Dr. Deborah Birx traveled out of the state with family over Thanksgiving weekend – according to a report, she ignored her own advice to stay home and not get together during the holidays.
The White House response coordinator for the coronavirus was joined by three different generations of family at one of her vacation properties on Fenwick Island, Delaware on Nov. 27, just a day after the Thanksgiving holiday, the Associated Press reported.
The group – which included her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren – came from two separate households.
Birx – who has a home in Washington DC and another in Potomac, Maryland – defended the trip, saying she should take care of winterizing the property before a potential sale.
“I didn’t go to Delaware to celebrate Thanksgiving,” Birx said in a statement.
She argued that the members of the trip belong to her “immediate household,” although she acknowledged that they live in separate houses.
Birx had urged people in the days leading up to Thanksgiving to hold meetings for “your immediate household.”
“I don’t like being a number,” Birx said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“Because you know, if you say there could be 10, and it’s eight people from four different families, that’s probably not the same level of security as ten people from your immediate household.”
Birx said at the time that every American is obliged to make sacrifices to stop the spread of the virus.
“I make the personal sacrifices of not infecting my parents and my pregnant daughter, and there are a lot of people who know how to protect each other, and we just need to make sure we all do that,” Birx said at the time.
But her journey came to light from a family member, who said they were concerned about her social distance during the pandemic, the AP said.
Kathleen Flynn, whose brother is married to Birx’s daughter, said the behavior worries her for her own parents.
“She cavalierly violated her own guidance,” Flynn said of Birx, whom she has never met.
One source of friction is Birx’s visits to the Potomac home, home to her elderly parents, daughter, and grandchildren.
Flynn’s mother – who is the other grandmother of the children – travels there regularly to see them before returning home to her 92-year-old husband, who has health complications.
But Flynn’s father, Richard Flynn, said he trusted Birx to make the right decisions.
“Dr. Birx is very conscientious and a very good doctor and scientist as far as I can tell,” he said.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University’s law school who knows Birx professionally, also said he is confident she has taken it upon herself to take appropriate precautions for Thanksgiving travel – but feared her behavior would send the wrong message. the Americans.
“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.”
With pole wires