A Trump-appointed official at the Department of Health and Human Services pushed for the government to allow millions more people to get infected with the novel coronavirus as a way to achieve "herd immunity."
Politico reports that emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee show that Trump-appointed former HHS science adviser Paul Alexander sent an email this past July outlining the case for herd immunity, which epidemiologists have said is akin to mass human sacrifice.
"There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus," he wrote. "PERIOD."
Alexander also wrote that "infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk... we want them infected."
In an email written later in the month, Alexander said the best strategy for handling the pandemic would be to "flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected" so that the disease would go through the population more quickly and burn itself out.
Earlier leaked emails showed that Alexander, who was a key deputy to Trump loyalist Michael Caputo at HHS, frequently tried to interfere with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 guidance to make it more in line with Trump's statements about the pandemic.