Birx: 130,000 Americans Would Be Alive Today If Trump Hadn't Been "Distracted" by the Election

[babylonsister]

Levin Report
Birx: 130,000 Americans Would Be Alive Today If Trump Hadn’t Been “Distracted” by the Election
That, and if he weren’t an anti-science megalomaniac who doesn’t care about anyone not named Trump.
By Bess Levin
October 26, 2021


As America learned last year, one of the many problems with electing an anti-science megalomanic who doesn’t read, won’t listen, and thinks windmills cause cancer is that when a highly contagious virus comes around killing people with alarming speed, he’s the last person you want in charge. A brief, in no way conclusive list of the ways Donald Trump reportedly made the COVID-19 situation worse in the U.S. includes but is in no way limited to:

Ignoring early warnings in January and February about the seriousness of the virus;
Actively lying to the public about how dangerous it was;
Listening to his idiot son-in-law, who decided the whole thing wasn’t a “health reality”;
Refusing to invoke the Defense Production Act because corporate CEOs asked him not to;
Sidelining doctors and and scientists;
Scrapping national testing plan because the virus was mostly hurting blue states at the time;
Touting unproven drugs instead of masking and social distancing;
Nixing a plan to send free masks to every household in the country;
Regularly holding super-spreader events;
Comparing it to the flu;
Claiming it affects “virtually nobody” under 18, even though he personally contracted it and had to be pumped full of experimental drugs;
Just being himself.

And while no moment in his presidency would have been an ideal time for the pandemic, according to Deborah Birx, M.D., the timing of the COVID crisis was extra unfortunate given that it coincided with the 2020 election, which Team Trump was apparently more focused on than saving people‘s lives. How unfortunate? 130,000-people-would-have-been-alive-today unfortunate. Per The Washington Post:

The Trump administration was “distracted” by last year’s election and ignored recommendations to curb the pandemic, the White House’s former coronavirus response coordinator told congressional investigators this month. “I felt like the White House had gotten somewhat complacent through the campaign season,” said Deborah Birx, who President Donald Trump chose in March 2020 to steer his government's virus response, according to interview excerpts released by the House select subcommittee on the pandemic. Birx, who sat for interviews with the subcommittee on Oct. 12 and 13, also detailed advice that she said the White House ignored late last year, including more aggressively testing younger Americans, expanding access to virus treatments, and better distributing vaccine doses in long-term care facilities.

More than 130,000 American lives could have been saved with swifter action and better coordinated public health messages after the virus’s first wave, Birx told investigators.

“I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30-percent-less to 40-percent-less range,” Birx said. More than 735,000 Americans have died of coronavirus-related complications since the pandemic began, including more than 300,000 since President Joe Biden took office.

more...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/deborah-birx-donald-trump-covid-election-deaths

[Carlitos Brigante]

1. When are these fucking poeple gonna get it? He didn't need to be "distracted" by anything. He just

couldn't bring himself to give a fuck.

[tanyev]

2. Exactly.

He would have behaved exactly the same if it had happened sooner in his term. I’m reading Carol Leonnig’s book I Alone Can Fix It and it’s making me furious all over again.

[madinmaryland]

13. End of thread. He did not give a fuck. 🤬🤬🤬🤬

[Arazi]

3. Deborah Birx can go fuck herself

She's complicit

[Igel]

4. Two points.

1. Her "beliefs" are converted into "fact". At least other sources get it accurate, as opposed to correct: They use "could".

The problem with "would" is simple. There are numbers with error bars and explicit assumptions. Why believe, when you can understand. Why religion, when you can science? But "would" means we know for sure, against evidence and logic, which means an assertion of faith.

2. It's unclear that a national mask mandate, national restrictions on businesses being open, would be Constitutional. Not that many matter when It Needs To Be Done Now. As for messaging, President Biden's messaging hasn't exactly produced a crushing of the curve. That prompts me to suspect that had President Trump said the same thing, he'd have gotten about the same result.

Of course, these are piddling little concerns, trivialities about causality and law and likelihoods when it comes to really matters....

[Walleye]

5. How many died after the election as a result of his refusal to transfer power and share information

He didn’t care about the pandemic at all until the stock market crash. He knew that would keep him from being reelected, after bragging about 401K’s for 3years. he never thought all those people dying might be bad for his campaign

[KentuckyWoman]

6. It always baffles me how educated people

can actually be this level of stupid. Her starting place is not even in the right place and then she just goes off into outer space after that.

[area51]

7. Still carrying water for Dementia Donnie, eh, Birx?

[LakeArenal]

8. Or, might have been saved had you said these things when happening.

[Raine]

9. and she just stood there in her designer scarfs basking in notoriety, collecting her pay and said

NOTHING! Its kind of late to take a superior self righteous stand ... too late to try and clear your conscience and clean up your reputation!

[ecstatic]

10. Way more than that. NT

[OhioChick]

11. She's just as responsible and can go to hell n/t

[Irish_Dem]

12. And she stood by and did nothing.