SC’s Clyburn targets statements on ‘herd immunity’ in his coronavirus subcommittee
A top Trump science adviser allegedly floated the idea that the nation should develop “herd immunity” to coronavirus by exposing young people to the COVID-19 disease, said Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., who chairs the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
“Evidence recently obtained by the Select Subcommittee ... (shows) that a Trump Administration appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), (former) Senior Advisor Paul Alexander, privately strategized with other top Administration officials as far back as June 2020 about pursuing a so-called “herd immunity” strategy in response to the coronavirus pandemic,” according to a subcommittee memo Clyburn made public Wednesday.
“Dr. Alexander explicitly endorsed allowing the disease to spread widely among “[i]nfants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc.,” writing, “we use them to develop herd ... we want them infected.”
On MSNBC’s MTP Daily Thursday afternoon, Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for HHS and COVID testing czar said of Alexander’s “herd immunity” proposal, “this was wrong and it did not influence my policy or anything at the task force level to my knowledge.... It would have been a catastrophe of unbelievable proportions if (herd immunity) would have been our policy.”
On the same show, asked by host Chuck Todd if the nation needed a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Trump administration’s pandemic response, Clyburn replied, “We may. And I think that that’s something the new administration may need to take a look at.”
As for “herd immunity,” Clyburn told Todd, “Why would you want to just infect people, when you can take steps like masking, social distancing, and not having super-spreading events, and prevent the stuff from happening?”
Earlier this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Clyburn chairman of the new select subcommittee, an oversight group that is charged with investigating a range of matters connected to the pandemic.
In the Wednesday memo, Clyburn said his subcommittee obtained the documents in connection with “its ongoing investigation of political appointees’ interference” at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Clyburn, who also talked about the memo on the MSNBC Rachel Maddow show Wednesday night, told Politico the same day that HHS must cooperate with his subcommittee’s investigation and allow Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, which is under the HHS, to appear before the subcommittee. If Redfield does not come voluntarily, “I will be forced to start issuing subpoenas,” Clyburn told Politico on Wednesday.
Since it was established in April by a House resolution, the subcommittee has held numerous meetings and issued reports, including a 15-page Oct. 2 report which said the subcommittee had documented 47 incidents of the Trump administration’s political interference in coronavirus response planning. That interference, the subcommittee charged, overruled the views of top government scientists.