Birx: Most U.S. virus deaths could’ve been avoided via fast effort
WASHINGTON — Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator under now-former-President Donald Trump, said most COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented if the Trump administration had acted earlier and more decisively.
Dr. 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 Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked Dr. Birx how much of a difference she thinks it would have made had the U.S. “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.
“I look at it this way: The first time, we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” Dr. Birx told Dr. Gupta. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
Since February 2020, more than 549,000 Americans have died of COVID19. The initial rise in cases in spring 2020 was followed by another spike that summer, then a postholiday surge over the winter that led to the deadliest month for the country so far, when an average of 3,100 people died every day of the disease, in January.
Mr. Trump, who later admitted that he initially tried to downplay the seriousness of the virus, at first compared it to the flu and suggested the media was in “hysteria mode.”
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and Mr. Trump declared a national emergency two days later. In mid- to late March, several states announced stay-at-home orders for nonessential workers in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.
By April and May, however, Mr. Trump had pushed for cities and states to reopen, and he falsely suggested that the virus could not survive in the sun and that “tremendous” light could kill it off. He also began hyping hydroxychloroquine as an unproven treatment, continued referring to the virus as the “China virus,” and questioned the effectiveness wearing face masks.
Dr. Birx, who headed the White House’s efforts to combat the virus throughout that period, has been criticized for not speaking more frequently and more forcefully against Mr. Trump. Last March, she praised Mr. Trump for being “so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data” with regards to the outbreak.
Dr. Birx also sat quietly at a news conference last July when Mr. Trump pondered whether people could be injected with disinfectant to “knock out” the coronavirus. Months later, she described it as an “extraordinarily uncomfortable” moment that she still thought about daily.
“Those who have served in the military know there are discussions you have in private with your commanding officers and there are discussions you have in public,” Dr. Birx told ABC News’s Terry Moran earlier this month.
In January, Dr. Birx defended her actions, telling CBS News that the White House “censored” her and that she had “always” considered quitting.
On Saturday, much as with the other times Dr. Birx has spoken out since Trump left office, her comments were met with frustration from Democrats.
“The malicious incompetence that resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths starts at the top, with the former President and his enablers,” tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. “And who was one of his enablers? Dr. Birx, who was afraid to challenge his unscientific rhetoric and wrongfully praised him.”