No good deed goes unpunished. Dr Deborah Birx has been Trump’s personal coddler throughout this pandemic crisis, always putting a smiley face on his inane gibberish.
But as has happened to virtually all of Trump’s closest associates, she’s been stabbed in the back and marginalized in favor of a full-blown snake oil Trumpian crank:
Once a fixture at the administration’s coronavirus briefings, Dr. Deborah Birx has confided to aides and friends that she has become so unhappy with what she sees as her diminished role as coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force that she is not certain how much longer she can serve in her position, sources familiar with her thinking tell CNN.
Birx has told people around her that she is “distressed” with the direction of the task force, describing the situation inside the nation’s response to the coronavirus as nightmarish.According to people familiar with her thinking, Birx views Dr. Scott Atlas, a recent addition to the task force, as an unhealthy influence on President Donald Trump’s thinking when it comes to the virus.
“The President has found somebody who matches what he wants to believe,” a source close to Birx said of her view of Atlas’s relationship with Trump. “There is no doubt that she feels that her role has been diminished.
“Birx believes Atlas is feeding the President misleading information about the efficacy of face masks for controlling the spread of the virus, the source said. Trump, whose rallies draw crowds of supporters who refuse to wear masks, has repeatedly mocked Democratic rival Joe Biden for using them.
Atlas, a neuroradiologist without expertise in infectious diseases, has seen his prominent role on the task force come under some scrutiny as respected medical experts have questioned his controversial flirtation with “herd immunity” as a solution for the outbreak in the US…
“When you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you’re prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem,” Atlas told Fox News in July.
An administration official close to the West Wing’s coronavirus response acknowledged the addition of Atlas has unsettled some of the experts on the task force. But the official maintained Atlas “shook things up a bit” and brought “fresh eyes” to discussions behind the scenes, a dynamic Trump prefers.
The same source said Birx, who has spent much of her career tackling global health crises from Covid-19 to AIDS, is not likely to end her time in government service by stepping down from the task force. “She is a good soldier. I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” the source said.
Yeah, I don’t think so either. But it would be smart for her to check out now but she won’t. She’s a true believer.