Why Were US Epidemiologists Not Allowed to Study Covid in China?
They would have, if Trump hadn’t fired them all
In February 2020, the Trump administration chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and for keeping US experts from entering the country to assist. But the truth is that it was Trump himself who removed them.
“We had a large operation of experts in China who were brought back during this administration, some of them months before the outbreak,” said one of the people who witnessed the withdrawal of US personnel. “You have to consider the possibility that our drawdown made this catastrophe more likely or more difficult to respond to.”
“You’re Fired!” Trump Cleans Out the CDC, Closes Down NSF and USAID Offices in China
From 2017, when Trump first took office, and continuing through 2020, the US CDC staff in China shrank from 47 to just 14 people. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the global relief program which had a role in helping China monitor and respond to outbreaks, also shut their Beijing offices on Trump’s watch, and in 2018, the USDA recalled the manager of their animal disease monitoring program. The Trump administration also eliminated the position of a U.S. trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists, who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases.
The US trainer, Dr. Linda Quick, worked with Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases. As an American CDC employee, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier.
No other foreign disease experts were embedded to lead the program after Quick left in July, according to sources. An embedded expert can often get word of outbreaks early, after forming close relationships with Chinese counterparts.
After Reuters’ story about the elimination of the key CDC position in China, Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign seized on it for fundraising. In a mass email to supporters, it accused Trump’s critics of “siding with the Chinese” and helping Beijing with a “cover-up.”
Sources said Quick could have provided real-time information to US and other officials around the world during the first weeks of the outbreak, when the Chinese government tamped down on the release of information and provided erroneous assessments.
Other positions lost included medical epidemiologists and other experts in infectious diseases, including local hires. “Local staffers had a real depth of knowledge,” said one person who was part of the purge, but asked to speak anonymously. “There’s a loss of deep expertise and institutional knowledge.”
Trump Slashed Budgets and When Congress Didn’t Play Along, He Withheld Funds
In February 2020, the Trump Administration also withheld $104 million in Congressionally-approved payments to USAMRIID at Fort Detrick and to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense (USAMRICD) at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Senators went looking for answers and discovered that the Trump Administration had withheld payment for laboratory research since September 2019.
Trump’s White House pushed US agencies with a presence in China to de-fund programs there along with the positions to manage them, according to a U.S. official who spoke to Reuters.
Republican Ambassador Told to “Get With the Program”
The source said Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador to China and a former Republican governor of Iowa, tried to remind the White House of the importance of the US presence in China but was told to “get with the program” by an administration official.
After Reuters’ story about the elimination of the key CDC position in China, Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign seized on it for fundraising. In a mass email to supporters, it accused Trump’s critics of “siding with the Chinese” and helping Beijing with a “cover-up.”
