Dr. Deborah Birx traveled with the family out of state during Thanksgiving weekend, ignoring her own tips for staying home and not meeting during the holidays, according to a report.
The White House coronavirus response coordinator joined three of the different family generations at one of her vacation properties on Fenwick Island in Delaware on November 27, just one day after the Thanksgiving holidays, the Associated Press reported.
The group, which included her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, a son-in-law and two grandchildren, were from two separate households.
Birx, who owns a home in Washington DC and another in Potomac, Maryland, defended the trip saying he had to take care to winter the property before a possible sale.
“I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said in a statement.
He argued that the members of the trip belong to his “immediate home,” although he acknowledged that they live in separate houses.
Birx had urged people in the days leading up to Thanksgiving to hold meetings in “your immediate home.”
“I don’t like it being any number,” Birx told CNN’s “New Day”.
“Because you know, if you say it can be ten, and it’s eight people from four different families, it’s probably not the same degree of security as 10 people in your immediate home.”
Birx said that at the moment every American is forced to make sacrifices to stop the spread of the virus.
“I’m making personal sacrifices to not infect my parents and my pregnant daughter, and there are a lot of people who know how to protect each other, and we just have to make sure we all do,” Birx said. then.
But their trip came to light in a relative, who said they had concerns about their social distancing during the pandemic, the AP said.
Kathleen Flynn, whose brother is married to Birx’s daughter, said the behavior worries her about her own parents.
“He violated his own guide,” Flynn said of Birx, whom he had never met.
One of the sources of friction has been Birx’s visits to the Potomac house, where his parents, daughter and grandchildren live.
Flynn’s mother, who is the children’s other grandmother, travels there regularly to look after 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 conscious and is a very good doctor and scientist for all I can see, ”he said.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University Law School who knows Birx professionally, also said he is confident he was responsible for taking the proper precautions to travel to Thanksgiving, but feared his behavior could send the wrong message to Americans.
“It’s extraordinarily important that coronavirus response leaders model the behavior they recommend to the public,” Gostin said.
“We lose faith in our public health officials if they say these are the rules, but they don’t apply to me.”
With publishing cables