Tag: Deborah Birx

Trump ‘exploded’ at Birx for making him feel ‘depressed’ because she wouldn’t whitewash COVID dangers: authors

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The authors of a new book about former President Donald Trump’s handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic told CNN’s Erica Hill on Tuesday that Trump last year angrily chewed out Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci for making him feel “depressed” about the novel coronavirus pandemic.

While appearing on CNN, Washington Post reporters Damian Paletta and Yasmine Abutaleb explained the delicate balance that Birx and other public health officials had to strike in trying to get Trump to back public health measures aimed at containing the virus.

All the same, Paletta said, no amount of flattery delivered by Birx could help her escape Trump’s wrath. Continue reading.

Trump targets Fauci, Birx in lengthy diatribe

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Former President Trump on Monday went on a tirade against Anthony Fauciand Deborah Birx, two of his former top medical advisers on the COVID-19 pandemic, excoriating their decisionmaking during his administration on the day after CNN aired previews of comments by the top government health experts.

Trump issued a lengthy statement in which he argued that he ignored both Fauci and Birx while in office as a benefit to the country and boasted that he was responsible for getting vaccines rapidly developed and approved.

“Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,” Trump said in a statement Monday. “They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine—putting millions of lives at risk.” Continue reading.

Birx tells CNN most U.S. covid deaths ‘could have been mitigated’ after first 100,000

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Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, said most coronavirus deaths in the United States could have been prevented if the Trump administration had acted earlier and more decisively.

Birx made her comments in the CNN documentary “Covid War: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out,” a clip from which the network released Saturday. The full documentary will air 9 p.m. Sunday.

In it, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta asked Birx how much of a difference she thinks it would have made had the United States “mitigated earlier, … paused earlier and actually done it,” referring to extending shutdowns, urging people to wear masks and implementing other steps to slow the spread of the virus. Continue reading.

Birx says someone was giving Trump ‘parallel data’ about Covid pandemic

Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump White House coronavirus response coordinator, said in a CBS interview released on Sunday that Former President Donald Trump had been reviewing “parallel” data sets on the coronavirus pandemic from someone inside the administration.

“I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made,” Birx told Margaret Brennan on CBS News’ “Face The Nation.” “Someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.”

Birx, who announced her retirement as President Joe Biden took office last week, said she doesn’t know the identity of the person who gave the president different information. She added that there were Covid-19 deniers within the Trump administration. Continue reading.

Top Trump adviser bluntly contradicts president on covid-19 threat, urging all-out response

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“This is not about lockdowns. … It’s about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented,” says internal White House report that challenges many of Trump’s pronouncements.

A top White House coronavirus adviser sounded alarms Monday about a new and deadly phase in the health crisis, pleading with top administration officials for “much more aggressive action,” even as President Trump continues to assure rallygoers that the nation is “rounding the turn” on the pandemic.

“We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic … leading to increasing mortality,” said the Nov. 2 report from Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. “This is not about lockdowns — it hasn’t been about lockdowns since March or April. It’s about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented.” 

Birx’s internal report, shared with top White House and agency officials, contradicts Trump on numerous points: While the president holds large campaign events with hundreds of attendees, most without masks, she explicitly warns against them. While the president blames rising cases on more testing, she says testing is “flat or declining” in many areas where cases are rising. And while Trump says the country is “rounding the turn,” Birx notes that the country is entering its most dangerous period yet and will see more than 100,000 new cases a day this week. Continue reading.

Whatever happened to Deborah Birx?

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Deborah Birx is nowhere to be found at the White House these days.

Though she retains the title of coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, Birx has not attended any of President Trump‘s press briefings on the pandemic since he started them anew in late July, nor was she at a recent event to tout the administration’s advances in testing.

Instead, Birx has been on the road, visiting 36 states and 27 different colleges and universities since the end of June to meet with state, local and university leaders to advise on best practices for containing the coronavirus and to gather information on what’s been working in each place. Continue reading.

After months of favor, Birx raises Trump’s ire with grim coronavirus assessment

Washington Post logoPresident Trump further disparaged his senior health advisers on Monday even as the pandemic deepened its hold on the nation, as the White House’s top coronavirus coordinator, Deborah Birx, joined Anthony S. Fauci and other scientists on the receiving end of the president’s ire.

Birx — who built a career leading public health efforts against HIV/AIDS — quickly garnered Trump’s favor earlier this year for publicly championing the administration’s coronavirus response, becoming a prominent figure both inside and outside the White House.

But she soon lost support within swaths of the scientific and medical community for seeming to minimize the virus and to enable Trump’s overly rosy view of the pandemic. This past weekend, Birx lost the backing of the nation’s top Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who privately called Birx “the worst” and publicly said she had no confidence in her. Continue reading.

Fauci amplifies Birx’s warning about ‘new phase’ of coronavirus spread in U.S.

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Washington Post logoAnthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, defended and amplified Deborah Birx’s statements about what she characterized as a “new phase” of the pandemic in the United States.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Fauci said that the kind of spread some states are experiencing is extremely difficult to contain. “When you have community spread it’s insidious, there are people who are spreading it who have no symptoms at all … It’s difficult to do identification, isolation and contact tracing,” Fauci said.

Fauci’s comments came the same day President Trump lashed out at Birx, seemingly over her weekend remarks on CNN in which she warned that even rural areas would suffer. “It is extraordinarily widespread,” Birx said. Continue reading.

Birx says U.S. has entered a ‘new phase’ of pandemic as cases, deaths rise

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Washington Post logoDeborah Birx, the physician overseeing the White House coronavirus response, warned Sunday that the United States had entered a “new phase” of the pandemic and urged people to take extreme health precautions as infections and deaths rise sharply nationwide.

“I want to be very clear: What we’re seeing today is different from March and April,” Birx told CNN’s “State of the Union,” noting that cases are increasing in rural and urban areas. “It is extraordinarily widespread.”

Birx did not rule out an estimate from former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb that virus deaths could top 300,000 by the end of the year, saying “anything is possible.” Such an outcome would be far less likely, Birx said, if people practiced social distancing and avoided large gatherings. Continue reading.

New red flags about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak come after Trump focused on upsides in televised briefing

Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, warned state and local leaders in a private phone call Wednesday that 11 major cities are seeing increases in the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 and should take “aggressive” steps to mitigate their outbreaks.

The cities she identified were Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

The call was yet another private warning about the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreaks given to local officials but not the public at large. It came less than a week after the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the White House compiled a detailed report showing 18 states were in the “red zone” for coronavirus cases but did not release it publicly. Continue reading.