SCIENCE, the American Association of the Advancement of Science’s flagship publication, has a damning article on Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s Covid-19 Coordinator. She has some supporters, but the incredibly detailed article provides a picture of someone who is a horrible clinical science manager with a bulldozer style that melds well with Trump’s. In other words, she comes off as much, if not more, of a soulmate than a toady of Trump, but an appeaser nevertheless.
Unfortunately, the article is behind a firewall. Let me first provide an excerpt from the introduction that describes her single-handed replacement of the CDC’s data gathering function with that from a private company:
On the morning of 13 July, more than 20 COVID-19 experts from across the U.S. government assembled in a conference room at the Department of Health and Human Services, steps from the Capitol. The group conferred on how best to gather key data on available beds and supplies of medicine and protective gear from thousands of hospitals. Around the table, masks concealed their expressions, but with COVID-19 cases surging out of control in some parts of the country, their grave mood was unmistakable, say two people who were in the room.
Irum Zaidi, a top aide to White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx, chaired the meeting. Zaidi lifted her mask slightly to be heard and delivered a fait accompli: Birx, who was not present, had pulled the plug on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) system for collecting hospital data and turned much of the responsibility over to a private contractor, Pittsburgh-based TeleTracking Technologies Inc., a hospital data management company. The reason: CDC had not met Birx's demand that hospitals report 100% of their COVID-19 data every day.
According to two officials in the meeting, one CDC staffer left and immediately began to sob, saying, “I refuse to do this. I cannot work with people like this. It is so toxic.” That person soon resigned from the pandemic data team, sources say.
Other CDC staffers considered the decision arbitrary and destructive. “Anyone who knows the data supply chain in the U.S. knows [getting all the data daily] is impossible” during a pandemic, says one high-level expert at CDC. And they considered Birx's imperative unnecessary because staffers with decades of experience could confidently estimate missing numbers from partial data.
“Why are they not listening to us?” a CDC official at the meeting recalls thinking. Several CDC staffers predicted the new data system would fail, with ominous implications. “Birx has been on a monthslong rampage against our data,” one texted to a colleague shortly afterward. “Good f---ing luck getting the hospitals to clean up their data and update daily.”
And just to make the point that her malign influence has not just been just with regard to the data collection issue:
BIRX ACQUIRED HER OUTSIZE influence over the agency in part because of how power was allocated in the federal pandemic response, CDC staffers say. An organizational chart obtained by Science, marked “for official use only,” shows Birx coordinates the task force and co-chairs two key bodies: the unified coordination group, which manages the response from HHS and therefore CDC; and Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine development effort. A physician advisory group, comprising Fauci, Redfield, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, and others—is off to the side. Senior CDC people say those advisers have been reduced to “window dressing,” with little ability to mediate between Birx and CDC.
The hospital data system is perhaps the most calamitous flashpoint in that relationship. But CDC officials say that, in other instances, Birx flouted science and undermined the agency to placate the president. For example, she responded with silence to Trump's suggestion that injecting disinfectants might cure COVID-19. And according to the nonpartisan FactCheck.org, in March she understated the pandemic's spread by “misleadingly” portraying states with few cases as “almost 40% of the country,” although those states make up only about 7% of the population.
“Dr. Birx, what the hell are you doing? What happened to you? Your HIV colleagues are ashamed,” tweeted Yale AIDS expert Gregg Gonsalves in response.
And she pressured CDC to tone down its guidance on school openings, according to The New York Times; it published an email she wrote asking Redfield to take a more permissive approach.
Several CDC leaders say Birx's distrust and rejection of input from CDC data experts has created enormous animosity. “She calls into question the science of the agency,” says a current senior CDC official. “We're not perfect … but in the midst of a crisis, to indicate that one of your chief arms for responding to a very severe pandemic can't be believed” has been disastrous.
Now she does have her supporters, but there are not many and some have mixed judgements about her and their defenses pale in comparison to her actions. Oh for better days!!