CNN: The hard lesson of Dr. Deborah Birx. “She, like many of us, had no idea how badly his administration would distort, ignore and deny science and the truth during the pandemic. Although she said she took the job out of a sense of obligation (‘That’s what a civil servant is supposed to do,’ she said a year later), Birx became inextricably tied to the harmful decisions of her negligent, disastrously ignorant boss.”
CNN: Autopsy of a pandemic: 6 doctors at the center of the US Covid-19 response. “This past January, just a few days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, six of the doctors responsible for the previous administration’s Covid-19 response agreed to sit down — in strict confidence — and talk with me about the events of the past year. Over the period of a few weeks, in Houston, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, our team secured nondescript, large hotel ballrooms with plenty of space and ventilation to allow these extraordinary one-on-one conversations to take place with Dr. Deborah Birx, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Brett Giroir, Dr. Stephen Hahn, Dr. Robert Kadlec and Dr. Robert Redfield.”
ABC News: Birx on Trump’s disinfectant ‘injection’ moment: ‘I still think about it every day’. “The former coronavirus response coordinator in the Trump White House, Dr. Deborah Birx, says she still thinks about the moment last year when she sat silently while former President Donald Trump raised the possibility of injecting disinfectant into people to treat COVID-19. ‘Frankly, I didn’t know how to handle that episode,’ Birx said Monday in an interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran for ABC News Live’s ‘The Breakdown.’ ‘I still think about it every day.’”
Reuters: Former Trump coronavirus coordinator Birx takes job at Texas air purifier maker. “Dr. Deborah Birx, the former Trump White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, is taking a private sector job, joining a Texas manufacturer that says its purifiers clean COVID-19 from the air within minutes and from surfaces within hours.”
New York Times: False Reports of a New ‘U.S. Variant’ Came From White House Task Force. “Reports of a highly contagious new coronavirus variant in the United States, published on Friday by multiple news outlets, are based on speculative statements made by Dr. Deborah Birx and are inaccurate, according to several government officials.”
Politico: ‘It’s complicated’: Biden team weighs whether to retain Deborah Birx. “President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is weighing whether to give Trump administration coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx a role in its Covid-19 response, even as it prepares a broader purge of officials closely tied to the president’s handling of the pandemic.”
Science: The inside story of how Trump’s COVID-19 coordinator undermined the world’s top health agency. “When [Deborah] Birx, a physician with a background in HIV/AIDS research, was named coordinator of the task force in February, she was widely praised as a tough, indefatigable manager and a voice of data-driven reason. But some of her actions have undermined the effectiveness of the world’s preeminent public health agency, according to a Science investigation. Interviews with nine current CDC employees, several of them senior agency leaders, and 20 former agency leaders and public health experts—as well as a review of more than 100 official emails, memos, and other documents—suggest Birx’s hospital data takeover fits a pattern in which she opposed CDC guidance, sometimes promoting President Donald Trump’s policies or views against scientific consensus.”
NBC Montana: Birx ‘deeply concerned’ about Montana, encourages action now. “In a one-one-one interview with NBC Montana, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said she’s deeply concerned about Montana heading into the winter months.”
CNN: A ‘distressed’ Birx questions how long she can remain on White House task force, sources say. “Once a fixture at the administration’s coronavirus briefings, Dr. Deborah Birx has confided to aides and friends that she has become so unhappy with what she sees as her diminished role as coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force that she is not certain how much longer she can serve in her position, sources familiar with her thinking tell CNN.”
CNN: Birx says she wishes US lockdown had resembled the one in Italy. “In Italy as the virus spread, residents were told to stay home and only leave for essential activities. Authorities would stop people and check to make sure they had documents that said where and why they were traveling. In a roundtable discussion hosted by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Birx said she has learned what Americans are willing to do to combat the virus, and that officials must meet people where they are.”
New York Times: With Old Allies Turning Against Her, Birx Presses On Against the Coronavirus. “Old allies and public health experts have expressed disgust at her accommodations to Mr. Trump and, more so, at the performance of the federal response she is supposed to be leading against the most devastating public health crisis in a century. Ms. Pelosi said she had lost confidence in Dr. Birx, while Mr. Trump called her ‘pathetic’ after she suggested the obvious: The coronavirus is in a ‘new phase’ and is spreading rampantly.”
BBC: Coronavirus: Nancy Pelosi criticises Deborah Birx. “US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has attacked the White House coronavirus task force’s Deborah Birx, linking her to ‘disinformation’ spread by President Donald Trump. Dr Birx responded that she always based her decisions on scientific data. She is a leading member of the task force, working alongside infectious diseases chief Anthony Fauci.”
Center for Public Integrity: Exclusive: White House Privately Warns 11 Cities Must Take “Aggressive” Action Against Coronavirus. “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. ”
New York Times: Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus. “Each morning at 8 as the coronavirus crisis was raging in April, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, convened a small group of aides to steer the administration through what had become a public health, economic and political disaster. Seated around Mr. Meadows’s conference table and on a couch in his office down the hall from the Oval Office, they saw their immediate role as practical problem solvers. Produce more ventilators. Find more personal protective equipment. Provide more testing. But their ultimate goal was to shift responsibility for leading the fight against the pandemic from the White House to the states.”
CNN: White House hasn’t approved requests for TV interviews with Fauci, official says. “CNN and other TV networks routinely ask for interviews with Fauci and other task force experts, but some of the requests have been blocked by the Trump White House. An administration official familiar with the situation said high-profile figures from the task force, including Fauci, have been unable to secure White House permission to appear on American TV networks.”
