Dr. Deborah Birx tells her side of the story.
Birx does a very good job of distilling what went wrong. She repeatedly emphasizes what she identifies as the principal fault in the Trump administration’s pandemic response: a failure to recognize the importance of asymptomatic transmission (thus the book’s title). She laments testing problems, including initial refusals to enlist the private sector, mistakes at the CDC, and later failures to ramp up diagnostics. Birx also cites the CDC’s consistent failure to develop good data about the pandemic, and places this at the center of reforms she proposes toward the book’s end.
But what sets Silent Invasion apart is how Birx, with the writing assistance of Gary Brozek, unhesitatingly names names (and dates and places). She does so with much more detail and nuance than we’ve had from anyone else. Birx paints a portrait of an administration in full, made up of people with a mix of talents and motivations. Where other chroniclers describe the White House as if it had just one occupant, Birx gives us the full cast. The book’s first 150 pages, on the period from January through March 2020, are especially riveting. In the early crucial weeks of the crisis, she writes, “some roaming the halls of the West Wing believed that the less we did, the less we would be held accountable for whatever was about to happen.”
Birx has her own list of bad guys. The worst is Scott Atlas, the radiologist whose epidemiology advice Trump came to take. Atlas, she writes, repeatedly responded to group emails from her by hitting “Reply All” and then removing her from the list before sending. Other lead villains include presidential Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (who seems to care only about politics) and vice-presidential Chief of Staff Marc Short (who seems to care only about protecting his boss from his boss). Also: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the entrenched and inflexible staff of the CDC, the out-of-its-depth staff of the Council of Economic Advisers, the politically wobbly World Health Organization, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, Birx indicates, knew better but caved to political pressure. Birx is forthright in calling out numerous examples of her sexist treatment by other White House staffers, especially Meadows and Short.
The forces for good, in her view, include some surprises. She portrays Vice President Mike Pence and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner as often aiding work that Trump loudly derided. Pence never seemed publicly at variance with Trump, and Kushner has been widely criticized for inept logistical efforts, but Birx offers a few convincing examples of moments when they worked to quietly facilitate some positive actions. Birx also praises her friend Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser, along with governors including Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Doug Ducey of Arizona. In between, alternately bolstering and disappointing her, are her longtime colleagues Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Robert Redfield.
The Clearest Account Yet of How Trump’s Team Botched the Pandemic
Deborah Birx’s "Silent Invasion" offers more detail and nuance than any other pandemic book.
www.theatlantic.com
Birx does a very good job of distilling what went wrong. She repeatedly emphasizes what she identifies as the principal fault in the Trump administration’s pandemic response: a failure to recognize the importance of asymptomatic transmission (thus the book’s title). She laments testing problems, including initial refusals to enlist the private sector, mistakes at the CDC, and later failures to ramp up diagnostics. Birx also cites the CDC’s consistent failure to develop good data about the pandemic, and places this at the center of reforms she proposes toward the book’s end.
But what sets Silent Invasion apart is how Birx, with the writing assistance of Gary Brozek, unhesitatingly names names (and dates and places). She does so with much more detail and nuance than we’ve had from anyone else. Birx paints a portrait of an administration in full, made up of people with a mix of talents and motivations. Where other chroniclers describe the White House as if it had just one occupant, Birx gives us the full cast. The book’s first 150 pages, on the period from January through March 2020, are especially riveting. In the early crucial weeks of the crisis, she writes, “some roaming the halls of the West Wing believed that the less we did, the less we would be held accountable for whatever was about to happen.”
Birx has her own list of bad guys. The worst is Scott Atlas, the radiologist whose epidemiology advice Trump came to take. Atlas, she writes, repeatedly responded to group emails from her by hitting “Reply All” and then removing her from the list before sending. Other lead villains include presidential Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (who seems to care only about politics) and vice-presidential Chief of Staff Marc Short (who seems to care only about protecting his boss from his boss). Also: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the entrenched and inflexible staff of the CDC, the out-of-its-depth staff of the Council of Economic Advisers, the politically wobbly World Health Organization, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, Birx indicates, knew better but caved to political pressure. Birx is forthright in calling out numerous examples of her sexist treatment by other White House staffers, especially Meadows and Short.
The forces for good, in her view, include some surprises. She portrays Vice President Mike Pence and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner as often aiding work that Trump loudly derided. Pence never seemed publicly at variance with Trump, and Kushner has been widely criticized for inept logistical efforts, but Birx offers a few convincing examples of moments when they worked to quietly facilitate some positive actions. Birx also praises her friend Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser, along with governors including Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Doug Ducey of Arizona. In between, alternately bolstering and disappointing her, are her longtime colleagues Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Robert Redfield.