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.
Trump warns US would ‘decimate and destroy’ Iran over assassination attempt
California men accused of $100K burglary allegedly took selfies while committing crime
Prosecutors seeking death penalty for deported illegal alien indicted in murder of sister-in-law
New Jersey woman accused of sexually assaulting child, posting video on Snapchat: police
Former Obama press aide accused of stealing cash, credit cards, from Minneapolis coworkers to buy kratom
Kelley Paul: America’s Founders were the ‘first civil rights heroes’
Michigan Senate hopeful calls AIPAC donations ‘legalized bribery,’ remains silent on other donations
Trump Admin Knocks Out Radically Woke ‘Equal Opportunity’ Rule, Makes It Much Harder to Sue Over Racism and Win
As the Hearing Wraps, Let’s Remember Charlie Kirk for the Modern-Day Thomas Paine That He Was
How Maine’s Democratic meltdown could shape the Senate midterms
ICE arrests illegal immigrants convicted of attempted murder, rape and child sex crimes in targeted crackdown
White House considers plan to build permanent fencing around Lafayette Park
Man arrested on suspicion of murdering British politician Ann Widdecombe
Erika Kirk urges judge to clear path quickly for Tyler Robinson murder trial
Trump says he left instructions to ‘bomb’ Iran ‘at levels’ never seen if he is assassinated
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.
