Dr. Deborah Birx Discusses Her New Role at ActivePure Technology
The United States may be finally gaining control of the coronavirus pandemic, but for many Americans, it's too late, and that disconnect is raising new questions about why the United States couldn't have done more sooner.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator during the Trump administration, reveals in a new CNN documentary that the number of coronavirus deaths could have been "significantly reduced" if cities and states across the country had aggressively applied the lessons of the first surge toward mitigation last spring, potentially preventing a second surge.
It's a harrowing look back from one of the top doctors tasked with putting an end to the pandemic, and it comes at a time when many bereaved families are still trying to figure out how one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations was unable to prevent the loss of nearly 550,000 lives.
In the new documentary, "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked six of the doctors who ran point on the pandemic response, including Birx, to provide their insights on what the US could have done differently. CNN at 5:00 p.m. ET The doctors all painstakingly dissected the country's blunders that resulted in the massive loss of life. But Birx saw it most starkly, claiming that the vast majority of America's deaths could have been avoided, a painful interpretation of the past year for a country still grappling with the ongoing loss of life.
In recent weeks, the news has been dominated by encouraging signs, such as the rapidly increasing rate of vaccinations and the fact that 71% of Americans 65 and older have already received one shot. Even if the data isn't all trending in the right direction, the country appears to be breathing a collective sigh of relief that the country is no longer stumbling through the frantic triage mode that characterized much of the last year.
While Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, President Joe Biden's choice to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, continue to urge Americans to wear masks and not let their guards down – especially given the rise in new variants – the country has reached a calmer period of introspection, one in which there is time to actually reflect on what went wrong
One area that is attracting new attention is how long it took former President Donald Trump and his Covid-19 advisers to declare a pause to slow the spread in March 2020, after the initial surge in coronavirus cases began – and how many lives could have been saved if all Americans had strictly adhered to the restrictions on gatherings and social distancing. Birx gives Gupta a gut-wrenching answer in the new documentary when asked how much of an impact it would have made if the US had paused earlier and implemented the safety measures that were proven to slow the spread.
"I look at it this way," Birx says, "the first time we have an excuse." "There were about a hundred thousand deaths as a result of that initial surge, and all of the rest, in my opinion, could have been mitigated or reduced significantly."
As the United States returns to normalcy, the best outcome of this moment of reflection is that Americans will continue to take the virus seriously, embracing the role that each of them can play in preventing more deaths by wearing masks, avoiding large gatherings, and showing up to get vaccinated when their turn comes. There are worrying signs that some people are progressing too quickly, despite the fact that the risks remain high: Miami Beach has struggled to control a flood of spring breakers who have clogged its streets, and air travel is up from a year ago for the first time since the pandemic began.
Walensky noted on Friday that case numbers are trending downward, increasing 7% over the previous seven days and that the average number of deaths is still hovering around 1,000 per day. Hospitalizations were also slightly higher this week compared to the previous seven-day period.
"This is still a source of great concern for me. Cases and hospital admissions have shifted from historic lows to plateaus to increases "Walensky stated this during a Covid-19 task force briefing at the White House on Friday. "And we know from previous surges that if we don't control things now, the epidemic curve has the potential to soar again. Please take this opportunity very seriously."
Disagreement over the virus's origins
As doctors from the Trump administration begin to speak more openly about the country's mistakes, one critical piece of the puzzle is determining the origins of the pandemic – and what could have been done in those early months to halt the spread of Covid-19, which had reached US shores by January 21, 2020.
Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expressed new skepticism about China's explanation that the first Covid-19 cases emerged in a wet market in Wuhan in another segment of the CNN documentary released Friday. He told Gupta that he believes the pandemic began several months before the US was notified of the "mysterious cluster of pneumonia patients" in late December, raising the possibility that the US and the rest of the world lost valuable time preparing for the outbreak and reducing deaths.
Redfield also told Gupta that he believes the pandemic began in a lab in China that was already studying the virus, a controversial theory that the World Health Organization called "extremely unlikely" and for which there is no clear evidence.
"If I had to guess, this virus started transmitting somewhere in September, October in Wuhan," Redfield said in a documentary clip to Gupta. "That is how I feel. And it's just my opinion. I'm now allowed to express my thoughts."
On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated that the Biden administration would reserve judgment until the World Health Organization released its final report on the origins of Covid-19. During a separate briefing on Friday, Peter Ben Embarek, who led the organization's Covid-19 origin investigation, told reporters that the report is now complete and will be released to the public in a few days. Investigators visited the lab at the center of the controversy, and Embarek told CNN in February that the team discovered the virus was much more prevalent in Wuhan than previously thought in December 2019.
During the White House Covid-19 briefing on Friday, Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, seemed to downplay the possibility that Redfield's explanation is correct.
"Obviously, there are a variety of hypotheses," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Dr. Redfield mentioned that he was offering an opinion on a possibility, but there are other alternatives — others, that most people believe in."
A goal of 200 million shots in 100 days has been set.
While the US awaits those results, the Biden administration announced new steps on Friday to meet President Obama's new goal of 200 million shots by his 100th day in office. Maintaining the current rate of 2.5 million vaccinations per day for the next five weeks, according to Jeff Zients, White House Covid-19 response coordinator, will be the equivalent of vaccinating a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium 50 times per day.
Approximately 49 million Americans are now fully vaccinated, and roughly one-third have received at least one dose. However, White House officials are emphasizing the fact that 71 percent of seniors have received one shot, despite the fact that this age group accounts for roughly 80 percent of Covid deaths to date.
With the increase in vaccine supply, Zients confirmed on Friday that there will be enough vaccine doses for every adult in the United States by the end of May and that the three manufacturers who have received emergency use authorization for their vaccines in the United States – Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson – "are setting and hitting targets."
The administration announced three new federally run mass vaccination sites on Friday in Boston, Norfolk, Virginia, and Newark, New Jersey, while increasing the number of available doses at pharmacies and community vaccination sites. Zients also noted that, at the President's request, most states and the District of Columbia have now outlined their plans to make all Americans eligible for the vaccine by May 1.
"It's clear that there is a case for optimism, but not for relaxation," Zients said. "Now is not the time to relax our guard."
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