sooner or later, the government will have to understand this, the situation is unsustainable and given the situation of ungovernable to here is dramatic value. but lasso is remaining firm knowing full well that in the last 26 years, 3 ecuadorian presidents have been forced out with the help of the combative indigenous movement. to see a newman al jazeera kito, the 1st minister of scotland has announced plans to hold a referendum on scottish independence next year. nicholas sturgeon said, the 1st step would be to ask the u. k. supreme court to decide whether it would be legal for the scottish parliament to court a referendum without permission from the u. k. government in london. if it wasn't, she said her party would stand in the next british elections on the single question of independence. ah, took it out of the top stories here on al jazeera,

turkey has agreed to back finland and sweden at bids to join nato. leaders of the alliance, our meeting in the spanish capital, and will also focus on approving a new strategic response to growing threats posed by russia, cyber security and climate change. the lead. this will also make an historic a decision or to invite finan and sweden to become members of nato. this is based on the agreement to a reached between finance written anarchy yesterday. and this is a good agreement for finance reasons for turkey. and for all of us, donna hall has more from madrid that news came late on tuesday and it was met with enormous release, of course, by the leaders gathered here that the summit could get underway without a show of disunity, over sweden and finland at a time. when nato's cor i'm central aim is to project a united front in the face of russian aggression. turkey's objection had been at it's claimed that the nordic countries, particular sweden were harboring members of band kurdish separatist groups and

giving them supported. also wanted the lifting of an arms embargo in place since 20194 hours of talks on tuesday afternoon ended with a memorandum signed by the 3 countries, the nordics agreeing to toughen their laws around those band groups especially to do with extradition. and to lift the arms embargo, ukrainian president as cold on the united nations to expel russia. let him as lensky address the security council after russian missile strike. an a shopping center in the city of credential killed 18 people. moscow says it was firing at a nearby weapons. devilish. a former white house aide as testify of donald trump wanted to join his supporters during last year storming of the us capital. the aid told a house committee that trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his limousine when his agent refused to take him to the capitol during the riots. the philippine media regulator has upheld in order to close the investigative news website. rap la, it was co founded by the journalist and the bel peace prize laureate maria risa.

she says the government's trying to intimidate the press and pretty social i. delane maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking. she was convicted for helping jeffrey epstein, sexually abuse under age girls. so those were the headlines. the news continue is he and al jazeera after the bottom line states with thanks so much bye for now. we understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. so no matter how you take it out, 0 will bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you count as era, i am steve clements and i have a question after more than 1000000 deaths attributed to the cronum virus. what did america get wrong? and it's response, and it's gonna get any better. let's get to the bottom line. ah, america's response to the coven,

1900. pandemic, has always been a work in progress. in the early days, very few people knew what the virus was or what the world was going to do about it . different countries tried to fight cove it in different ways, shutting borders and locking down their citizens as much as possible. this show did its 1st expos, a on the potential consequences of a deputy pandemic on february 11th, 2020, even before it had been officially termed a pandemic. but many simply did not take the threat seriously at that time, as time marches on and vaccines are becoming more widespread, people are learning to live side by side with a virus, even though we're obviously not out of the woods. now we're seeing people who already got the virus get reinfected in some cases, reinfected again, we still don't know what all the effects of long covert are, and the virus keeps mutating and new variance. today we're talking with a leading physician who had a front row seat, all the politics, the science, and the media wars that were going on inside the white house and around it. when the pandemic broke out more than 2 years ago, dr. deborah burke's was the white house corona virus task force coordinator during

the trump administration. and she just come out with a book on her time, their silent invasion, the untold story of the trump administration cove in 1900 and preventing the next pandemic before. it's too late. dr. burks. thank you so much for joining us today. and i guess, you know, the obvious question is when you try to look at the pandemic came and i was, you know, we were talking about that on february 2020, early before a lot of folks had even begun to register. this might be serious. how did we get so much wrong? well, you know, i think most of our people who are working in public healthy united states haven't worked globally. and we've been battling pandemic h i v. tv malaria as the people around the world for decades and successfully so. so we had those lessons learned, so it's interesting that international system had it well because we knew we knew that it starts with community and it starts with data and it starts working with people from day one. and so i think where the us really thought that they could

contain the virus, sometimes highly industrial, high income countries think that they can conquer infectious diseases. but we've learned when you work around the globe that, that wealth does not determine your ability of being infected or not infected. i guess i'm really interested in the next pandemic or the next big thing that comes and in my view, just reading and listening the you, you believe that will happen? yes. well, i believe that if you want to be ready for the next pandemic, you figure out this one. and if we can get this one under control, we will be ready for the next one. and it's not just the public health infrastructure. it is setting up to parallel systems. and so the information that we need is in the clinical and the laboratory system of the united states. and so we now need another public health system. we need to learn how to work successfully every day with the private sector that's getting the information. so the information is there and the information was always there,

but we weren't collecting it systematically and anonymized so that no one could tell who was who like we do all around the world. so i mean if we had approached h i v and t b like the u. s. approach covert in those early days, we would have failed miserably. and we learned that you create the data so you know where the virus is, where it's going and what needs to be done. so let she what donald trump shared with us on february 24th. the krona virus is very much under control in the usa. we're in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. cdc in world health have been working hard and very smart stock market starting to look very good to me. i find is fascinating at the time because i was freaking out that this was spreading . the silent spread that it was probably already here and drove correct. donald trump links it to the stock market. so what was going on there? starting in january like you, i'm seeing this,

i call the national security council, the africa bureau and say this is an emergency. i need all the african diplomats coming into the white house and we need to talk to them about what's coming. and so we're holding a meeting the end of january with all the african diplomat so that they'll cable to their countries. and so that they'll say those resources, the laboratory infrastructure, everything that we built to combat h, i, b, t, b, a, malaria. you can use the people, the labs, the facilities you can use to combat cove at and get ready. so i am taking this very seriously and the u. s. is talking about containment because just like you, i knew it was everywhere because i could see that it was spreading silently. you don't end up with that many people in the hospital and will hon if there is not incredible community spread. and the only way you have that level of community

spread without awareness is when most of it is happening in people that have such mild disease that they don't believe that they're infected. you're desperate time to share something with our audience. but you, that many may not know for 29 years you were and you were, you were in the army or an army colonel. you you help run pat far. and for which of course was a rather remarkably successful. interdiction with h i. v aids in africa in the developing part of the world. and i don't know how to put this and i may put it, you know, in elegantly. there are a lot of kind of big headed guys that are running, you know, governments military's and you are also worked with a lot of that kind of person in the white house, the trump white house. so i just be interesting to reflect on your time working with narcissistic, self absorbed bosses, both in the white house, but also out in africa. and in the military. you are one of the few women of your stature in public health. tell us about that journey. while you find

a way to make it work, and the reason you do that is because lives are at stake. and so, you know, so many people say, well, why didn't you do this? or why didn't you do that? or why did you leave as long as you're making progress, even if it's on seen, but you can see it and you know that you're making a difference every day. and that's where i've always approached everything i've done. i mean, in the military, it was the same way h, i v was very stigmatizing. and so to be in the military, in the eighty's working for our commanders of a hospital which were 2 and 3 star general, who would look me in the eye and say, i don't want aids cases here because i don't want to be known as the a hospital this is walter read in a, in the eighty's, and i mean it with all due respect, that kind of sounds like president from saying don't test anymore. we don't want to find anymore people with tests. so it, yeah, it's very similar. but as opposed to president trump, who was saying that and then giving me $6367000000000.00 to expand,

testing around the united states and calling in the private sector and asking them to make all the tasks that we need. he was saying one thing and we were able to do something very different and i think that's where you continue to work on seeing on heard, but making a big difference day after day. and that's how i've had to work around the globe parents. so many of these pandemic se are political, and so many of them are so many infectious diseases are stigmatizing and, and a lot of people go to the corners, and you don't want to talk about it. and when you can talk to people, frankly about what's actually happening and show them the data, that's when you get movement and policy changes. and, and even though the president, after about early april, was not really looking at my data anymore, the vice president and the task force was and more critically,

the private sector was using that data to ensure that we get the supplies to the people who need it. and that was what was important to me when you work. we were essentially a resource limited setting in that time. i mean, we didn't have p p e. we didn't have treatments. treatments were very limited. and when you have limited resources, like i've had for decades and subsaharan africa, you just have to do to present pence, a hero. and this was the a villain, you know, alex is, are peter navarro who's been in the news lately. you know, when you look at the circle of people there and you know, price president pence was given, at least for a time, you know, some latitude to, to deal with this. did you find pockets of support for what you felt like you really needed to do to save lives? and i have to say, save lives despite the fact that we're talking about this because a 1000000 americans have died. and that's something we shouldn't be at all. acquiescing to we're happy with. yeah, i think you describe it perfectly. i know people would like to have everybody into

a black and white way to have either victims or villains, and it wasn't like that. and that's why i thought it was important to write the book because i wanted people to understand what went right and what went wrong, because if you don't, you're managing correcting the wrong. thanks. right, and i think part of that is today we haven't been transparent enough about what's working and what's not working. and that has led us to just really confusing communications to the american people and not real time common sense solutions that they can apply to protect themselves in their family. and that's really the key. and the most important thing to me is there are solutions out there for everything that we're experiencing. and many of the countries have gotten those solutions to the public and a very clear, transparent way. and we still suffer in this united states from not being able to get that clarity into every community. when i look at attitudes about president

biden's responsive croner virus, we see about 49 percent of americans approved 43 percent disapproved. you know, it's very partisan. the view, 81 percent of democrats are supported in 42 percent of independence, which is not a great number. and 1900 percent of republicans. i guess perhaps this is an unfair question cuz you're a public health. you know, you're a doctor and you're out there running systems, but you must have a sense of the ability of the, of the nation to absorb science and absorb guidance. how did this become? you know, 3 be it's really because independents are different to independence, republican to democrat, 3 different countries. we let it do that. and i think we're letting it do at still today. and that is what i find so discouraging because we should be treating every hospitalization and every death as a programmatic failure and holding ourselves accountable. that is the way you

change pandemic. that's what i did with h i b, that's what i did with t b. and we have 90 percent less new cases of h i v in many countries of sub saharan africa, but you have to treat every new infection as a failure. and i think in this country we're still doing the tyranny of averages. we're still making states or counties red and blue when you make, when you put up data and you put it up as a how people voted, you further push people into the corners. and i have found that where i have worked, if you go and talk to people honestly with clear data and the evidence to make decisions, they will make the right decisions. but you have to use local peer educators like we learned with h. i b, you can go in there and say, well, i've said that i said that i said that from the white house microphone that doesn't work get on the ground, see what's happening, talk to communities,

find out what their barriers to access are. why are we talking about right now that it's not people look at health care or they think it's all the say. i can tell you health care in new york city area is very different than health care in mississippi . and people have been dying at a higher rate in our rural counties for decades. for decades. cove, it has uncovered that, but this isn't because they voted republican or they voted democrat is because they don't have access to the same level of health care. how do we elevate that commitment to the uncovered on, connected american and prioritize that? because i think one of the few people i've read who gets the fact that their health is our health. and i think that's true internationally to that our house of the development under develop nation that does not have the resources we do guess what, what happens there may come an impact our health here. how do we change the vector? because i can tell you almost no one in this town in washington

d. c. walks around with that template. first you have to share a bright light onto the issue like you are doing. and that is absolutely critical. and that's our job is to really shine that bright light and say it's not so simple . when i came back, i found a country with less data and less communication than i had in sub saharan africa, the united states of america. i found tribal nations that were less for health care access than what i had built for communities in africa. and i felt incredibly guilty. and so you know, my passion and why i have so many sections on that in the book. as we know what to do, we know what to do, but we have to recognize that it's a problem. i think for decades we believed if we built stronger urban areas than we would elevate health care everywhere. and we neglected all the rural areas. most

people in rural areas believe their doctor is the wal mart i, dr. and the e r. that is 2 hours away. so if you look at how distant people are from, let's just say a level, let's say your level one trauma as a surrogate. because in order to become a level one trauma, you have to have surgeons and you have to have advanced and sophisticated medical care. so let's use that as an indicator. there are 22 level one trauma centers within the new york. metro area is one and mississippi in the whole state in the whole state, well. and so when you look at who has health care within 30 minutes, you'll start to see that most of the read counties do not do not. and we did nothing about it. we filled up the urban centers and created this sense that there would be a hub and spoke, but the people who are living at the end of the spokes know that they don't have

the same access and they're angry about it and that has further disenfranchised them because people have not been there that i love to when i watch tv, and they said we'll talk to your primary doctor about co vaccines map, where they are our primary doctors and how other people can access them again. and i think you'll find that most of the read counties don't have access to primary care doctors haven't per decades. so in the and that's why their diabetes is more out of control, their hypertension there, obesity. all those factors that put them at a greater risk. all of our tribal nations that have not had adequate preventive care for decades. cove, it has uncovered that, did you feel like you were in a kind of a really bad netflix soap opera sometimes? i mean, i think, you know, sometimes when you see some of these episodes it would come up like the whole, i mean, one of the ones that i fall that a lot with the hydroxyl clerk and obsession. which proved to be this very,

very weird side show, but with staggering a number of people who believed in it and it created misinformation or, you know, we know and you, you've often talked about about the day where you're in the room and you're on camera. you know, chlorine and disinfectant and what president trump was willing to say. and i know what i've read what you said that it was important for you to be in the room to try to fix these problems as and not just abandon ship. and then when they tried to shut you down, you went to talk to governors and go out to states and try to do this. i guess my question is, what is your counsel to people who are sitting at other tables in their kitchens or they're sitting in other policy planning discussions and the next chlorine disinfectant. comments. com or the next, you know, hydrox corklin type fad comes up. how do responsible people remain engaged with nuttiness? well, it's, you know, i guess i don't, i don't like to classify it isn't id ness because in the

h i v aids spend. when we had nothing, people were looking for cures and treatment, right? it's all kinds of products. so i lived that and i lived that desperation. now, if you're in a rural area where there is no rendez, severe where there is no packs loaded, where there are no adequate testing. what are you going to do? you're going to grab on to something that you can get your hands on. because when you have nothing access to nothing, you look for those miracles and you look for that hope and you, you hold on to anything that you can get access to our mistake and our mistake continues to be. i mean, we've lost 880000 american since january of 202-218-0000 americans just in the last 5 and a half months. why aren't we getting test to the people we know who need it? the most with a hotline,

it says call this show on their test. get your tele medicine. if you don't have a smart phone call them, they'll believe you, they'll send you packs, love it in the mail. it will come to your address. that is the way you get services to people that live in far distant and rural areas. and we have that information and we're not using it. so i just feel like we have the tools, we have the common sense answers. we're not using peer educators, we're not getting information through people that they trust. we're not in the churches, we're not in the tribal nations every day. we're not setting up solutions that can work for every single american. yes, if you live in the washington area, the area, the area you are expanding to doing this exact, i mean let me just ask you, you know, finally deborah burke's as scientist. because i've read that you have looked at the data, particularly out of africa. you see these 4 in 6 months cycles that come on and in

a way i want to ask you, do we need to be scared straight in the sense that even when i introduced the show, i said something, i'm not completely comfortable with that. we have learnt, we're learning to live with the virus and i'm not sure that's the right attitude or posture we should have. and i guess my fear is that talking to a lot of scientists, i know that variance can come in different forms and they don't always become more benign. they can become something more deadly. i've been hearing about potential variance that are vaccine resistant. and so can you share with give us a snapshot, frankly, of why we should not be comfortable with the fact that potentially living with the virus? what is out there that we need to really arm ourselves against? because we are sort of shrugging our shoulders about a 1000000 people dead. i mean, it could be a very different number to tell us what, how we need to change our frame. 8 we have the tools to live with the virus, but i think the, the key phrase that you just said is live. what is our plan?

so every american can live, not just those $45.00 or 25 year olds, but the 65 year olds, the 85 year old. how are they going to live and survive despite cove it? and there is a pathway to do that, but we're still not on that road. other countries have gotten on that road. and so if you look at delta and am a kron in the u. k, they are a death rates were almost half what ours were. when we were equal, all through 2020, in 2021. they had half. the reason they had half is they communicated to the public successfully. they told them that vaccines were not the 100 percent answer in this country. we said throw off here. may i ask vaccines got to keep you from getting infected. we never had that evidence. when you say you're following the data and the science, you have to look at the data on the science. and once you saw those periodic surges in south africa, it was clear that natural infection did not lead to long term protection like

measles, mumps, and rubella, and therefore the vaccine was not going to lead to long term protection from infection. so now we have lot more people with mild an asymptomatic disease, passing it on to their sick aunts, their grandparents and those individuals are dying on. so the u. k. started testing at 4 times our rate, but not only 4 times the rate, they told the piece of people the reason to test your task before you go and visit grandma, because you could be silently infected and they people did it. and so that's what is always discouraging to me, no matter where i worked. if you show people the evidence, the grass, the data, everyone can understand it. it's not, it's your job as a public health official to make sure that people get what you're talking about and, and spend enough time answering their questions so that they get it. and it's our job than to make sure they not only get it, they have the tools to survive. and so we're not putting enough emphasis on

communication down at the county and local level with peer educators. and we're not putting enough tools into those counties. so everyone can survive. if we do that, just like we did with h i, b and t b, we can have a different outcome, but we can't just say test entry and everything is going to be better. and then when it is it, yes, we've gotten through a low swell we had one last year with alpha variance. variance are predictable. swells are predictable. surges are predictable. well, i want to thank you for that. deborah burke's former white house corona virus task force coordinator during the trump administration and author of and you should read it silent invasion. thank you so much for being with us. thank you. so what's the bottom line? former president donald trump, with laser focused on his election prospects and wanted to stay on message. the virus is under control, no need to panic. he thought in my view incorrectly,

that leveling with the american public would undermine the economy and cost in political support. science had to take a backseat with him. president joe biden doesn't sugar coat the reality of the situation as much. but he was also unprepared for the waves of corona virus that infected millions and killed hundreds of thousands under his watch. and his administration's public guidance on masks and on vaccines and on testing contact tracing has also been erratic. this pandemic has exposed america's inequality and political divisions. and now the united states has the sad distinction of being number one in the world in known corona virus depths. my guess says we have to take our blinders off and make sure we're better prepared next time. because in my view, there will be a next time, and that's the bottom line. ah, july on al jazeera home cold march 25 years since it's hand over from british to

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