Trump’s ‘forced’ worship guidance left CDC official scared people would ‘get sick and perhaps die’, emails say

The White House Covid-19 response team was deeply divided under the Trump administration, with top health experts reportedly privately excoriating the policies pursued by the president and his team.

New emails obtained and published by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis contain discussions between members of the team about guidance for places of worship, an area that became an issue of controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s Covid-19 response.

In the emails, the White House is sharply criticised by Dr Jay Butler, the Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), for guidance issued by the agency that stated houses of worship could remain open, while leaders were encouraged to reduce the size of attending congregations.

The guidance came in May of 2020, when many businesses and public spaces were closing completely in the face of the first wave of Covid-19 in the US.

“This is not good public health [policy],” Dr Butler is seen telling other CDC officials in the emails. “I am very troubled on this Sunday morning that there will be people who get sick and perhaps die because of what we were forced to do.”

The admission that the agency was “forced” to change the guidance giving houses of worship the green light to stay open is a shocking revelation that adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that the Trump White House did not take the virus as seriously as it should have when it first began hitting US shores months before a vaccine would be developed.

Mr Trump’s administration already faced criticism for the often contradictory messages that would result from the former president’s own remarks and protocols related to Covid-19; he and his team were often seen maskless at indoor events even when in municipalities where mask orders were in place throughout the 2020 campaign season.

The former president’s apparently cavalier attitude towards the virus led to very different campaign styles between him and Joe Biden during the campaign, with his Democratic opponent opting for far more virtual events in the hopes of avoiding the spread of Covid-19.

Mr Trump would go on along with his wife to be infected at a “superspreader” event at the White House celebrating a successful Supreme Court nomination that led to numerous infections among White House staff and guests just weeks before the election.

In other emails obtained by the committee and published this week, Covid-19 task force members including Dr Deborah Birx are seen sharply criticising officials working for the administration who opposed lockdown measures and other anti-Covid protocols.

The Trump administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic was seen as a major factor in Mr Trump’s defeat to Mr Biden in the 2020 election.

Mr Biden offered an olive branch to his predecessor on that issue this week, however, in remarks about his response to the new Omicron variant of Covid-19, during which Mr Biden complimented the fact pace of development of a Covid-19 vaccine under the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed”.