The coronavirus response coordinator for President Donald Trump’s COVID task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, told ABC News in an exclusive interview that she was “stunned” when Trump raised the possibility of injecting people with disinfectant to treat the virus. , and revealed how he thinks. Data meant to keep New York City playgrounds open prompted the president to take that ill-advised leap.
Birx, who spoke with Dr. Jennifer Ashton, chief medical correspondent for ABC News, ahead of her new book’s release Tuesday, also said she had a pact with other doctors on the Trump team, including Anthony Fauci, that if one of them was fired. then everyone would quit.
From the beginning, she wrote in the book “Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, COVID-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late,” she was not equipped to deal with the toxic political atmosphere. which was the Trump White House.
And while she was the only one on Trump’s team with on-the-ground experience dealing with a deadly pandemic, she was constantly being sidelined, she said.
“I wanted it to be ‘The Twilight Zone'”
But many Americans have come to associate Birx with his failure to correct Trump more forcefully during the White House press briefing on April 23, 2020.
New York City had recently closed its playgrounds, and according to Birx, a Department of Homeland Security scientist had just briefed Trump on how sunlight seemed to make them safe.
“So let’s say we hit the body with a tremendous light, whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light, and I think you said that that hasn’t been verified because of testing,” Trump said. “And then I said, assuming you carry the light inside your body, which you can do through your skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to try that as well.”
“I see the disinfectant that takes it out in a minute, a minute. And is there any way we can do something like that by injecting it in or almost cleaning it out? You see, it goes into the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to verify that,” the president continued.
“I wanted to be able to reassure parents that the natural disinfection activity of the sun, with its ability to produce those free radicals that eat these viruses, bacteria and fungi, their membranes, that would work,” Birx told Ashton. “And that they could take their children outside to play on the playground.”
But when Birx said he saw Trump and the government scientist casually continue their conversation on camera, and the president made the leap to publicly question whether humans could be treated with disinfectant, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“I just wanted it to be ‘The Twilight Zone’ and for everything to go away,” Birx said. “I mean, I just– I could see everything fall apart in that moment.”
Birx also addressed that moment in an interview Monday with “Good Morning America.”
“This was a tragedy on many levels,” he told co-host George Stephanopoulos.
“I immediately went to their top staff and to Olivia Troye and told them this had to be reversed immediately,” he said; Troye was an adviser to then Vice President Mike Pence.
“And the next morning, the president was saying it was a joke,” Birx said. “But I think he knew that night, clearly, that this was dangerous.”
Birx said she was concerned that Americans would think Trump had been talking directly to her, when in fact he was talking primarily to the Homeland Security scientist. Triumph However, at one point I asked: “Deborah, have you ever heard of that? Heat and light, in relation to certain viruses, yes, but in relation to this virus?”
“Not as a treatment,” she replied. “I mean, certainly a fever is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But not like: I haven’t seen heat or (inaudible).”
Birx now says that he regretted not saying more.
“We spent a lot of time getting everyone to take the virus seriously, and we had this whole series of actions that were critical to saving American lives at the time,” Birx said. “And I could see that everything would fall apart after that moment
Birx: The doctors had a pact to resign
Birx also wrote in her book about how she had a pact with other doctors on Trump’s coronavirus task force that if one of them was removed from the task force, they would all resign.
He said the doctors included Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
“Actually, I wasn’t worried about getting fired because I was working two roles and I was going back to the State Department and my job at PEPFAR, full time,” Birx told Ashton, referring to her role as coordinator for the US State Department. The US government’s program to combat HIV/AIDS, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
“I was really worried about Bob and Steve, because you can hear people talking about them in the hallways,” she said, referring to Redfield and Hahn. “So, I went to the vice president several times to call Bob and Steve because I was worried that they felt like they were at risk. And I made it very clear to the chief of staff that if something happened to Bob or Steve, Steve, we all we would go”.
Asked if that was ever close to happening, Birx said “there were times when I felt like Steve in particular was under a lot of pressure” over developing the vaccine.
“I wanted him to know that I had his back, no matter what,” he said. “And I think we all knew, we all knew what it was like to be out there and in the trenches. Although, they were able to go home after the task force and go back to their agencies. He was still in the White House.
“But,” he continued, “they knew enough about what was going on in the White House to understand that all of us were at risk at one time or another.”
Reference-abcnews.go.com