Human sacrifice to win the news cycle
By 
Trump has succeeded in getting the CDC to recommend COVID-19 testing only for people who are already symptomatic:
After weeks of encouraging people to get tested if they may have been exposed to COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly changed course this week and is now telling the public testing might not be necessary.
The public health reasons for the change were not immediately clear.
President Donald Trump has said previously that he thinks the U.S. conducts too many tests, falsely claimed it’s behind a surge in cases, and complained testing makes the U.S. look bad compared to other countries.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters that the reversal from the CDC “strains credulity.”
“The only plausible rationale is they want fewer people taking tests,” said Cuomo.
The White House and CDC did not answer questions about the change, which was made quietly on the CDC website this week. Questions were referred to CDC’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, which is run by HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who as a Cabinet secretary reports directly to Trump.
And in case there was any doubt, CNN has established that the only reasonable causal inference is in fact exactly what happened:
A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN.
“It’s coming from the top down,” the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new guidelines raise the bar on who should get tested, advising that some people without symptoms probably don’t need it — even if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person.
Previously, the CDC said viral testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic.
From a public health standpoint, this is insane. Testing people who aren’t symptomatic is actually more important if you actually want to suppress tie virus:
Trump warping the CDC guidelines to exclude asymptomatic testing is like an air traffic controller turning off the radar.— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) August 26, 2020
But of course Trump doesn’t care about suppressing the virus, he cares about winning short-term news cycles, so here we are. Time for another round of interviews with “undecided” white guys in Ohio who have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980 talking about how awesome tonight’s fascist rally on Zoom is.