The Hill: Whatever happened to Deborah Birx?
“Deborah Birx is nowhere to be found at the White House these days. Though she retains the title of coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, Birx has not attended any of President Trump’s press briefings on the pandemic since he started them anew in late July, nor was she at a recent event to tout the administration’s advances in testing. … Olivia Troye, a former coronavirus task force adviser who worked with Birx and is now a Trump critic, said White House officials grew irritated by Birx’s detailed and data-heavy presentations in the early summer that showed emerging hot spots and difficulties getting the virus under control. … The frustration preceded a push to get Birx out on the road to meet with state and local leaders, multiple officials familiar with the discussions said…” (Samuels, 10/18).

STAT: For Trump, Covid-19 therapeutics are the new vaccines
“…In Florida, [Trump] told seniors they’d soon have access, for free, to the antibody therapy he’d received during his own bout with the virus two weeks before. It’s a significant shift. Trump campaigned for months on the dubious pledge that a vaccine would be available ‘before a very special date,’ an open nod to Election Day. But as it’s become clear drug companies won’t help Trump deliver on a key campaign promise by Nov. 3, he’s largely dropped the aggressive vaccine rhetoric. Instead, he’s begun to campaign on equally lofty boasts of a Covid-19 cure-all — even though the treatments remain unproven and unavailable to the general public…” (Facher, 10/19).

UPI: Fauci sees similarities between HIV, COVID-19 in public health response
“The HIV epidemic in the 1980s and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are very different but the two share ‘some similarities’ related to public health response, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was a researcher at the government agency during the early stages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and he recalls the ‘messaging difficulty’ he and his colleagues faced then…” (Dunleavy, 10/16).