Dr. Birx Shuts Down Reporters Trying To Push Political Agenda During Crisis

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx shut down those on Friday who were trying to score political points over the administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Birx’s remarks appeared to be directed at CNN’s Jim Acosta, who had asked during the briefing who had “dropped the ball” in the administration.

“One other comment because I know we’re always saying who knew what when. I just want to make clear. There’s 150-plus countries working on this collectively together,” Birx said. “It’s devastating for every single country. When we get through this, we can go back and look at what happened where, and what does this epidemic look like. Then, when you get through it, then you can validate every model there is known to man. When you’re in the middle of it, you have to concentrate on serving the needs of each American and what that need looks like.”

“At the same time, you have these other work streams on surveillance, and how to be prepared both scientifically and therapeutically and vaccine wise for the next fall if it happens again,” Birx continued. “So, I think these things are happening together, but I just want us to really concentrate on the fact that all around the globe, country after country is dealing with this.”

Birx then highlighted how China hid critical information about the outbreak, and how the head of the World Health Organization offered poor advice on trying to contain the outbreak.

“We can talk about why didn’t Italy do something or Spain do something or Germany do something, or we can really say, right now, we all can do something,” Birx said. “We can do the social distancing and all of the pieces that we know is starting to work around the globe in country after country. Then when we get through all of this, we can ask the questions about could we have done some piece of this better as a global community. I will remind you that on February 3, the head of the W.H.O said there was no reason to ever do a travel ban. It wasn’t until January 14th that we knew that there was human-to-human transmission.”

Right when Birx brought up the W.H.O. and China, Acosta interrupted her.