The Biden administration didn’t have data on students’ learning loss when the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its COVID-19 school reopening guidance, internal emails show.
The emails also indicate that Dr. Anthony Fauci flagged an article citing scientific studies disputing the need for students to stay 6 feet apart, noting that the rule appeared to be based on “decades-old research.” Additionally, the CDC denied a Harvard University public health expert’s request for state-level vaccine distribution data, which she needed for her research about how policies affected vaccinations, the emails show.
“These emails show the CDC forged ahead and crafted pandemic policy based on poor data – even after they’ve been warned old and out-of-date research was being used to support their guidelines,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told Fox News. “First, the CDC allowed teachers’ unions to write the guidance on school reopenings, and now we just learned the CDC isn’t publishing large portions of the COVID data it collects.”
CDC officials recently acknowledged in unrelated internal emails that the agency must clean up its data-gathering process, which hindered the pandemic response, Politico reported.
APT provided the emails to Fox News after obtaining them through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted to the CDC.
The government didn’t have data concerning learning loss in various communities, emails show just one day before the CDC issued school reopening guidance.
“We don’t have federally collected data on what is happening inside schools,” Donna Harris-Aikens, deputy chief of staff at the Department of Education, said during a Feb. 11, 2021, briefing between CDC and department officials and Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat.
Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, flagged for Walensky an article published in a health- and science-centric publication that was critical of the CDC’s guidelines for school reopening.
