'It's complicated': Biden team weighs whether to retain Deborah Birx [View all]

[brooklynite]

Source: Politico

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is weighing whether to give Trump administration coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx a role in its Covid-19 response, even as it prepares a broader purge of officials closely tied to the president’s handling of the pandemic.

The debate over Birx’s future has vexed transition officials, with advocates for the longtime public health official arguing that her experience on the front lines of the pandemic could aid a Biden administration that will be thrust into the middle of a deepening crisis.

Yet others are far more skeptical, voicing worries that her nine months as coordinator for the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force have permanently eroded her credibility — and that keeping Birx on would jeopardize Biden’s plan for selling the American public on a full reset of the federal government’s pandemic response, according to interviews with Biden’s Covid-19 advisers and others involved in the transition.

“It’s complicated,” said Céline Gounder, who sits on Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board. “It’s almost like she herself has been politicized.”

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/18/biden-coronavirus-team-deborah-birx-437923