HUGE—an @NPR investigation uncovered info about private firm awarded contract taking over CDC hospital COVID data.

TeleTracking CEO Michael Zamagias had links to NY real estate world—a firm that financed billions $ in projects with—Trump Organization. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/29/896645314/irregularities-in-covid-reporting-contract-award-process-raises-new-questions

2) Also weird: “The process by which HHS awarded the contract is normally used for innovative scientific research, not the building of government databases.”

3) More weird: “HHS had directly phoned the company about the contract, according to a company spokesperson.”

4) “thousands of hospitals had used the CDC system for years to report infection control data. So it raised questions: Why the change? Why now?

The CDC has been tracking these numbers for some 15 years.“

5) “it is unclear why the government, already underwater with the spread of COVID, didn't decide instead to tinker with the existing system”

6) “Redfield, CDC's director, said the reason HHS chose TeleTracking was cuz it provided "rapid ways to update the type of data that we're collecting" none of which seems to be happening. The new software requires all the data to be keyed in manually, just like CDC once did.