The Uncomfortable Truth Behind "15 Days to Slow the Spread"- 5 Years Ago Today

How Deborah Birx Relied on Faulty Models, and Manipulated the President and the Public

Five years ago today, President Trump and his coronavirus task force announced what can be seen as the official launch of the pandemic response in the United States: “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”

US government slide outlining its “15 Days to Slow the Spread” campaign.

What was not revealed to the American public is that Deborah Birx, the head of the White House coronavirus task force, knew 15 days was a ruse. Birx admits in her book, Silent Invasion, that in one of her meetings where “15 Days” was being pitched, that she “left the rest unstated: that this was just a starting point.” She goes on:

No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that.

Birx fashioned herself quite the manipulator and boasts of the “chess” moves she made, changing tactics for the goals she wanted to achieve as she presented various cases to the vice president, members of his staff, and, ultimately, the president. At one point she describes her pitch of a travel ban as yet “one brick in the construction of a larger wall” of measures she planned to push for. But, she said, “I couldn’t do anything that would reveal my true intention.”

The marks for her trickery weren’t only those in the White House. Her true target, of course, was the American public. Early on, the CDC had encouraged no more than 50 people to gather. Birx advocated for a limit of ten people. But not because that was backed by any solid scientific data. Rather, Birx explains:

“Ultimately, cross-household gatherings needed to be stopped entirely. Limiting gatherings to ten had been a first step and was consistent with my spoonful-of-sugar approach. Starting at fifty, as the CDC was advising, would require many more moves to get to zero.”

Birx said she “knew” that whatever number Americans heard they would “round up.” If they were told 50, they would gather in groups up to 100 people. If the public was told 250, “they would hear 500.”

The disdain for the elected politicians and government appointees she worked with was only surpassed by her condescension toward the citizenry, which, in her view, was not to be trusted with the truth, but instead to be infantilized. Just as 15 days was never her goal, neither was a limit of ten people in gatherings. “If I pushed for zero (which was actually what I wanted and what was required), this would have been interpreted as a ‘lockdown’—the perception we were all working so hard to avoid.”

Many Americans were the proverbial frog in the pot. Gatherings of ten would soon be gatherings of zero. When fifteens days expired, the authorities would extend the lockdown-that-wasn’t-to-be-called-a-lockdown by an additional thirty days. And when schools were first closed “out of an abundance of caution,” for tens-of-millions of kids a few weeks would turn into three, six, twelve, and even eighteen months. This was a thing that, well, just happened. (As the media continues to remind us, the pandemic closed schools, not policy makers and administrators at the behest of the experts.)

Over time, many others, though, particularly small business owners whose livelihoods were destroyed, churchgoers no longer able to attend services, and families with kids who struggled mightily with the isolation and challenges from “remote learning,” began to realize the water was boiling.

Of course, in her deceptions Birx believed she was doing the right thing. Ethicists can argue whether one’s conviction in the righteousness of their pursued ends justify the means. But the problem (beyond ethics) was that many of Birx’s assumptions and beliefs were very wrong. As I reveal in my forthcoming book, An Abundance of Caution (out 4/22!), the models that Birx had based so much of her policy recommendations on, many of which were imposed on several-hundred-million people, were deeply flawed. The various projections of cases and deaths that could be avoided by social distancing—which, we were told, included, critically, school closures—were based on very dubious assumptions and, as I show, in some cases, even made up figures.

During the pandemic, most of the Left viewed Trump as a dangerous moron; and in an emotionally satisfying, yet childish binary, the “experts” were seen as wise and forthright. It is deeply unmooring for people of good will to come to terms with the reality that the experts were not the ballast they perceived and wished them to be. As the economist Paul Romer told me after receiving an advanced copy of my book, “An Abundance of Caution is a disturbing but important read.”