Time For Today's Episode Of WE DON'T NEED NO F*CKIN' CDC!

CDC guidelines on reopening America without killing everyone? Why would anybody want something like that?

Donald Trump is president, coronavirus is so over ,* and everything in US America is just going great. Therefore why would we let some kind of Deep State quote-unquote "CDC" pretend otherwise? We wouldn't, that's what!

The AP is reporting that the CDC was set to release a 17-page report, "Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Framework," to give local officials all over the country some best practices to safely reopen. It was supposed to be a Good Thing! The Trump administration had released its own minimal weak shit guidelines for the grand reopening, but has been promising something very detailed was coming.

But we guess the Trump administration didn't like the very detailed something the CDC came up with for some reason, and anyway, we don't need no fuckin' CDC guidelines, so they are being shelved:

It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance "would never see the light of day," according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Just ... what? Why? Huh? Were the guidelines bad ? 

 Tell us,   New York Times :

In a senior staff meeting at the White House last week, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, expressed concern that the guidelines were "overly prescriptive," according to a person familiar with the discussion. Mr. Meadows' concern, the official said, was that the guidelines were too uniform and regressive for places with minimal numbers of cases.

And it's not like COVID-19 is coming to rural areas that didn't have much COVID-19 before, oh wait, the bloodbath is only just beginning in rural areas .

The guidelines — somebody at the CDC leaked them to the AP, in case you are wondering if the CDC is going apeshit about this — are totally normal. They list out recommendations and phases for:

• childcare facilities

• schools and day camps

• churches

• employers with "vulnerable workers"

• restaurants and bars

• mass transit services

You know, all the places that might want some guidelines, and for which local officials might want some guidelines, to help them establish policy.

The Times reports that the Trump administration was most upset by the guidelines for churches, because it's a well-known fact that it is illegal to require people to socially distance FROM JESUS in the United States of Christian America. (Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo reported this week that Attorney General Bill Barr is misusing a statute in the 1994 crime bill, intended to be about investigating police misconduct, invoking the law to go after police departments and other authorities for discriminating against Christians during coronavirus. Yes, this is hell we live in now.)

In fact, the guidance is very clear that the CDC is not trying to prevent people from grinding on Jesus as their faith traditions command them, that this has nothing to do with religious freedom. Rather it's to protect fellowshipping Jesus grinders from grinding on each other in a way that increases the likelihood they'll get to grind on Jesus in His presence very soon , because they dead. The CDC guidelines recommend keeping religious gatherings as virtual as possible; social distancing and masks for in-person gatherings, which we guess is a sin because covering your face is covering THE IMAGE OF GOD and the Lord hates it when he has to play peek-a-boo with His flock; hand sanitizer stations; and, they dunno, maybe put up some signs at church that say how to let the Spirit in while keeping the COVID out.

Oh and maybe have soloists instead of the whole choir for a bit? And a couple other helpful suggestions?

Clearly churches following these guidelines would feel just like Jesus's agony in the garden of Gethsemane. Clearly.

As the AP notes, this seems exemplary of both the White House's constant sidelining of the CDC, and also its desire to fob all responsibility for the coronavirus response off on the states, while openly sabotaging states' responses. Will some version of these guidelines ever be officially released? Unclear.

But this sure does appear to be part of a larger trend, at least from the GOP death cult side of things. When Trump issued his executive order banning states from closing meatpacking plants, the CDC and OSHA had just released guidelines, helpful suggestions, on how meat plants might more safely package meats without a bunch of workers getting sick and barfing virus into your bacon. It was particularly weird, because the guidance the CDC had been issuing before that were actual step-by-step orders. But suddenly, they were just helpful suggestions. You know, if Smithfield and Tyson feel like doing anything to try to keep all their workers from getting coronavirus. Totally optional! Don't worry, Donald Trump knows the CDC is not your real dad!

Meanwhile, this week we've seen Republican governors in both Florida and Arizona take steps to make the coronavirus just magically disappear, by ordering the medical examiner to stop releasing lists of COVID-19 deaths ( Florida ), and ordering scientists at the state university to stop doing the COVID-19 modeling the state asked them to do , and also repo-ing their data ( Arizona ).

Because if you issue real guidelines and make real models and keep real tallies of deaths, then that means the pandemic must be real and it might not be safe to just reopen America all half-cocked with your pants down. Better to just bury everything in the backyard and stick your head in the sand and convince everybody it's FINEJUSTFINE to get back to normal life and restore Donald Trump's beautiful economy to its former glory.

In news that's probably related, here is Pete Hegseth from Fox News — yeah, the one who doesn't wash his hands, and by the look of his gross skin, not his face or his ass either — saying everybody should just go out and get infected, based on science he probably learned from Dr. Oz and Brian Kilmeade. 

Fox News' Pete Hegseth calls for people to go out and get infected by coronavirus: "Now that we are learning more,… https://t.co/20DegEKAeE

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona) 1588868262.0 

So many people are going to die this summer.

* not over 

[ AP / New York Times ]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE! 

Wonkette is fully funded by readers like YOU. If you love Wonkette, SUPPORT WONKETTE FINANCIALLY.

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .