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.
House narrowly backs allowing troops, Pentagon workers to carry personal guns on military bases
Progressive wave crashes in Sun Belt battleground as moderate holds his seat
House GOP votes to punt government shutdown battle to after November midterms
Woman’s remains identified by DNA in Virginia, exposing second alleged murder linked to same 4 suspects
Mamdani goes back on campaign promise, says NYC can’t arrest Netanyahu
Watch: Leftist Witness Confused by Jasmine Crockett’s Wild ‘Racism’ Claim About the World Cup Final
Alleged ‘mime’ stalker stripped to underwear, covered himself in cooking oil: officials
Watch: Dog Moves Like Lightning to Protect Her Boy from Charging Black Bear and Gets the Job Done
David Hogg Rips DNC’s Campaign Arm as ‘Evil’ and Says Top Party Fundraisers ‘Pick Terrible Candidates’
Slack messages released by Rand Paul appear to show authors of key COVID-19 origin paper held private doubts
WATCH: Smithsonian director pressed on woke exhibits: ‘Is Mickey Mouse racist?’
Peter Navarro contempt of Congress conviction upheld by appeals court
FBI Director Kash Patel to Make Rare Trip to Russia: Report
Todd Blanche faces lingering GOP holdouts for attorney general post over ‘anti-weaponization fund’
Zelensky sacks Ukrainian Commander in Chief Syrsky in major military shake-up
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.
