Art Caplan On Dr. Birx's Downplaying Risk Of COVID Spread In Schools

The Trump administration waged a pressure campaign against the C.D.C. to push messaging in line with President Trump’s agenda to reopen schools and downplay the risk of COVID-19 spread among younger populations, according to a report in the New York Times.

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House, was involved in the effort, a move medical ethicist Arthur Caplan told Boston Public Radio on Wednesday is inappropriate.

“Birx should be advising if you’re going to reopen you’ve got to test, if you’re going to reopen here’s the cut off point where you’ve got to close,” he said, “and what we’re getting is more of the political message that we’ve got to reopen, and that’s politics not science.”

Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.