WASHINGTON (AP) – As COVID-19 cases skyrocketed for Thanksgiving weekend, said Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, warned Americans to “be vigilant” and limit the celebrations to “your immediate household.”
For many Americans it was difficult to adhere to those guidelines, also for Birx herself.
The day after Thanksgiving, she traveled to one of her vacation spots on Fenwick Island, Delaware. She was joined by three generations of her family from two households. Birx, her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren were present.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have asked Americans not to travel while on vacation and discourage indoor activities involving members of different households. “People who are not currently living in your housing unit, such as students going home from school for the holidays, should be considered as part of different households.”
Even in Birx’s day-to-day life, there are challenges that meet that standard. She and her husband have a home in Washington. She also has a home in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where her elderly parents, daughter and family live and where Birx visits occasionally. In addition, the children’s other grandmother, who is 77, also travels regularly to the Potomac home and returns to her 92-year-old husband near Baltimore.
Birx’s own experiences underscore the complexity and difficulty of trying to break through the dangers of the pandemic while balancing work, family and health, especially among key workers like her.
Still, some of Birx’s public health colleagues say she should be held to a higher standard, given her prominent role in the government’s response to the pandemic and the current rise in COVID-19 deaths across the country.
Birx has expressed the wish to retain an important role about the White House coronavirus task force when President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated next month, according to a person familiar with the Biden team’s staff consultation and an official from the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force. Neither was authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations and both spoke on condition of anonymity.
“For me, this disqualifies her from any future government health position,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security. “It’s a terrible message for anyone in public health to send to the American people.”
After The Associated Press asked questions about her Thanksgiving weekend travels, Birx acknowledged in a statement that she had moved to her Delaware property. She declined to be interviewed.
She stressed that the purpose of the approximately 50-hour visit was to winterize the property ahead of a potential sale – something she says she hadn’t had time to do because of her busy schedule.
“I didn’t go to Delaware to celebrate Thanksgiving,” Birx said in her statement, adding that her family shared a meal together while in Delaware.
Birx said that everyone on her trip to Delaware belongs to her “immediate household,” even though she acknowledged that they live in two different houses. Initially, she called the Potomac house a “3-generation household (previously 4 generations)”. White House officials later said it is still a four-generation household, a distinction that would include Birx as part of the house.
Birx’s job makes her an “essential worker” under federal guidelines, in a position that requires extensive travel to consult state and local officials about the pandemic response. She has traveled to 43 states and covered 25,000 miles, she said, often to coronavirus hotspots. Birx also has an office in the White House, where numerous COVID-19 infections have been revealed.
Through it all, she said she has kept herself and her family safe by isolating, wearing a mask, and testing regularly.
Birx did not say how long she isolates before visiting family. Medical experts say that people who have only recently become infected often do not test positive. They say that wearing a mask has limited efficacy in an environment like the White House, where few others use it.
Margaret Flynn, the other grandmother of the children, comes to the Potomac house to provide childcare and then returns to her husband, who has health complications. Birx said she hasn’t seen the other grandmother since the start of the pandemic and doesn’t know how often she visits the Potomac house.
Flynn confirmed that she has not spoken to Birx in months. Flynn wouldn’t say how often she visits the house to look after the grandchildren.
From the stage in the White House, Birx has spoken about coming from a multi-generational family with her parents and her daughter’s family, including grandchildren, all living under one roof. Many saw this as a recognizable family dilemma.
In early April, she said she understood the sacrifices many made and explained that she couldn’t visit her Potomac home if one of her grandchildren had a high fever.
“I didn’t go there,” she said, standing next to President Donald Trump. “You can’t take that kind of risk.”
She has since resumed her visits to the house.
Numerous elected officials, including prominent Democrats, have been forced to admit that they have disregarded their own stern warnings to the public about the dangers of spreading the virus.
But Birx has much greater authority when it comes to the pandemic. Many Americans rely on the advice she and the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Kathleen Flynn, whose brother is married to Birx’s daughter who lives in the Potomac house, said she brought up information about Birx’s situation out of concern for her own parents, acknowledging the friction in the family over the matter.
“She cavalierly violated her own guidance,” Flynn said of Birx.
Richard Flynn, her father, confirmed details of Birx’s Thanksgiving holiday gathering and visits to the Potomac house, but said he trusted the doctor and believes she is doing the right thing. He said Birx’s visits to the house have been only every few weeks lately.
“Dr. Birx is very conscientious and a very good doctor and scientist as far as I can tell,” said Richard Flynn in a recent interview.
Medical experts say public health officials like Birx need to lead by example, including personal behavior that is impeccable.
“We need leadership to lead by example, especially when it comes to things they ask of average Americans who are far less privileged than they are,” said Dr. Abraar Karan, a global health specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, about the high-profile errors of judgment.
Birx came to the White House coronavirus task force with an excellent reputation. Birx has been a public servant since the Reagan administration and has served as a U.S. military physician and as a globally recognized AIDS investigator. She was pulled from her position as ambassador to the US Global AIDS Coordinator in late February to assist the task force.
However, Birx has been criticized by public health experts and Democratic lawmakers for not speaking out forcefully against Trump when he contradicted the advice of medical advisers and scientists on fighting the virus.
Although she remained in Trump’s good graces much longer than Fauci, who regularly contradicted Trump, the president had also sidelined Birx by the end of the summer.
Kathleen Flynn said she urged her brother and sister-in-law not to let her mother babysit, arguing that spending so much time in a different household than hers would put her mother in danger, while also being a poses a danger to Birx’s elderly parents. Flynn, who said she has had a long-term tense relationship with her brother, is currently not in talks and has never met Birx.
Flynn said her mother waited about a week after Birx’s Thanksgiving trip before returning to the Potomac home to provide childcare.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University’s law school who has known Birx professionally for years, said he is confident that Birx has taken all necessary precautions to minimize the risks during her Thanksgiving travels. Still, he said it undermines its greater goal of getting Americans to collaborate with government officials’ efforts to minimize the death and suffering caused by the virus.
“It is extremely important for coronavirus response leaders to model the behaviors they recommend to the public,” said Gostin. “We lose faith in our public health officials when they say these are the rules, but they don’t apply to me.”
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Madhani reported from Wilmington, Delaware.