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Deborah Birx, who was selected to coordinate the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus in February 2020 but quickly lost the president’s favor, drew a picture of widespread dysfunction on Thursday that she said she cheated the public and state officials, hampered coronavirus testing and contributed to unnecessary deaths from the virus.
“People were communicating dangerous ideas to the president … every day,” such as encouraging former President Donald Trump to defend unproven treatments, including hydroxychloroquine, or providing him with misleading data about the virus, Birx told the subcommittee select from the House. coronavirus crisis.
Asked about Trump’s repeated claims in 2020 that the virus would simply go away, Birx hinted that the president mistakenly believed that if enough Americans became infected, the pandemic would go away.
“I think there were people communicating with the White House … who believed that if you infected enough people you would have herd immunity. There was no evidence [of that] – in fact, there was evidence to the contrary, “Birx said.
Birx also criticized Scott Atlas, a senior member of Stanford University’s health policy who joined the administration in July 2020 and won Trump’s favor by saying many infections were inevitable and encouraging a less governmental response. robust. Atlas’s private advice and public comment broke with recommendations made by Birx and other pandemic experts like Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.
“It certainly destroyed any cohesion in the response,” Birx said, adding that Atlas and other officials presented data to the president who he believed represented a more optimistic view of the pandemic than it was justified.
“When you no longer agree on what’s really going on in the country and what needs to be done … then you lose the ability to execute yourself in the most efficient and effective way,” Birx said.
Birx also recounted an Oval Office meeting with Atlas and Trump in August 2020 during which officials discussed an increase in coronavirus cases in the summer.
“Dr. Atlas took this opportunity to point out that no matter what you did, each of these increases would be identical. It didn’t matter if you did. In fact, testing young people … and asking them to isolate themselves while they were contagious was a violation of their rights, and was tantamount to confinement, “Birx said.” Such thoughts, especially in any infectious disease. , they are dangerous “.
Birx told panel investigators last year that the upcoming 2020 election distracted Trump officials from the pandemic and that more than 130,000 U.S. lives could have been saved with faster action and better public health messages. coordinated after the first wave of the virus.
“We have learned and will remember how science policy was prioritized,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (DS.C.), who chairs the panel, said Thursday.
Atlas did not respond to requests for comment. Atlas, who had no experience in fighting pandemics, has blamed Birx for “harmful blockades” in early 2020 that he said caused widespread harm to children and the elderly.
“Dr. Birx cannot be allowed to rewrite history and avoid responsibility for his failures, “Atlas told The Washington Post in a statement last year.
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Birx’s testimony and new allegations. “It was a very negative voice that didn’t have the right answers,” Trump said in a statement last year about Birx’s previous criticisms of the response.
Republicans in the audience pressured Birx over unresolved questions about where the virus originated, which Birx largely diverted, and complained that Democrats were not examining the Biden administration’s pandemic strategy.
“Here we are today, having another hearing with a witness to discuss things that happened more than two years ago,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), The panel’s top Republican, asking why Fauci hadn’t testified before the panel for more than a year, and why former Biden White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients and current coordinator Ashish Jha had not been summoned to answer questions about the response from the current administration.
Birx separately criticized the ongoing response, saying better communication and more vaccines were needed to save lives, especially in rural America.
“We’re still losing Americans today at a very unacceptable rate when we have the tools to prevent it,” Birx said. About 300 Americans die every day from covid-19, according to The Post’s seven-day average.
Democrats on Thursday published hundreds of pages of interviews with Birx last October, during which he made additional allegations about Trump’s White House pandemic strategy. Birx said Trump officials often asked him to change reports on the state of the pandemic, which he sent to governors’ offices, and which he reluctantly followed.
“If the changes hadn’t been made … the governors’ reports wouldn’t have come out, ”Birx told investigators, unwilling to identify officials calling for changes.
Democrats also released a staff report this week that criticized Atlas as the author of a “dangerous and discredited herd immunity strategy,” based on interviews with Birx and other officials and recently released documents.
The documents included an email sent from Atlas to a Trump health official in March 2020 in which Atlas claimed the coronavirus outbreak was likely to “cause about 10,000 deaths” and argued that the federal government had overreacted. Atlas did not answer The Post’s questions about the email.
Birx was the first former Trump official to testify publicly before the House panel on the previous administration’s response, and Democrats had originally envisioned his more than two-year coronavirus investigation as an opportunity to highlight mistakes. Trump pandemics ahead of this year’s election.
But that strategy has been complicated by the persistence of the pandemic under President Biden and voters’ faded interest in the coronavirus as a priority, and the panel’s findings have been increasingly overshadowed by other Democratic priorities. Thursday morning The hearing was relatively quiet, with lawmakers focused on a House panel in the afternoon investigating Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election.
Birx sat alone at the audience table, accompanied by her memoirs detailing her time as Trump’s coronavirus coordinator. The book had sold 5,938 copies as of June 11, an NPD BookScan analyst told The Post last week.