Scientists were 'muzzled' under Trump, says whistleblower now working to predict next pandemic

A US government official who blew the whistle on Donald Trump’s attempts to “push” the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid has described how scientists were “muzzled” during the former president’s time at the White House.

Dr Rick Bright, an immunologist and influenza expert, was removed from his role as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda) in May last year after he criticised the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic.

In particular, he questioned the awarding of lucrative contracts to “cronies” and was outspoken in his condemnation of Mr Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine.

In an interview with the Telegraph Dr Bright described an atmosphere of fear of reprisals if officials spoke out.

“People were afraid of being called out or punished or ridiculed in some way because they spoke what they believed to be true. Scientists were muzzled. There was just a handful of people that were allowed to speak publicly and reporters were denied access to any level of scientific expertise within the government,” he said.

Dr Bright, who Mr Trump dismissed as a "creep", was transferred to a lesser role at the National Institutes for Health but eventually left the government. He told the Telegraph he and his family had to go into hiding for two months after receiving death threats.

He said he was shocked at how scientists were cowed into silence.

“I spoke up because of the dangers of the drug they were pushing onto the population without testing. Scientists saw what happened to me.

“But I was surprised to see people who had spent decades planning for these events and knew what needed to happen but were so afraid to speak up,” he said.

Dr Bright was speaking to the Telegraph as the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a $150 million grant to the Pandemic Prevention Institute, a global coalition of scientific partners that aims to be an “early warning system” for the next potential pandemic.

Dr Bright, CEO of the institute, said one of the “legacies” of his bruising experience at the heart of government was to ensure a non-political, global response to the next big disease outbreak.

The institute is already working with the World Health Organization’s Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin and the UK’s Global Pandemic Radar in a bid to bring together a network of laboratories and public and private sector institutions to share data.

“The data is siloed, Balkanised and fragmented. We have amazing genomic surveillance and epidemiological data. We also have data from academia and the private sector. There's gold mines and oil fields of data but it’s absolutely useless on its own.

“So our vision is to identify these different types of data and to build a common architecture where we can enable it to be aggregated and analysed in different ways and combinations,” he said.

“What types of data would have been most beneficial in September, October 2019, to tell us something unusual was emerging [in Wuhan]?.”

Dr Bright added that governments are bound to resort to nationalism in a pandemic response.

“I don't think we can control for that, we're going to have to let governments be governments and politics be politics. But we have to build in parallel a federated structure where scientists are connected and can share and transmit information with each other,” he said.

He added: “In all of our pandemic planning exercises in the United States and around the world no one ever factored in the variable of political interference.”

Despite his experience with the Trump administration, Dr Bright accepted an invitation by incoming US President Joe Biden to be part of the new administration’s coronavirus task force. He said he wanted to share his expertise - but added it was unlikely he would ever return to government work.

Dr Bright also feels complacency has crept into the response to the virus - he does not understand why there have not been more efforts made to develop a vaccine that is targeted at the Covid variants.

“I do think that some companies have started. But where is it and why aren't we rolling that out, instead of a third dose or booster dose of the same vaccine, when know the predominantly circulating virus has drifted from the original Wuhan strain,” he said.

Dr Bright also thinks that not enough effort is being made to understand why “vaccine breakthrough” cases - where people have developed Covid despite being double jabbed - are occuring. And he believes the US may have declared freedom from the virus too early - on July 4, Independence Day.

“It’s much harder to put the toothpaste back in the tube once it’s out,” he said. “Complacency is at fault - but also acceptance and tolerance.”

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