Birx Says Majority of Deaths Could Have Been Prevented

Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator for President Trump, told CNN that the number of coronavirus deaths could have been “decreased substantially” if cities and states across the country had aggressively applied the lessons of the first surge toward mitigation last spring, potentially preventing the surges that followed.

Said Birx: “I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse. There were about a hundred thousand deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”