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: Another Talarico Clip Comes Back to Bite Him as He Characterizes Christians as ‘Causing Trouble’
Socialist Wisconsin governor candidate referred to America as ‘abundance of suffering,’ resurfaced post shows
HHS bureaucrats accused of ‘sabotaging’ RFK Jr’s efforts to expose Fauci records
Russia Releases American Military Veteran Who Was Taken Prisoner During Biden Administration
Replacement GOP nominee named after Rep Chuck Edwards drops re-election bid
US Marine veteran released from Russian prison after 1,666 days of detention
Michigan rescuers find family stranded for 3 days after tubing trip in dramatic video
Watch: Longtime Clinton Advisor Blasts Today’s Dems as Group of Lunatics, Who Are ‘Basically Illiterate and Uninformed’ from Watching MSNOW
NYC Homeowners Score Temporary Court Victory Over Mamdani’s New Tax
Alex Murdaugh lawyers allege ‘fabricated’ evidence was used to secure murder indictments
Trump-backed Darline Graham Nordone faces test in unpredictable South Carolina primary
Inside the Senate’s chaotic all-nighter that left Trump’s SAVE America Act on the shelf
Pentagon races to buy 10X more missiles as Iran war dwindles arsenal, threatens readiness for China aggression
GOP senators rally behind 9/11 families in push to ban Mamdani from anniversary ceremony: ‘He’s a disgrace’
The Medicare-for-all trade-offs socialists aren’t talking about, according to experts
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.
