Trump team sought to suppress virus data to states, Birx testifies
Dr. Deborah Birx, President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, told a congressional committee investigating the federal pandemic response that Trump White House officials asked her to change or delete parts of the weekly guidance she sent to state and local health officials, in what she described as a consistent effort to stifle information as virus cases surged in the second half of 2020.
Birx, who publicly testified to the panel Thursday, also told the committee that Trump White House officials withheld the reports from states during a winter outbreak and refused to publicly release the documents, which featured data on the virus’ spread and recommendations for how to contain it.
Her account of White House interference came in a multiday interview the committee conducted in October 2021, which was released on Thursday with a set of emails Birx sent to colleagues in 2020 warning of the influence of a new White House pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, who she said downplayed the threat of the virus.
The emails provide fresh insight into how Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, grappled with what Birx called the misinformation spread by Atlas.
The push to downplay the threat was so pervasive, Birx told committee investigators, that she developed techniques to avoid attention from White House officials who might have objected to her public health recommendations.
In reports she prepared for local health officials, she said, she would sometimes put ideas at the ends of sentences so that colleagues skimming the text would not notice them.
In her testimony Thursday, she offered similarly withering assessments of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, suggesting that officials in 2020 had mistakenly viewed the coronavirus as akin to the flu even after seeing high COVID-19 death rates in Asia and Europe. That, she said, had caused a “false sense of security in America” as well as a “sense among the American people that this was not going to be a serious pandemic.”
COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million Americans.
Monkeypox outbreak: The World Health Organization convenes its emergency committee Thursday in London to consider if the spiraling outbreak of monkeypox warrants being declared a global emergency. But some experts say the WHO’S decision to act only after the disease spilled into the West could entrench the grotesque inequities that arose between rich and poor countries during the coronavirus pandemic.
Declaring monkeypox to be a global emergency would mean the U.N. health agency considers the outbreak to be an “extraordinary event” and that the disease is at risk of spreading across even more borders, possibly requiring a global response. It would also give monkeypox the same distinction as the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.
The WHO said it did not expect to announce any decisions made by its committee before Friday.
Many scientists doubt any such declaration would help to curb the epidemic, since the developed countries recording the most recent
cases are already moving to shut it down.
Okinawa ceremony:
Okinawa marked the 77th anniversary Thursday of the end of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, with the governor calling for a further reduction of the U.S. military presence there as local fears grow that the southern Japanese islands will become embroiled in regional military tension.
The Battle of Okinawa killed about 200,000 people, nearly half of them Okinawan residents. Japan’s wartime military, in an attempt to delay a U.S. landing on the main islands, essentially sacrificed the local population.
Many in Okinawa are worried about the growing deployment of Japanese missile defense and amphibious capabilities on outer islands that are close to geopolitical hotspots like Taiwan.
At a ceremony marking the June 23, 1945, end of the battle, about 300 attendees in Okinawa, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other officials, offered a moment of silence and placed chrysanthemums for the war dead. The number of attendants was scaled down because of coronavirus worries.
At the ceremony in Itoman city on Okinawa’s main island, Gov. Denny Tamaki spoke of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the destruction of towns, buildings and the local culture, as well as Ukrainians’ constant fear, “remind us of our memory of the ground battle on Okinawa that embroiled citizens 77 years ago.”
“We are struck by unspeakable shock,” he said.
Tamaki also vowed to continue efforts to abolish nuclear weapons and renounce war “in order to never let Okinawa become a battlefield.”
Suu Kyi: Myanmar’s military government Thursday confirmed that ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved to a prison compound in quarters separate from other detainees.
Suu Kyi was arrested Feb. 1, 2021, when the army seized power from her elected government. She was initially held at her residence in Naypyitaw, the capital, but was later moved to at least one other location. For most of the past year, she has been held at an undisclosed location in Naypyitaw, generally believed to be on a military base.
Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson for the ruling military council, said Suu Kyi, having already been convicted in several cases, was transferred to the prison in accordance with the law.
Maxwell sentence: British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell should spend at least 30 years in prison for her role in the sexual abuse of teenage girls over a 10-year period by her onetime boyfriend, financier Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors said in written arguments.
Prosecutors said she should serve 30 years to 55 years in prison, reflecting the federal sentencing guidelines. They made their recommendations late Wednesday to the judge who will preside over a sentencing hearing next weel in Manhattan federal court.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted in December of sex trafficking and other crimes after a monthlong trial that featured testimony from four women who said they were abused in their teens.
Largest bacterium: Scientists have discovered the world’s largest bacterium in a Caribbean mangrove swamp. Most bacteria are microscopic, but this one is so big it can be seen with the naked eye.
The thin white filament, about the size of a human eyelash, is “by far the largest bacterium known to date,” said Jean-marie Volland, a marine biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-author of a paper announcing the discovery Thursday in the journal Science.