Review: Is ‘Silent Invasion’ Deborah Birx’s Trump’s Covid Story


The SILENT Invasion: The Trump Administration’s Untold Story, Covid-19 and Preventing the Next Epidemic Before It’s Too Late
by Deborah Birx


On March 2, 2020, Dr. Deborah Birx She takes up her new position as coronavirus response coordinator on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. He had just gotten off the plane from South Africa, where he was in his sixth year as the global AIDS coordinator in the United States. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)A respected and influential initiative initiated by George W. Bush. The word “coordinator” is an ambiguous title under the best bureaucratic conditions, let alone the Trump White House, and while it was coined to curb the urgency of this new epidemic and the older one (AIDS), Birx had neither the time nor the opportunity. . define the title before committing. She said yes to “a job I wasn’t looking for but felt compelled to accept,” she tells in “Silent Invasion.” it wasn’t chair this White House task force; Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, held the post until he was replaced a month later by Vice President Pence. Birx had an office in the West Wing but hardly any staff, and his only advantage was persuasion. His explanation of how this plays out – it’s not a spoiler to say how bad played – serious, thorough and unbearable.

A representative inflection point occurred in its first week. Sat in a meeting, prepared to hear Robert RedfieldThe director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides detailed data showing where the virus was in America at that point—data he assumes will be specific to counties, municipalities, and zip codes, adding positive test rates and hospitalization rates so that efforts against local outbreaks can be focused and the disease is a part of the disease. projections can be made of where it might explode next. What he and his colleagues got was a one-page CDC brochure without any elaborate details. “I pressed my hands to my eyes and nodded,” she says. “I was expecting something very different.” Advanced data reporting structures and procedures, like he and his PEPFAR team, have helped African nations thrive over the years, but were not available in the United States, although they will be sorely needed in the days to come. This wasn’t the last time Birx would give a face-to-face reaction, literally or figuratively, to her new colleagues and bosses.

He did this to Trump, somewhat more cautiously, on April 23, 2020, as he sat on a side wall in the White House briefing room, in front of assembled reporters, praising the idea of ​​using disinfectant chemicals taken internally as a possible treatment. against the virus. He suggested that Americans drink bleach? It was unclear whether he did. If such disinfectants could kill SARS-CoV-2 on a tabletop as Trump said, why not? “He’ll be knocked out in a minute,” he said. “Minute.” So maybe doctors should try giving injections. “It would be interesting to check that out,” said the President (as he later claimed) without showing any signs of joking. Birx froze, her hands clasped in her lap. You can see it there even now, protected video on youtube. “I looked at my feet and wished for two things: something to kick and for the floor to open up and swallow me whole,” he writes.

By then, he and his more trusted colleagues on the task force, doctors Redfield and Anthony Fauci, had achieved something useful: persuading the President to approve a 15-day partial shutdown proposal, followed by a 30-day extension, under the slogan. “Stop Spreading”; the government seemed to be taking the viral threat seriously. “The president’s disinfectant statement could solve anything,” Birx recalls, “at the worst possible time.” When Trump turned to him to comment on the potential benefits of disinfectant, as well as some type of sterilizing light (sunlight or rays of pure UV radiation or who knows), he replied, “Not as a cure.” Birx didn’t get lost on the ground, as he had hoped, but disappeared from the flowchart of White House influence at the time. His daily press conferences ended, and he found himself marginalized for the remainder of his tenure as task force coordinator – until January 19, 2021. Why did he stay at work? Because Trump and his political advisers didn’t want to fire him, which could get bad publicity in an election year, and he didn’t want to resign. “I am not a quitter,” he writes, as one of the many personal testimonies in which he supports himself throughout the book.



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