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Former U.S. coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said people in Trump’s White House viewed Covid-19 as a hoax.
Birx questioned the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in a broad interview that aired Sunday. Elsewhere, Joe Biden’s advisers have described the new president’s plans to control Covid-19 – a challenge made more difficult, Chief of Staff Ron Klain said, by the fact that Trump left office without a vaccine distribution plan in place.
More than 417,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States, out of a workload of nearly 25 million people, according to figures kept by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
In the White House and in the general public, “there were people who definitely believed it was a hoax,” Birx told Face the Nation on CBS.
The former military doctor attributed such skepticism to people’s varying experiences with the virus.
“They saw people catch Covid and be fine, and then they got us talking about the seriousness of the disease and how it could cause these incredible deaths to our American public,” she said.
When asked if she attributed such skepticism to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, Birx said some statements by political leaders had “derailed” the response to the coronavirus.
“When you have a pandemic where you rely on every American to change their behavior,” she said, “communication is absolutely essential, and so any time a statement is made by a political leader who isn’t not in line with public health needs, it derailed our response. This is also why I went out on the road, because I was not censored on the road.
Birx, who has 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 had “always” considered quit his role in the White House under Trump.
“I still feel like I could have done more, been more outspoken, maybe spoken more openly in public,” Birx said. “I did not know all the consequences of all these problems.”
Birx has long promoted a data-driven response to disease outbreaks, and she has suggested those efforts are being undermined by people working in Trump’s White House. From her arrival until her departure, she said, unknown advisers were providing “parallel” data on the coronaviruses.
“I saw the president presenting graphics that I never did,” Birx said.
Public vaccination efforts have been marred by delays, as a new, 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, switched to advising Biden, told CBS: “The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines appear to be continuing. to protect against the mutant strain. . “
He also said that a “mutant” virus variant “now widespread in South Africa” was “a little more worrying”.
“It appears to further decrease the effectiveness of the vaccine,” he said. “But we are still in this cushion level of effective vaccines against these mutants.”
On Thursday, the first full day of his presidency, Biden released a 198-page Covid-19 strategy. He has also signed 10 decrees or other related directives since taking office. The White House has said it aims to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine in 100 days.
Biden’s candidate for surgeon general, Dr Vivek Murthy, told ABC this week that the success of the vaccination campaign should be determined not only by quantity, but also by how fairly vaccinations are delivered.
To do this, Murthy said, the government must increase supply by using the Defense Production Act and better targeting distribution with mobile units and community vaccination centers.
“We already know from the Covid crisis over the past year that some communities have been hit hard by this virus,” he said, “that rural communities have found it more difficult to access resources , which communities of color have known. more cases and deaths the elderly have battled, especially those in long-term facilities ”.
Murthy also called for greater investment in treatment strategies, contract tracing and testing. Such efforts, combined with people vaccinated and adhering to public health guidelines, he said, could put the United States in control of the pandemic.
“If we do these things, and if we continue to take the safety precautions, like masking and avoiding indoor gatherings of people outside your household, then I think we can be on the path to not just reversing the pandemic,” but, more importantly, open our schools, get our workplaces back on track and get our way of life back.
Biden’s candidate for health secretary Xavier Becerra has warned that improving the response to the pandemic “will not happen overnight.”
“We can’t just say to states, ‘Here’s PPE, masks, here’s vaccines, go ahead now,'” Becerra told CNN’s State of the Union.
Klain, chief of staff at Biden, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “The process of distributing the vaccine, especially outside of nursing homes and hospitals in the community at large, didn’t really exist when we did. arrived at the White House.
Klain said barriers to better distribution include the need for more vaccines, more people to administer the vaccines, and more sites to deliver them. Klain said the Biden administration was aimed at convincing people who are hesitant to get vaccinated, especially in communities of color, that the vaccine is safe.
“Unless we can reduce the reluctance to get vaccinated,” he said, “unless we can get all Americans to take this vaccine, we will continue to see Covid being a problem in our country. .
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