Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that misinformation and denial about the coronavirus pandemic were common at the White House.
Early last spring, there were people working at the White House who denied the severity of the disease. “There were people who definitely believed this was a scam,” she said in an interview with CBS news program “Face the Nation”.
This disbelief echoed in many pockets in the United States, because at the beginning of the pandemic, public officials did not fully describe the spectrum of the disease that the virus could trigger. “And then they saw people take Covid and be okay,” she explained.
Incomplete messages, she said, had devastating consequences. Although he did not specifically name President Trump, who initially labeled the pandemic “scam”, Dr. Birx noted that “whenever a statement made by a political leader was not consistent with public health needs, our response was in the way. That’s also why I went out on the road, because I wasn’t censored on the road. “
In summer and fall, in particular, Dr. Birx traveled to several states and met with governors and local officials to discuss preventive measures, including wearing a mask and social detachment.
She described the flow of information to Mr. Trump about the virus as chaotic and uncoordinated and said that, even today, she did not know the source of some data he was receiving. “I saw the president presenting graphs that I never did,” she said.
Dr. Birx was heavily criticized by public health experts for being part of the Trump apparatus, promoting misleading and, at times, completely erroneous material. She was criticized for not opposing the president’s misinformation about the seriousness of the pandemic, for promoting certain false treatments and for not adequately addressing the conflicting messages and approaches transmitted by the White House as the virus went out of control last spring and then spread across the country during the summer and fall.
She said that whenever there was a significant disagreement with the policy and practice of coronavirus announced by the White House, in a few days, a negative story about it would appear.
“I was not able to do national press,” she said. “Another very important thing for me is that I would not leave the chain of command.”
In the interview, she said she had little exposure to Trump and was unsure whether he read the regular reports she sent 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.