Dr. Deborah Birx on Tuesday said that medical experts failed to understand the seriousness of the coronavirus because of incomplete data coming out of China.
“I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as that this was serious but smaller than anyone expected,” she said. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.”
Birx spoke about the experts’ relationship with the data during a White House press briefing on Tuesday evening.
She acknowledged frankly that when she saw early data from China reporting only 50,000 cases of the virus among the 20 million people in Wuhan, China, and the 80 million in Hubei province, she felt that the threat was similar to that of SARS, which had 8,098 cases globally and 774 deaths.
Watch: Emotional Kurt Busch Reveals His Final Words with His Brother Kyle
Karmelo Anthony’s Legal Team Smears Austin Metcalf in Desperate Attempt to Overturn Conviction
Tupac Shakur murder trial’s first week sees heated testimony from reluctant witnesses with old gangland ties
WATCH: Father of three outraged over advice his family received amid trans teacher fight
Charles Manson’s granddaughter reveals moment she discovered dark family secret: ‘It was devastating’
Dem Senate hopeful racked up hundreds of missed votes during stops at multiple taxpayer serving jobs
New York Times Ordered to Pay College Basketball Player $9.25 Million for Defamation
College Costs Surge 10% Higher Than Last Year, New Report Shows
A Bayh-gone era for Indiana Democrats?
Scharf edge for the Trump administration
Skip the summer’s woke dinosaur movie, ‘The End of Oak Street’
Senator launches assault on illegal immigration gaps as GOP races midterm clock to lock in key wins
EXCLUSIVE: 5-time illegal entrant admits ‘mistake’ that finally got him busted by ICE
Missing New York grandmother found dead near Las Vegas airport after mysterious Bitcoin texts
Trump to honor Artemis II astronauts who traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history
The devastation hitting countries like Italy and Spain and South Korea gave the experts much more complete data, helping them draw models that were far more alarming.
“Let’s see if we can do much better than that,” President Donald Trump said during the briefing, pointing to the models predicting 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the United States.
Trump noted that the virus was also more contagious than expected.
“I think the one thing that nobody really knew about this virus was how contagious it was,” he said. “It’s so incredibly contagious, and nobody knew that.”
Story cited here.
