Earlier this week, critical data on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website vanished without a trace.
According to HuffPost, the data concerned the availability of ICU and hospital beds around the country.
The policy change also had an immediate impact on independent researchers who use the data to track and forecast the toll of the virus across the country.
Likewise, doctors and hospital administrators were blindsided, as they track the data to prepare for coming waves of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
The Trump administration claims the problem will be fixed and insists the goal of the change was to get more data, not less, out to the public.
But the administration opted to keep to itself the chilling news that 18 states are in the “red zone” for COVID-19 cases, with more than 100 per 100,000 people last week.
