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CDC Watered Down Coronavirus Testing Guidelines Over Objections of Scientists

HeadlineSep 18, 2020

The New York Times reports a recommendation by the CDC to radically scale back coronavirus testing was not written by scientists and was published over their strenuous objections. Last month, the CDC’s website quietly changed its guidance to recommend that people without symptoms should not be tested — even if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person. The new CDC guidelines contain basic scientific errors, suggesting they were drafted by a political operative rather than an expert in infectious diseases. One unnamed federal official told The New York Times, “That was a doc that came from the top down, from [Health and Human Services] and the [White House] task force.”

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