House speaker Nancy Pelosi escalated an attack on Dr Deborah Birx, a senior scientist on Donald Trump’s coronavirus taskforce, in television comments on Sunday as Birx defended the administration’s handling of the pandemic.Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, was asked on ABC’s This Week whether she has confidence in Birx, a renowned public health expert who has frequently appeared alongside Trump in briefings on the virus.“I think the president has been spreading disinformation about the virus and she is his appointee so, I don’t have confidence there, no,” Pelosi told ABC. However Pelosi praised another scientist on Trump’s task force, Dr Anthony Fauci.Pelosi’s comments came as Birx made an appearance of her own on cable television, and warned that widespread coronavirus infections in urban and rural America mark a “new phase” for the pandemic in the US, as she doubled down on calls to wear face masks and observe social distancing.“What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread,” she said.The United States has the world’s largest number of cases at 4.6m, or one-quarter of the global total, and 154,361 deaths. Birx said mitigation efforts across the west and the south are beginning to work but warned that people need to take the virus seriously and employ significant safety precautions when cases first begin to tick up.Pelosi’s comments built on a report last week that she criticized Birx to Republican counterparts negotiating a new coronavirus relief package.“Deborah Birx is the worst. Wow, what horrible hands you’re in,” Pelosi said, according to Politico. More
