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: US Soccer Player Takes Possibly Worst Dive Ever Caught on Camera After Mexico Player Barely Taps Him
Child Dies After Freak Accident in Playground Tube Slide
Denver man’s escape exposes chilling Tren de Aragua kidnapping plot that lands trio in prison
Former TV anchor who pleaded guilty to killing mother last Halloween gets life sentence
‘Cornell 7’ Member Turns Accusations Around, Says He Was the Victim and Jane Doe Was the Perpetrator
Trump says Putin call coming ‘very soon’ as US tracks suspected plague death in Russia
Ex-CIA official admits to $194 million fraud scheme involving gold bars
Cornell Appoints Former Acting Attorney General Who Was Fired by Trump for Insubordination to Lead Investigation
Foreign adversaries running ‘psyop’ to fuel anti-AI and anti-data center movement, war official says
Veterans of ‘unbearable’ Chinese factory in Ohio detail brutal work conditions amid top Dem’s oversight visit
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis Sucks Up to ‘The View’ by Threatening to Dox Trump’s Personal Phone Number
Watch: Scary Moment as Usha Vance and Infant Nearly Fall from Helicopter Stairs as Servicemen Refuse to Move
Unearthed social media posts contradict El-Sayed’s ‘capitalist’ narrative
Christa Pike now conscious and talking after surviving 2 doses of lethal injection drug: report
Delta Air Lines jet clips Air Canada plane on Los Angeles International Airport tarmac
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.
