Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, said in an interview on Sunday that misinformation and denial about the coronavirus pandemic had occurred in the White House.
Early in the spring, there were people in the White House who denied the severity of the disease. “There were people who definitely believed it was a joke,” she said in the interview on the CBS news program ‘Face the Nation’.
This disbelief has been echoed in many pockets in the United States, because at the start of the pandemic, public officials did not fully describe the spectrum of diseases that could trigger the virus. “And they saw people get Covid and go well,” she explained.
Incomplete messages, according to her, had devastating consequences. While he does not pres. Trump, who initially described the pandemic as a farce, did not name Dr. Birx noted that ‘every time a statement is made by a political leader that is not in line with public health needs, it has derailed our response. This is also the reason why I was on the road, because I was not censored on the road. ”
Especially in the summer and autumn, dr. Birx traveled to several states and met with governors and local officials to talk about preventative measures, including wearing masks and social distances.
She passed the stream of information to Mr. Trump described the virus as chaotic and uncoordinated, saying that to this day she did not know the source of the information he had received. “I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made,” she said.
Dr. Birx has come under criticism from public health experts for being part of the Trump apparatus that promotes misleading and sometimes erroneous material. She was reprimanded for not resisting the president’s misinformation about the severity of the pandemic, for promoting certain false treatment, and for not adequately addressing the White House’s conflicting messages and approaches. last spring was out of control and then spread. throughout the country during the summer and fall.
She said that when she had a significant disagreement with the coronavirus policy and practice announced by the White House within a few days, a negative story about it would appear.
“I could not do national press,” she said. “The other thing that was very important to me was that I would not go outside the commando.”
In the interview, she said that she had little exposure to Mr. Trump had and did not know if he read the regular reports she submitted to Vice President Mike Pence.
She said she plans to announce her retirement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within four to six weeks.