Global AIDS Warrior on the Frontlines of the Coronavirus Battle
Dr. Deborah Birx, a fixture at White House briefings, is known for working across agency lines
Dr. Deborah Birx answers a question during the daily briefing at the White House.
PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Deborah Birx was leading an AIDS conference in Johannesburg on Feb. 27 when she received a call from the State Department summoning her to Washington to help combat a new disease that was about to change the way that all Americans lived.
In less than a month, Dr. Birx has become a central player in the Trump administration’s fight against the pandemic and a mainstay in the coronavirus task force’s public White House briefings, urging the public to recognize the severity of the threat.
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“Can we communicate effectively enough so that the American people take these guidelines seriously?” Dr. Birx asked in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Because that’s the only thing that’s going to change the course of this pandemic.”
As the U.S. coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Birx has been a regular presence at the White House, invariably wearing colorful scarfs that she said she has collected along her international travels and that are representative of “the global community response that’s needed now.”
A global-health expert on immunology and vaccine research, Dr. Birx has spent decades combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. Since 2014, she has served as ambassador-at-large in the State Department as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, managing an effort across multiple government departments.
“It’s why they sought her out for this particular role,” said Brian Honermann, the deputy director of public policy for Amfar, an AIDS research foundation, who has worked closely with Dr. Birx. “The ability to coordinate across different agencies.”
Dr. Birx, 63 years old, grew up in Philadelphia and earned a medical degree at Pennsylvania State University. Her father was an electrical engineer, her mother a nursing professor—an apt background for a daughter who would ultimately apply mathematical models to public-health problems, using numbers to combat illness.
Dr. Birx served 20 years as an Army doctor, attaining a colonel’s rank while working on immunology and vaccine research at the Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Birx led the military’s HIV research program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center before leaving the service in 2005 to join the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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The George W. Bush administration had recently established the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, to coordinate the aid and assistance that the U.S. government disbursed internationally to combat and contain the disease.
As the director of HIV/AIDS initiatives at CDC, Dr. Birx administered roughly half of Pepfar’s program, and in the process built a far-reaching network of global public health officials.
“She’s a very good manager,” said Tom Frieden, who was CDC director from 2009 to 2017. “She’s politically very savvy. She works hard. And she’s very focused on achieving results.”
In 2014, Dr. Birx effectively received a promotion when then-President Obama appointed her to lead Pepfar as the fourth U.S. global AIDS coordinator. Still serving in that position, she oversees a budget of $4 billion.
“She drives a hard program,” Mr. Honermann said. “She expects outcomes. She has a vision of what needs to happen.”
In her role at Pepfar, Dr. Birx has used mathematical modeling to examine and predict epidemiologic curves. And she has used this and other scientific data to assist the administration in making informed AIDS-related policy decisions, according to a senior coronavirus task force official.
Dr. Birx is one of the few remaining Obama appointees in the Trump administration.
When the coronavirus appeared in China last year, Dr. Birx was particularly concerned about its possible spread, according to the task force official. She had worked in that country during the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 and had witnessed the troubles it had wrought.
She also realized that the subsequent increase in international travel among upwardly mobile Chinese might exacerbate the scattering of this new virus, the official said.
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After the virus jumped China’s borders, Dr. Birx was in touch with officials on the newly formed White House coronavirus task force, including CDC Director Robert Redfield and Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci have known each other since the early 1980s, when she served under him as a clinical immunology fellow.
The task force, then led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, was charged with developing the administration’s program to mitigate the spread of the virus. Dr. Birx began feeding general epidemics and modeling data to her colleagues to assist the effort, the task force official said.
As the epidemic began to take root in the U.S., President Trump installed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the task force, increasing the group’s significance and visibility. Dr. Birx was quickly on a plane from Africa.
Mr. Pence has referred to Dr. Birx as his "right arm in this effort.” In a March 4 meeting with airline executives, she was seated at Mr. Trump’s left elbow and has remained prominent.
Dr. Birx headed to the West Wing on Friday.
PHOTO: ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dr. Birx works in an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, where she often attends meetings. She said she is compiling data and information from “20 to 30 different sources,” while staying in close touch with her many international public-health colleagues to monitor developments abroad.
A task force spokesman said that Dr. Birx pulls “dozens of work streams into focus.”
As the administration has at times struggled to maintain a consistent message, Dr. Birx also has occasionally been caught in the middle.
During a White House briefing on March 13, she held up a flow chart illustrating a Google project that Mr. Trump said was imminent and would provide Americans with an evaluation of coronavirus symptoms and testing recommendations. However, the announcement was premature, given the project isn’t yet complete.
The White House had previewed the announcement with Google to ensure accuracy, a person familiar with the matter said. Google representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The task force includes experts in the control of respiratory viruses—Covid-19 is one such virus—leading some to question why an expert in AIDS fills the role of coronavirus response coordinator.
Dr. Fauci, in a statement, cited Dr. Birx’s leadership of “complicated programs” targeting infectious diseases. “This skill and experience amply qualifies to coordinate the coronavirus effort,” he said.
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