"One area that is drawing new scrutiny is how long it took for former President Donald Trump and his Covid-19 advisers to declare a pause to slow the spread in March 2020 after the initial surge in coronavirus cases began -- and how many lives could have been saved if all Americans had really adhered to the restrictions on gatherings and social distancing. In the new documentary, Birx gives Gupta her gut-wrenching answer when asked how much of an impact it would have made if the US had paused earlier and followed through with the safety measures that were proven to slow the spread.
"I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse," Birx says. "There were about a hundred thousand deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.""
AND SHES NOT ALONE IN THAT BELIEF
"A key study from Columbia University released last year underscored the devastating conclusion that earlier intervention could have saved tens of thousands of lives. Researchers at Columbia built a model to examine transmission rates between March 15 and May 3, 2020 -- and they determined that if the country had shut down two weeks earlier, it could have prevented 84% of deaths at the time.