{"id":605808,"date":"2021-07-29T11:36:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T15:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=605808"},"modified":"2021-07-29T11:36:16","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T15:36:16","slug":"whistleblowers-accuse-bidens-hhs-efforts-made-to-downplay-the-degree-of-covid-infection-at-migrant-children-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/whistleblowers-accuse-bidens-hhs-efforts-made-to-downplay-the-degree-of-covid-infection-at-migrant-children-site\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblowers Accuse Biden\u2019s HHS: Efforts Made To \u2018Downplay The Degree Of COVID Infection\u2019 At Migrant Children Site"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhistleblowers-accuse-bidens-hhs-efforts-made-to-downplay-the-degree-of-covid-infection-at-migrant-children-site%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=605808&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-983824246.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Two whistleblowers have accused members of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of directing them to minimize the size of a coronavirus outbreak among migrant children housed in detention facilities.<\/p>\n<p>Arthur Pearlstein, a director at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and Lauren Reinhold, an attorney-adviser at the Social Security Administration, wrote in their <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1wrZNY8-x_3MHrD5BQsmfcGR3TFYIClGp\/view\">complaint<\/a> regarding the Fort Bliss Emergency Intake Site, near El Paso, Texas, between April and June of this year, \u201cCOVID was widespread among children and eventually spread to many employees. Hundreds of children contracted COVID in the overcrowded conditions. Adequate masks were not consistently provided to children, nor was their use consistently enforced. Every effort was made to downplay the degree of COVID infection at the site, and the size of the outbreak was deliberately kept under wraps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The complaint continues, \u201cAt a \u2018town hall\u2019 meeting with detailees, a senior U.S. Public Health Service manager was asked and refused to say how many were infected because \u2018if that graph [of infections] is going to The Washington Post every day, it\u2019s the only thing we\u2019ll be dealing with and politics will take over, perception will take over, and we\u2019re about reality, not perception.\u2019 All the manager would acknowledge is that several children had to be hospitalized. The manager also dismissed a detailee\u2019s concern that the children in the COVID tents were wearing basic disposable masks instead of N95 masks. The manager said N95 masks were unnecessary for the infected \u2013 even though uninfected detailees were working with the infected children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFederal detailees witnessed significant waste, fraud and abuse,\u201d the complaint alleges. \u201cWhen they attempted to express their concerns to federal managers they were told \u2014 time and again \u2014 it was the contractors that were in charge and government employees needed to be responsive to the contractors\u2019 needs. The contractors ignored or rejected most detailee concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor example, the shortage of underwear and other clothing for children has been widely reported,\u201d the complaint notes. \u201cThe problem persisted for weeks and months. Countless children reported these shortages to detailees. Boys said they had no underwear at all, while most simply had only one pair with nothing to change into. Detailees insisted that the children be supplied with underwear. Each time the answer was that shipments had not come in. Whenever detailees brought it up, they were told it was the contractor\u2019s responsibility. Detailees, private contractors and managers were well aware of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The complaint concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"20\">\n<p><em>Detailees were frequently reminded that everything at Fort Bliss was confidential. This ensured no effective oversight or accountability. Especially noteworthy was the fact that the identity of the federal contracting officer \u2014 responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts handed out to the private contractors \u2014 was never provided to the detailees (they repeatedly asked). Yet perversely, the detailees were also told that the contracting officer was the only federal employee authorized to bring any significant issues to any Fort Bliss private contractor.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In other words, other than the useless \u201cSuggestion Box\u201d (discussed at length in our July 7 letter), detailees had no internal recourse. Complementing the penchant for secrecy was management\u2019s reflexive aversion to bad news. For example: Regularly, when detailees reached the end of their term, a sheet was passed around with detailed instructions from the HHS Public Affairs Office on how, when asked, to make everything sound positive about the Fort Bliss experience and to play down anything negative.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe tents, officially referred to as Emergency Intake Shelters, were set up at Fort Bliss in El Paso in March to house unaccompanied migrants amid an influx arriving at the US-Mexico border.&nbsp; The only images of the tents that have been made public have come from two lawmakers who visited Fort Bliss to inspect the intake shelters in the spring,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-9837497\/Two-federal-whistleblowers-allege-Dept-HHS-instructed-downplay-migrant-coronavirus-outbreak.html\">The Daily Mail<\/a> noted.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two whistleblowers have accused members of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of directing them to minimize the size of a coronavirus outbreak among migrant children housed in &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}