Former U.S. coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said people at Trump’s White House considered Covid-19 a scam.
Birx questioned the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in a broad interview broadcast on Sunday. Elsewhere, Joe Biden’s advisers described the new president’s plans to control Covid-19 – a challenge that has become more difficult, said chief of staff Ron Klain, because Trump left office without a vaccine distribution plan. in force.
More than 417,000 people died of Covid-19 in the United States, in a number of cases of almost 25 million, according to figures maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
At the White House and the general public “there were people who definitely believed this was a scam,” Birx told Face the Nation on CBS.
The former Army doctor attributed this skepticism to people’s different experiences with the virus.
“They saw people take Covid and get well and then they made us talk about the severity of the disease and how it could cause unbelievable fatalities to our American audience,” she said.
Asked whether she attributed such skepticism to Donald Trump, who repeatedly downplayed the virus, Birx said that some statements by political leaders have “derailed” the coronavirus response.
“When you have a pandemic where you depend on each American to change their behavior,” she said, “communication is absolutely critical and therefore whenever a statement made by a political leader was not consistent with public health needs, it hindered our response. That’s also why I went out on the road, because I wasn’t censored on the road. “
Birx, who played a key role in the fight against AIDS, said she believed the 2020 election was a factor in how information about the coronavirus was shared and that she “always” considered leaving her position at the White House under Trump.
“I always feel like I could have done more, be more frank, maybe be more frank publicly,” said Birx. “I didn’t know all the consequences of all of these problems.”
Birx has long been promoting a data-based response to disease outbreaks and she suggested that such efforts were hampered by people working at Trump’s White House. From the moment she arrived until she left, she said, unknown advisers were providing “parallel” data on the coronavirus.
“I saw the president presenting graphics that I never did,” said Birx.
Efforts to vaccinate the public have been hampered by delays, while a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus originating in Britain has been identified in at least 20 states.
On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who also served under Trump, but unlike Birx made the transition to advise Biden, told CBS: “The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines appear to continue to protect against the mutant strain. “
He also said that a variation of “mutant” viruses “now prevalent in South Africa” was “a little more worrying”.
“It appears that the vaccine’s effectiveness is further reduced,” he said. “But we are still within that level of protection from vaccines being effective against these mutants.”
On Thursday, the first full day of his presidency, Biden launched a 198-page Covid-19 strategy. He has also signed 10 related executive orders or other directives since taking office. The White House said it plans to provide 100 million doses of vaccine in 100 days.
Biden’s nominee for general surgeon, Dr. Vivek Murthy, told ABC’s This Week program that the success of the vaccination campaign must be determined not only by the amount, but also by how the inoculations are distributed equitably.
To do this, Murthy said, the government must increase supply using the Defense Production Act and better target distribution with mobile units and community vaccination centers.
“We already know from the Covid crisis last year that there are certain communities that have been hit hard by this virus,” he said, “that rural communities have had a harder time gaining access to resources, which communities of color more cases and deaths , that the elderly have faced, especially those in long-stay institutions ”.
Murthy also called for greater investment in treatment strategies, contract tracking and testing. These efforts, combined with vaccinating people and adhering to public health guidelines, he said, could allow the United States to control the pandemic.
“If we do these things and continue to work to take safety precautions, such as masking and avoiding internal meetings of people outside your home, then I think we can be on a path not only to reverse the pandemic, but, most importantly, to make our schools open, our workplaces to function again and to recover our way of life. “
Biden’s nominee for health secretary, Xavier Becerra, warned that improving the response to the pandemic “will not happen overnight.”
“We can’t just say to the states, ‘Here are some PPE, some masks, here are some vaccines, now come on,'” Becerra told CNN’s State of the Union.
Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, told NBC Meet the Press: “The process for distributing the vaccine, especially outside nursing homes and hospitals to the community as a whole, didn’t really exist when we came to the White House.”
Klain said the obstacles to better distribution include the need for more vaccines, more people to administer the vaccines and more places to give them. Klain said the Biden administration has focused on convincing people who hesitate to vaccinate, especially in communities of color, that the vaccine is safe.
“Unless we can reduce vaccine hesitation,” he said, “unless we can get all Americans to get this vaccine, we will continue to see Covid being a problem in our country.”