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 Birx will join Dallas-based ActivePure as chief scientific and
medical adviser, she and the company said on Friday.
An expert in global health, Birx came to the White House in 2020 to
help lead the Trump administration's response to the pandemic.
But she was criticized for not standing up to former President
Donald Trump as he played down the virus, predicted it would
disappear, and questioned whether ingesting bleach could help cure
infected Americans.
While her friend and former mentor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was promoted
to become a top medical adviser to Democratic President Joe Biden,
Birx did not get a job in the new administration.
"The Biden administration wanted a clean slate," she told Reuters in
an interview. "I understand that completely."
Birx left government earlier this week.
She and Fauci, she said, asked themselves regularly what could have
been done differently over the last year.
"When you have the 100,000 people we lost over the summer, and the
300,000 people we lost over the fall-winter surge, you have to ask
yourself and have to know that it didn't go as well as it should
have," she said.
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 "All of us are responsible for
that."
The coronavirus has killed more than 530,000
people in the United States, more than any other
country.
Birx said she was still processing regrets and
steps she could have taken to do be more
effective.
"I'm trying to rank order them," she said. "We
have to be willing to step back and really
analyze where we could have been and why we
weren't more effective."
Birx said she remained concerned about the level
of testing in the country, but she praised the
new administration for modeling mask-wearing and
other behaviors that help to combat the virus.
Trump, a Republican, eschewed masks.
"I think the messaging has been very good, very
consistent," she said of the Biden team. "That's
really important when you're asking people to
change their behaviors."
In addition to her role at ActivePure, Birx has
also joined the George W. Bush Institute as a
global health fellow and the biopharmaceutical
company Innoviva as a board member, she said.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Heather
Timmons, Kieran Murray and Himani Sarkar)
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