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.
Fox News Poll: Broad anxiety about AI doesn’t extend to jobs
Artemis II vs. Apollo: Why this mission loops the moon but doesn’t land
Trump Fires Off Heated Message After Walking Out of Supreme Court Oral Arguments
Sauer cites ‘striking’ figures on secretive birth tourism in high-stakes SCOTUS case
Trump highlights ‘day of prayer’ at National Mall next month with faith leaders
Ted Bundy unmasked in decades-old teen murder as cold case finally solved by DNA: report
Trump Goes to Supreme Court for Oral Arguments in Unprecedented Move
Trump says Artemis II launch is sign US is ‘WINNING, in Space, on Earth, and everywhere’
Trump working to clean ‘filthy’ Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, blames Biden for maintenance delays
Trump calls for second ‘big, beautiful bill’ to fund ICE on his desk by June 1
Audience of one: Trump watches from Supreme Court gallery during birthright citizenship arguments
Watch: Nancy Pelosi Plants Absurd Conspiracy Theory About the 2026 Election
Grand conspiracy investigation into Obama-era officials gains steam in South Florida
Impeach Them All: Rogue Judge Orders Trump to Restore Legal Status to Up to 900,000 Immigrants
Iran launches mass text-based recruitment drive, including minors, to join targeted security forces
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.
