Meet Michael Caputo. He’s the new top communications person at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
HHS Game of Thrones in a Time of Coronavirus
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The Azar Watch
Caputo, a former Trump campaign official, was reportedly sent over to HHS to keep an eye on current HHS Secretary Alex Azar. An April 15, 2020 POLITICO report cites two unnamed White House sources who said the president’s staff believe Azar has been behind recent critical reports about the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic to make himself look good.
White House officials have reportedly been frustrated with Azar since last year, when Azar’s long-running feud with Medicare chief Seema Verma, Azar’s nominal deputy went public. Verma worked for then Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s as a Medicaid consultant.
It did not take long for the long knives to come out as reports appeared on April 23, that Azar had initially turned over the handling of the pandemic to what five White House sources called a “dog breeder.” Let the Azar watch begin.
After being one of the primary faces of the administration early in the pandemic, Azar has been noticeably absent recently from daily White House briefings. Will a new HHS Secretary be far behind? Azar replaced orthopedic surgeon and former Georgia Congressman Tom Price, M.D. as HHS Secretary in 2017 after Price got into hot water over a travel corruption scandal.
Michael Caputo Tweets
Where you stand on Michael Caputo will depend on where you sit politically.
He recently authored a book titled, “The Ukraine Hoax,” alleging a conspiracy behind Trump’s impeachment. He may have insights into the Ukraine as he once worked for Boris Yeltsin while living in Moscow and also performed public relations work for a subsidiary to Russian state-owned energy conglomerate Gazprom. Caputo told the Buffalo News in 2016 that he was not “proud of the work today, but at the time, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wasn’t such a bad guy.”
Like the president, Caputo has been a serial Tweeter. The POLITICO story chronicled some of Caputo’s now deleted Twitter feed, including: “For the Democrat 2020 victory strategy to work, 100,000+ Americans have to die,” Caputo wrote on March 11 tweet. “For the Democrat 2020 victory strategy to work, you have to believe the media.”
The tweets are vulgar, provocative, numerous and we will not reprint them here. But you can find them on CNN here.
“I’m delighted to have Michael Caputo join our team at [HHS] as our Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, especially at this critical time in our nation’s public health history,” Azar posted on Twitter on April 15. Probably as delighted as getting the shovel from the executioner to dig your own grave.
HHS will now be in the news. But it will not be over healthcare. It will be about infighting and power.
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Discussion
This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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