, “15 Days To Slow the Spread”; the April 16, 2020 Guidelines on Opening Up; the May 24, 2020 Strategic Testing Plan; and the Operation Warp Speed push for vaccines. In general there was a lot more heat than light generated. Scalise made obligatory references to “China’s lies” as an excuse, but his only example was that China told us that “human-to-human transmission” was impossible. (It took the first two weeks of January before China could assert that there was “human-to-human transmission.”)
And Maxine Waters had a disgraceful performance, claiming Azar appeared without knowing what he should know. (She asked for detailed numbers about specific states, which Azar both correctly characterized and then promised the exact numbers for her. But her “gotcha” moment, that he had failed to memorize every number, was transparently ridiculous.) Most members of the subcommittee largely repeated talking points prepared by staff, drawn from imprecise or incorrect media reports.
Azar objected to unscientific attacks upon the Warp Speed vaccine program as having the effect of driving up the vaccine hesitancy in the country, which would increase deaths. He also described the necessity of balancing “health vs. health” — that is, dealing with both the battle against Covid and against the excess deaths and problems that arise from lockdowns, including suicides; opioid usage; drops in cancer screenings, mammographies, colonoscopies, CAT scans; and increases in strokes and heart attacks.
