Dr. Birx's CNN Interview Brought an Enormous Temptation Toward Ungovernable Rage
Toward her, toward the previous administration*, and toward the blind alley of stupidity into which our politics have marched so proudly.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl23326926
_By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 29, 2021
washington, dc may 15 flanked by white house coronavirus response coordinator dr deborah birx l and dr anthony fauci r, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, us president donald trump delivers remarks about coronavirus vaccine development in the rose garden of the white house on may 15, 2020 in washington,
Dr. Deborah Birx is a helluva witness, which is a good thing because, when it came down to the health of a nation during a worldwide pandemic, as a physician, she was a helluva bureaucrat.
Watching her bombshell interview on CNN brought an enormous temptation toward ungovernable rage—toward her, toward the previous administration*, toward the previous president*, and toward the blind alley of stupidity into which our politics have marched so proudly.
A haunting admission by Dr. Deborah Birx in a new CNN documentary that after last year's first infectious wave, the death toll could have been substantially reduced, will prove harrowing for those who lost loved ones. It also throws new scrutiny on the negligent management of the pandemic by former President Donald Trump and his willingness to put economic and political goals above science and the public well-being.
Revelations by Birx, a highly respected international health expert before she became coronavirus response coordinator for the Trump White House, and by her colleagues who spoke to CNN in "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," which aired Sunday night, represent the most intimate view yet inside Trump's chaotic and feudal White House when Covid-19 struck.
"I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse," Birx told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "There were about a hundred thousand deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
Where were you? Where in the unshirted hell were all of you? How did you not consider your duties as physicians, let alone as public servants? More from CNN:
She said that some of those data streams stemmed from Trump's controversial coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who she eventually refused to attend meetings with, because she did not want to legitimize his position.
"At one time, the President looked at the data and understood the data because he wouldn't have shut down the country for 15 days and then another 30 -- but that never really happened again, because there were too many parallel streams of data" Birx said.
"The thing that hit me like a punch to the chest was then all of a sudden he got up and says, 'liberate Virginia,' 'liberate Michigan,' and I said to myself, 'Oh my goodness, what is going on here?' It shocked me because it was such a jolt to what we were trying to do," Fauci said.
Fauci's account is in line with statements made by Birx. "The one policy directive he gave to me in April, which was the last time I really had any briefing with him in that kind of way, was, 'We will never shut the country down again,'" Birx said.
Listening to all of this made me recall all the wishful thinking that preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, all the war-gaming that depended on Japan’s being unable to mount a sophisticated air offensive and all the American exceptionalism that ended up at the bottom of an anchorage by that afternoon.
Everybody thought everybody else was on top of things and, as a result, almost nobody was. From the report of the Roberts Commission, which investigated the abject failure of the defense establishment prior to the attack:
The foregoing messages did not create in the minds of the responsible officers in the Hawaiian area apprehension as to probable imminence of air raids. On the contrary they only served to emphasize in their minds the danger from sabotage and surprise submarine attack. The necessity for taking a state-of-war readiness which would have been required to avert or meet an air-raid attack was not considered.
We were less prepared for this pandemic than the Pacific Fleet was for an air attack on December 6, 1941 and we’ve only begun to dig for the answers why.
Toward her, toward the previous administration*, and toward the blind alley of stupidity into which our politics have marched so proudly.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl23326926
_By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 29, 2021
washington, dc may 15 flanked by white house coronavirus response coordinator dr deborah birx l and dr anthony fauci r, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, us president donald trump delivers remarks about coronavirus vaccine development in the rose garden of the white house on may 15, 2020 in washington,
Dr. Deborah Birx is a helluva witness, which is a good thing because, when it came down to the health of a nation during a worldwide pandemic, as a physician, she was a helluva bureaucrat.
Watching her bombshell interview on CNN brought an enormous temptation toward ungovernable rage—toward her, toward the previous administration*, toward the previous president*, and toward the blind alley of stupidity into which our politics have marched so proudly.
A haunting admission by Dr. Deborah Birx in a new CNN documentary that after last year's first infectious wave, the death toll could have been substantially reduced, will prove harrowing for those who lost loved ones. It also throws new scrutiny on the negligent management of the pandemic by former President Donald Trump and his willingness to put economic and political goals above science and the public well-being.
Revelations by Birx, a highly respected international health expert before she became coronavirus response coordinator for the Trump White House, and by her colleagues who spoke to CNN in "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," which aired Sunday night, represent the most intimate view yet inside Trump's chaotic and feudal White House when Covid-19 struck.
"I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse," Birx told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "There were about a hundred thousand deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
Where were you? Where in the unshirted hell were all of you? How did you not consider your duties as physicians, let alone as public servants? More from CNN:
She said that some of those data streams stemmed from Trump's controversial coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who she eventually refused to attend meetings with, because she did not want to legitimize his position.
"At one time, the President looked at the data and understood the data because he wouldn't have shut down the country for 15 days and then another 30 -- but that never really happened again, because there were too many parallel streams of data" Birx said.
"The thing that hit me like a punch to the chest was then all of a sudden he got up and says, 'liberate Virginia,' 'liberate Michigan,' and I said to myself, 'Oh my goodness, what is going on here?' It shocked me because it was such a jolt to what we were trying to do," Fauci said.
Fauci's account is in line with statements made by Birx. "The one policy directive he gave to me in April, which was the last time I really had any briefing with him in that kind of way, was, 'We will never shut the country down again,'" Birx said.
Listening to all of this made me recall all the wishful thinking that preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, all the war-gaming that depended on Japan’s being unable to mount a sophisticated air offensive and all the American exceptionalism that ended up at the bottom of an anchorage by that afternoon.
Everybody thought everybody else was on top of things and, as a result, almost nobody was. From the report of the Roberts Commission, which investigated the abject failure of the defense establishment prior to the attack:
The foregoing messages did not create in the minds of the responsible officers in the Hawaiian area apprehension as to probable imminence of air raids. On the contrary they only served to emphasize in their minds the danger from sabotage and surprise submarine attack. The necessity for taking a state-of-war readiness which would have been required to avert or meet an air-raid attack was not considered.
We were less prepared for this pandemic than the Pacific Fleet was for an air attack on December 6, 1941 and we’ve only begun to dig for the answers why.
