Birx: ‘We Didn’t Know How Contagious’ Coronavirus is Because of China
China was accused of covering up the scale of the virus at early stages
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One of the leading members of President Donald Trump's COVID-19 task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, admitted that they "didn’t know how contagious” coronavirus was due to holes in the data reported by China.
China was accused of covering up the scale of the virus in its early stages in January, which many have argued took away valuable time in containing COVID-19.
“At the time, when this virus stuck…I was working very intently on HIV at the time, and was overseas in sub-Saharan Africa, watching the data coming from China," Birx said.
"And I think when we looked at the profile, first, there was a question about human-to-human transmission.
"Obviously, in a virus, that’s really key. … So, there was that first question," she added.
"And I think when you’re in the midst of an epidemic, it’s hard for you to really be testing at the level that you need to really look for those asymptomatic cases and really look for those people with mild disease," Birx continued.
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"And so, now we’re finding out that most of the reporting was around very severe cases, severe cases that presented in a very difficult situation, and that they weren’t really measuring asymptomatic or mild disease," she added.
"In that case, that may be a significant portion of the epidemic," Birx said.
"And so, we didn’t know how it was spreading. We didn’t know the surface contact," she admitted.
"We didn’t know how — I think the bottom line is, we didn’t know how contagious it was," she said.
"And I think when you make misassumptions around contagion early on, then you don’t prepare in the way that you should prepare for the level of contagion that this COVID-19 exhibits.”
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of launching a false propaganda campaign accusing the U.S. Military of planting the deadly coronavirus in their country.
Pompeo outlined China's reluctance to work with the US on combatting the virus.
“We’ve wanted to work with the Chinese Communist Party throughout this crisis – this crisis that began in Wuhan, China,” Pompeo said.
“We tried – you’ll remember – from the opening days to get our scientists, our experts on the ground there so that we could begin to assist in the global response to what began there in China, but we weren’t able to do that.
"The Chinese Communist Party wouldn’t permit that to happen.”
NY Doctor Successfully Treats Patients With Drug Cocktail: “Zero Deaths, Zero Hospitalizations, Zero Intubations.”
— Neon Nettle (@NeonNettle) March 24, 2020
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China was also accused by one of its news outlets of "faking" its miraculous recovery from the coronavirus outbreak.
Last month, Beijing-based Caixin claimed that China was far from recovered.
The newspaper states that “local governments are faking coronavirus recovery.”
The paper cites business insiders across the country that claim to be unable to fill quotas set by the government.
Neon Nettle also reported in March that Chinese scientists raised the alarm about coronavirus in December but were ordered to keep quiet.
Researchers claim that after warning government officials about their discovery, they were told to suppress the evidence, a report by the NY Post has argued at the time.
A number of sick patients were tested in Wuhan by genomics companies in December.
Scientists noticed similarities between their illnesses and SARS, the Post reported.
