Advertisement“The plane in a nose dive, and we’ve got to pull it up,” Becerra said. AdvertisementMeeting the president’s goal “is going to be a challenge,” Fauci told CBS. One prominent infectious-diseases specialist who will not be joining the Biden team is Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus task force coordinator under former President Trump. During her tenure, she sometimes came under criticism for not pushing back publicly against some of the ex-president’s more fanciful claims. In an interview on “Face the Nation,” Birx was asked directly whether there were “COVID deniers in the White House.” She replied that in the White House and around the country “there were people who definitely believed that this was a hoax.”The scientist said she believes “a parallel set of data” from someone inside or outside the White House was shown to the president, suggesting that that misinformation influenced Trump’s actions and public statements.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 24, 2021 22:25 UTC