President Donald Trump has spent the past few weeks hosting dozens of large campaign rallies across America with hundreds of attendees, often in coronavirus-ravaged states and where he has continued to downplay the growing viral threat for the sake of his political prospects. Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, has also been traveling to virus hot spots in recent weeks, but instead urging state and local officials to tighten restrictions, mandate masks, and encourage measures like physical distancing to slow the spread.
Birx and Trump’s disparate pandemic messaging were brought to the fore in a leaked White House memo on Monday, in which the top White House coronavirus adviser directly contradicts the president’s rosy outlook with urgent calls for “much more aggressive action” and warnings of new levels of trouble ahead. “We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic … leading to increasing mortality,” she said in the internal November 2 report to senior White House and agency officials, first disclosed by the Washington Post. “This is not about lockdowns—it hasn’t been about lockdowns since March or April. It’s about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented.” The memo implores the administration to put forth “consistent messaging about uniform use of masks, physical distancing and hand washing with profound limitation on indoor gatherings especially with family and friends,” guidance Birx called “essential at this time point.”
Birx’s internal report challenges many of Trump’s misleading public talking points, such as blaming rising infections on increased testing, with Birx noting testing is “flat or declining” in many of the places seeing rising cases, and the president’s repeated insistence that the country is “rounding the turn” on the pandemic. In reality, Birx’s report says, the nation is heading into uncharted territory. “Cases are rapidly rising in nearly 30 percent of all USA counties, the highest number of county hotspots we have seen with this pandemic,” her memo said. “Half of the United States is in the red or orange zone for cases despite flat or declining testing.”
And as the Post notes, Birx’s message signals “the increasing desperation of health officials to spotlight the risks of a pandemic that is forecast to take thousands more lives as the weather worsens unless people change their behaviors,” a task made difficult under a president who has not only personally modeled dangerous behavior, but promoted it. On Tuesday, Trump reportedly plans to host 250 guests at the White House for an indoor gathering to watch the election results.
Birx’s memo comes as Trump publicly mused to supporters at a rally on Sunday about firing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, after the election. But while Fauci has for months now been publicly bashed by Trump and undermined by administration officials (who have reportedly tried to censor his COVID messaging), Birx had previously earned Trump’s praise. The president’s comments Sunday came after Fauci offered his strongest condemnation yet of Trump’s handling of the pandemic in an interview with the Post on Friday, during which he said he and Birx had lost Trump’s ear. Hints of that shift came in August, when Trump hired Scott Atlas—a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases or epidemiology—as his new pandemic adviser, reportedly to “argue an alternative point of view” from Birx and Fauci. And according to the Post, Birx has become increasingly fed up with the weight Atlas and his controversial views, including a “herd immunity” approach and questioning mask use, have continued to amass inside the White House: “She has challenged his views in task force meetings, suggesting that reopening society without any restrictions would lead to thousands of deaths.”
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