Sen. Warren: No pass for Dr. Birx on pandemic response

METHUEN, Mass. — After U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren toured a testing site and vaccination clinic, she was asked about Dr. Deborah Birx’s appearance on CNN Sunday night. The former White House Covid Task Force member claimed most of the deaths in the U.S., due to the virus, could have been prevented.

“I’m not giving her a pass,” Warren said.

It doesn’t seem Birx got a pass from anyone, including the Trump administration.

“I knew I was being watched,” she told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, MD. “Everybody inside was waiting for me to make a misstep. So that they could, I guess, remove me from the task force.”

She wasn’t removed, but Birx said her power to speak out nationally was severely curtailed after an August interview on CNN when she warned the virus was widespread, such that even rural areas were not immune.

“I got called by the president,” Birx said. “I think you’ve heard other conversations that people have posted with the president. I would say it was even more direct.”

Birx did not go into further detail about the call.

But Warren had little sympathy for Birx, saying:

“Where was Doctor Birx a year ago? She now wants to describe all the mistakes that were made back then? That was the time to speak out,” Warren said. “For those of us who have lost loved ones hearing a year after the fact that we knew and we should have done better, but that politics got in the way is just not good enough. It’s just fundamentally wrong.”

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