Dr. Deborah Birx’s first meeting with President Donald Trump on COVID-19 lasted just 30 seconds before she lost interest and returned to the Fox News channel, Birx wrote in her new memoir.
Birx, a leading public health expert and diplomat best known for her work on HIV / AIDS, has been persuaded by Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger to step down from the State Department as US global AIDS coordinator to serve as White coordinator. . The newly formed House Coronavirus Task Force. Birx first met with Trump on March 2, 2020, nine days before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Up to that point, however, global public health experts who were closely monitoring the spread of the virus were concerned. Birx’s goal at that meeting, he wrote, was to impress Trump with the urgency of the situation and to convey that the highly contagious and deadly COVID-19 virus, which could be largely transmitted by asymptomatic people, could not it looked like the seasonal flu. . But when Birx finally caught Trump’s attention in the packed hall, things did not go as he had hoped. “Mr. President, this is not the flu. This is much more serious than the flu. We need to formulate our response differently,” Birx told Trump. Trump, he wrote, smiled with a “grimace” before answering: “Well, the people I talk to say that this will not be worse than the flu.” “Mr President, I do not know who you are talking to, but I have evidence that fully supports the conclusion that this outbreak will be nothing like seasonal flu or even pandemic flu. This virus is very deadly,” he said. he said. “Well, these are good people,” he replied, according to Birx. “Smart people. I trust these people. They know what they are saying.” Birx reiterated her concerns about the virus, but Trump lost interest. “His eyes are returning to his television screens. The remote control is approaching and someone on Fox News’ voice enters what he went through for a conversation between us,” Birx wrote. “I do not hear the rest. Someone takes a few steps towards me and gestures towards the door. I had less than thirty seconds to talk to the president.” Birx wrote that other presidents he had worked for, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, “had the ability to shift gears and direct their attention in a way that President Trump does not.” “I am not going to make him change,” he wrote. “I have to change my approach. Experience has taught me that you have to meet people where they are.” In the book, “Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late,” published Tuesday, Birx describes in detail her own turbulent experience with his mission. White House COVID-19 The power and the many flaws and mistakes in the handling of the virus by the Trump administration.