Fauci and Birx interviews detail Trump’s failed coronavirus response

It didn’t take long for the two scientific faces of former President Donald Trump’s failed response to the coronavirus to denounce just how dysfunctional efforts to stem the pandemic really were under the 45th President.

On the first weekend following Trump’s departure from the White House, Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx – both members of the Trump White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinated by Birx – held talks with national media in which they described a culture in Trump’s White House that has reduced scientific expertise and focused on the type of denial that has led Trump to continue to hold tight political rallies even as the deaths and coronavirus cases soared in the fall.

“We would say things like, ‘It’s an epidemic. Infectious diseases take their own course unless something is done about it. And then he would get up and start talking, “It’s going to go away, it’s magic, it’s going to go,” “Fauci told the New York Times.

Birx made similar comments to CBS during an interview with Face the nation host Margaret Brennan, saying: “There were people [in the White House] who definitely believed it was a hoax, ”and adding that Trump had a penchant for listening to people who told him what he wanted to hear, even though this information had no scientific basis.

“I saw the president presenting graphics that I never did,” she said. “So I know that someone – someone over there, or someone inside – was creating a parallel set of data and graphs that were shown to the president. I don’t know to this day who, but I do know what I sent, and I know what was in his hands was different from that.

Fauci corroborated this point, telling The Times that in the early days of the pandemic he was “really concerned” to observe that Trump “was receiving comments from people calling him, I don’t know who, from people who ‘he knew. business, saying, “Hey, I heard about this drug, hasn’t it been great? or, ‘Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal.’ “

“He would take their opinion – based on no data, just an anecdote – that something could really be important,” Fauci added. “It wasn’t just hydroxychloroquine, it was a variety of alternative medicine-type approaches. It was always, “Some guy called me, a friend of mine from blah, blah, blah.” This is where my anxiety started to escalate.

Birx’s revelation represented an effort to rehabilitate his damaged reputation

Birx emerged from the Trump era with his reputation more in tatters than Fauci. While the two went to great lengths to avoid contradicting the president in public, Birx’s tendency to effusively praise Trump, even as he touted unproven miracle cures and downplayed the severity of a pandemic that has killed 400,000 Americans before leaving office, gave the impression of putting politics first.

Fauci did not share this tendency. He refused to disparage Trump, even if he had the chance, but often publicly contradicted the former president.

Unlike Fauci – who now serves as President Joe Biden’s medical adviser in addition to his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – Birx was not invited to join the Biden administration. This made his interview with CBS, in part, an effort to rehabilitate his image before his next retirement from the federal government.

Birx became emotional as she spoke of her legacy and how it might end up being tarnished by the time she spent coordinating Trump’s White House coronavirus task force. She tried to push back the perception that she was sometimes more concerned with staying in Trump’s good graces – something Fauci didn’t seem to care about – than putting herself on a par with the American people.

Asked about an infamous incident at a press conference in which Trump suggested that disinfectant injections or sun treatments could be miracle cures for the coronavirus, Birx tried to downplay her role.

“I didn’t even know what to do at the time,” she said, later adding, “People want to define you then.”

Cependant, c’était loin d’être la seule fois où Birx n’a pas réussi à corriger les mauvaises informations que Trump donnait au public. Il y a eu de nombreuses occasions où elle a semblé faire tout son possible pour interférer pour les mauvaises décisions prises par Trump, allant de défendre son refus de porter un masque à cajoler le CDC pour exclure les cas présumés positifs à partir du décompte des décès par coronavirus. Elle a dit à CBS qu’elle envisageait constamment de démissionner, mais a déclaré qu’elle ne l’avait pas fait parce qu’elle pensait qu’elle pourrait faire plus de bien de l’intérieur du gouvernement. Enfin, elle est arrivée à la conclusion «juste avant les élections» que «je n’allais nulle part».

Birx a affirmé lors de l’interview que Trump «appréciait la gravité» de la pandémie en mars et avril, pour se désintéresser alors que «le pays commençait à s’ouvrir» et que le jour des élections approchait. Alors que les reportages du journaliste Bob Woodward ont révélé en septembre que Trump s’est rapidement rendu compte que le coronavirus constituait une menace sérieuse, ce que l’allégation de Birx néglige, c’est que Trump n’a pas partagé ces croyances privées avec le peuple américain.

Au lieu de cela, il a passé les premiers mois de la pandémie à dire que le coronavirus disparaîtrait de lui-même «comme un miracle» et à rejeter les efforts des démocrates pour le prendre plus au sérieux comme «un canular». L’interview de Fauci avec le New York Times a mis en lumière la façon dont le récit de Birx révise l’histoire.

L’interview de Fauci met en évidence l’inaptitude fondamentale de Trump

Alors que Birx donnait l’impression que la réponse de Trump au coronavirus avait commencé fort, l’interview de Fauci avec le Times dresse l’image d’un président qui était incapable de répondre avec compétence à une pandémie – et qui s’est engagé dans une réflexion magique dès le début.

«J’essayais d’exprimer la gravité de la situation, et la réponse du président était toujours orientée vers: ‘Eh bien, ce n’est pas si mal, non?’ Et je dirais: “Oui, c’est si mauvais” », a déclaré Fauci. «C’était presque une réponse réflexe, essayer de vous convaincre de la minimiser. Je ne dis pas: «Je veux que vous minimisiez cela», mais: «Oh, vraiment, était-ce si grave?» »

Ces commentaires font écho aux déclarations faites par Fauci jeudi dernier lors de ses premiers commentaires publics en tant que conseiller de Biden, lorsqu’il a qualifié le départ de Trump de une bouffée d’air frais.

«L’une des nouveautés dans cette administration est que si vous ne connaissez pas la réponse, ne devinez pas. Dites simplement que vous ne connaissez pas la réponse », a déclaré Fauci lors de la conférence de presse de jeudi dernier, ajoutant à un autre moment que la vantardise de Trump de« remèdes miracles »non prouvés et potentiellement dangereux pour le coronavirus était particulièrement« inconfortable »pour lui,« parce qu’ils étaient non fondée sur des faits scientifiques. »

Alors que Fauci essayait d’éviter de réprimander directement Trump publiquement, il a contredit ses fausses allégations selon lesquelles Covid-19 était aussi mortel que la grippe et a essayé de corriger le dossier lorsque Trump promouvrait des traitements non éprouvés comme remèdes possibles pour le coronavirus. Il a déclaré au New York Times qu’avant même que Trump ne songeait à le renvoyer lors de l’un de ses rassemblements électoraux, il avait reçu des menaces de mort – et dans un cas, une lettre contenant de la poudre.

«Un jour, j’ai reçu une lettre par la poste, je l’ai ouverte et une bouffée de poudre est tombée sur mon visage et ma poitrine», dit-il.

«C’était très, très dérangeant pour moi et ma femme parce que c’était dans mon bureau», a-t-il poursuivi, ajoutant que, heureusement, la substance s’est avérée être «un rien bénin».

À un moment donné, Fauci a exprimé de l’empathie pour Birx car elle devait traiter quotidiennement avec Scott Atlas – un neuroradiologue sans expertise préalable en matière de maladies infectieuses que Trump a amené à la Maison Blanche en tant que conseiller en coronavirus. Atlas était un partisan de l’idée discréditée selon laquelle le gouvernement fédéral devrait laisser le coronavirus infecter autant de personnes que possible.

«J’ai essayé d’approcher [Atlas] and say, “Let’s sit down and talk because we obviously have differences,” “Fauci told The Times. “His attitude was that he examines the literature intensively, we may have differences, but he thinks he’s right. I thought, “Okay, okay, I’m not going to invest a lot of time trying to convert this person,” and just went my own way. But Debbie Birx had to live with this person in the White House every day, so it was a lot more painful for her.

Atlas’s refusal to hear anything he didn’t want to hear was a characteristic he shared with Trump, who was doing his best to ignore advice from his own CDC on rallies, organizing rallies of high profile during his failed re-election campaign, even as science experts warned the United States was heading into a winter of soaring cases and deaths. Trump ended up in hospital in early October after contracting the virus, but even that experience did not punish him.

As Fauci told The Times:

When [Trump] was at Walter Reed [hospital] and he was getting monoclonal antibodies, he said, “Tony, that really made a big difference. I feel a lot, a lot better. These are really good things. I didn’t mean to pop her bubble, but I said, “Well, no, it’s an N equal to 1. You might have started to feel better anyway.” [In scientific literature, an experiment with just one subject is described as “n = 1.”] And he said, “Oh, no, no no, absolutely not. This stuff is really good. It completely turned me around. So I figured the best part of being brave would be not arguing with him.

None of this is surprising – but it’s still remarkable

What Birx and Fauci said in their interviews isn’t necessarily surprising. We’ve long understood that Trump’s White House coronavirus response was a disaster, especially compared to countries like Australia and Japan which have done a much better job of limiting infections and deaths. We know that Trump tends to engage in wishful thinking and has an aversion to scientific reasoning.

But what Birx and Fauci’s willingness to speak out immediately after Trump stepped down illustrates just how bad things were under the previous administration. It is now incumbent on the Biden administration to try to clean up the mess left behind after a year of politically motivated short-term thinking, in which public health experts like Fauci and Birx have had to wrestle daily with questions about the c-value. t is for them to keep showing up for work.