Birx looks on as Trump speaks during a press briefing on March 20, 2020. | Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The former Trump health official’s comments to Sanjay Gupta and the ensuing backlash, briefly explained.

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of former President Donald Trump’s failed coronavirus response, is facing criticism after making an obvious but notable claim in a new CNN documentary: that the vast majority of the US’s nearly 550,000 coronavirus deaths could’ve been prevented.

“I look at it this way: The first time, we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” Birx told CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”

In sum, Birx suggested that thousands of American deaths were all but unavoidable as