The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked Americans not to travel over the holidays and discourages indoor activity involving members of different households.
As COVID-19 cases skyrocketed before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, warned Americans to “be vigilant” and limit celebrations to “your immediate household.”
For many Americans that guidance has been difficult to abide, including for Birx herself.
The day after Thanksgiving, she traveled to one of her vacation properties on Fenwick Island in Delaware. She was accompanied by three generations of her family from two households. Birx, her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren were present.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked Americans not to travel over the holidays and discourages indoor activity involving members of different households. “People who do not currently live in your housing unit, such as college students who are returning home from school for the holidays, should be considered part of different households.”
Even in Birx’s everyday life, there are challenges meeting that standard. She and her husband have a home in Washington. She also owns a home in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where her elderly parents, and her daughter and family live, and where Birx visits intermittently. In addition, the children’s other grandmother, who is 77, also regularly travels to the Potomac house and returns to her 92-year-old husband near Baltimore.
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After The Associated Press raised questions about her Thanksgiving weekend travels, Birx acknowledged in a statement that she went to her Delaware property. She declined to be interviewed.
She insisted the purpose of the roughly 50-hour visit was to deal with the winterization of the property before a potential sale — something she says she previously hadn’t had time to do because of her busy schedule.
“I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said in her statement, adding that her family shared a meal together while in Delaware.
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Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University’s law school who has known Birx professionally for years, said that he’s confident that Birx took all necessary precautions to minimize risks in her Thanksgiving travel. Still, he said it undercuts her larger goal to get Americans to cooperate with government officials’ efforts to minimize the death and suffering caused by the virus.
“It’s extraordinarily important for the leaders of the coronavirus response to model the behavior that they recommend to the public,” Gostin said. “We lose faith in our public health officials if they are saying these are the rules but they don’t apply to me.”
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Despite warning Americans to “be vigilant” and limit celebrations to “your immediate household,” Dr. Deborah Birx traveled to one of her vacation properties on the day after Thanksgiving with three generations of her family from two households https://t.co/T13R0joNUA
— POLITICO (@politico) December 21, 2020
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