Then-White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx privately warned that the Trump administration's proposed coronavirus strategy would lead to an "unacceptable death toll" while publicly giving it "cover," according to newly published emails obtained by the House Select Committee investigating the previous administration's response to the pandemic.
Due to her reservations, Birx pulled out of a planned White House roundtable in August 2020 featuring a small group of outside medical experts advising the White House that included those publicly advocating limited coronavirus restrictions and proposing a herd immunity strategy, the emails show, Business Insider reported.
Then-President Donald Trump's prepared comments for the event said that "unending lockdowns" is "not a science based approach — and it would inflict grave harm on our children and our entire society."
The morning after the event, Birx wrote an email to former Vice President Mike Pence's then-chief of staff Marc Short explaining that "I can't be part of this with these people who believe in herd immunity and believe we are fine with only protecting the 1.5M Americans in [long-term care facilities] and not the 80M+ with co-morbidities in the populations included in the unacceptable death toll among Native Americans, Hispanics, and Blacks."
Birx warned that by utilizing this strategy the death toll could rise to 500,000 by the time the U.S. had a vaccine, saying, "without masks and social distancing in public and homes we end up with twice as many deaths — we are a very unhealthy nation with a lot of obesity etc."
Before the event, Birx described in an email to Short the people who would attend the roundtable as "a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health, or on the ground common sense experience."
Birx then wrote that she was "happy to go out of town or whatever gives the WH cover for Weds."
She then forwarded her email to Short to Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-FDA Commissioner Steve Hahn, and then-CDC Director Robert Redfield with the message: "I just can't."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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