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 At
what has become a daily briefing by the president and his advisers,
Birx, a highly respected expert in global health, has served the
role of explainer, walking journalists and the public through the
data behind federal recommendations designed to slow the virus's
spread.
Just a couple days into a new, 30-day extension of the guidelines,
Birx said data showed not enough people were following them. The
recommendations, first unveiled on March 16, encourage people not to
gather in groups larger than 10 and to avoid dining in restaurants
or bars.
"When we said that, now over 16 days ago, that was serious," Birx
said, noting that the people who were now becoming sick would have
gotten the virus after the guidelines first went out.
But the president, standing near the White House podium where Birx
was speaking, interceded.
"Deborah, aren't you referring to just a few states, because many of
those states are dead flat," Trump said, referring to states where
the virus had not taken off dramatically and pushed up the national
"curve" of deaths.
Birx responded that it was true that some states were flat but that
an outbreak in a new city would spoil that.
Trump has faced criticism for playing down the outbreak in its
initial stages. He said early on that the virus was under control
and repeatedly compared it to the seasonal flu.
Last week he argued the time was right to re-open the U.S. economy,
complaining that the cure was worse than the problem and setting a
goal of economic rebirth by Easter on April 12.
On Sunday he announced that he had ditched that plan after Birx and
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, convinced him that projections showed more than
2 million people in the United States could die without further
stringent measures.
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But after a few days of adopting a more somber tone, the president on Thursday
seemed chagrined that Birx was focusing on areas where those measures had not
been followed sufficiently rather than on states in which the virus had not
taken off.
"It's hard to blame flat-liners for not doing a good job," Trump said, sparking
Birx to express with emotion, "No, no, I don't want to say that!"
Trump made clear he did not want headlines suggesting that not enough was being
done, and he went on to explain repeatedly what he believed Birx meant as she
remained standing on the stage.
"She wasn't talking about the average of everything, she was talking about an
individual state," Trump said.
"Our states, generally speaking - it's like lots of different countries all over
- we have, many of those 'countries' are doing a phenomenal job. They're really
flat, and I think that's what you meant."
Birx responded simply: "Thank you, sir."
She went on to say, nonetheless, that not all U.S. states had followed the
guidelines.
"We know what can be done. And others are doing it and most of the people in the
United States are doing it. It's our communities, it's every American that has
to make these changes," she said.
Trump weighed in again.
"We've done, I think on average, really phenomenally as a country."
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by coronavirus,
stood at 5,821 by Thursday evening, with more than 241,000 positive cases across
all 50 states.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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