Paul E. Alexander
Paul Elias Alexander is a Canadian independent scientist, and a former Trump administration official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alexander was recruited from his part-time, unpaid position at McMaster University to serve as an aide to HHS assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo in March 2020. In that role, Alexander pressured federal scientists and public health agencies to suppress and edit their COVID-19 analyses to make them consistent with Trump's rhetoric.
Paul E. Alexander | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Health researcher |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | McMaster University |
| Thesis | Clinical practice and public health guidelines: The making of appropriate strong recommendations when the confidence in effect estimates is low (2015) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gordon Guyatt |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Health research |
Within the Trump Administration, Alexander advocated for a strategy of mass infection of the public with COVID-19 to build herd immunity. He sought to muzzle federal scientists and public health agencies to prevent them from contradicting the Trump Administration's political talking points.