‘We want them infected.’ ‘There is no other way.’

Private emails pushed public apathetic COVID-19 response

“There is no other way,” then-White House science adviser Paul Alexander wrote in emails obtained by a House watchdog, published by Politico on Dec. 16. 

“We need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups to expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo and other top officials.

“Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk,” he falsely wrote, “so we use them to develop herd … we want them infected.”

Politico reported other emails, showing the spread of Alexander’s influence and for context quoted Kyle McGowan, the Donald Trump-appointed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief of staff who resigned mid-August. 

“It was understood that he [Alexander] spoke for Michael Caputo, who spoke for the White House,” McGowan said. “That’s how they wanted it to be perceived.” 

But, muddying the story, Politico also noted that “Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity … was under consideration or shaped the White House’s approach to the pandemic.”

A clarifying outside view was offered by Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, on MSNBC the next day. Pushing herd immunity was only one aspect of a broader anti-science agenda, he explained.

“I put together a brief document, I called it my October One Plan, by which we can bring things back down to containment and prevent this horrible fall surge,” recalled Hotez, in late July. “And, instead what they did was they made this tragic pivot, which was to create and launch a disinformation campaign. This was a deliberate disinformation campaign led by the president’s advisors, where they tried to make the case that the COVID deaths were not really due to COVID, [they were] due to other causes they downplayed the severity of the epidemic, they discredited masks, they created this fake concept of herd immunity, saying it occurs around 20-22%.”

This figure — cited by GOP Sen. Rand Paul, as one example — is less than a third of the generally-accepted level. 

“[The result] was deadly,” Hotez said. “The White House declared a war on science, and we fought back.” 

So, they made attempts to push back on the Alexander private emails story, denying their impact and ignoring how consistent they were with what the Trump administration and its allies publicly did. 

What’s more, Alexander’s very existence is evidence of anti-science sabotage. As noted above, he was appointed the science advisor to the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs. But a public affairs officer for an agency full of scientists has no need for a personal science advisor. His job is to facilitate the communication of those scientists — not to second-guess or obstruct them.