Department of Health and Human Services have been altering the weekly scientific reports issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) following the course of the coronavirus pandemic. They believe the reports are undermining Trump’s cheery pronouncements about the disease, and claim there is a “deep state” at the CDC determined to hurt the president.

Corruption is sometimes just an isolated scandal. But the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s response are illustrating just how corrupt the functioning of our government has become — and just how high the stakes are. Unfair advantages that the well-connected and wealthy have accumulated over decades produced a system that gives the “have-mores” even more in the middle of a global health crisis.