Dr. Deborah Birx said the continuous coverage of President Trump’s comments about injecting disinfectants from the mainstream media is bothersome.
On Thursday, President Trump discussed two ideas he floated to coronavirus researchers about using UV light or disinfectant injections as a way to kill the coronavirus. The President’s comments triggered a series of warnings from disinfectant producers and public health officials against consuming the products. It also triggered a lot of media coverage, something Birx told CNN she wished would end.
“I think it bothers me that this is still in the news cycle because I think we’re missing the bigger pieces of what we need to be doing as an American people to continue to protect one another,” she said Sunday on State of the Union.
Dr. Birx, who is coordinating the White House Coronavirus Task Force, also described a few data points in which the U.S. is an outlier that could be beneficial to study and discuss with the public rather than continuing to cover President Trump’s comments about disinfectants.
Dr. Birx said that public health officials are struggling to get their message through to the public because of the media’s stunts.
“As a scientist and a public health official and a researcher, sometimes I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night. So, I think I’ve answered that question. I think the president made it clear that physicians had to study this. I think I’ve made it clear that this was a musing, as you described,” Dr. Birx said.
She continued, “But I want us to move on to be able to get information to the American people that can help them protect each other and also help them understand how devastating this virus is to different age groups and different symptoms and different comorbidities.”
