What the Covid-19 war was really like in Trump's White House

Watch "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out" at 8 p.m. Friday, April 2 on CNN and CNNI. The special report will also be available on demand, on CNNgo and CNN mobile apps. (CNN)No longer working under the Trump administration, six leading US health officials now reveal to CNN the real challenges they faced during the nation's fight against Covid-19 over the past year: death threats, mixed messages and in some cases, being kept from sharing information with national audiences. The nation's doctors -- Dr. Deborah Birx, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Brett Giroir, Dr. Stephen Hahn, Dr. Robert Kadlec and Dr. Robert Redfield -- were fighting a pandemic that would claim more than 500,000 American lives, all while navigating a White House fraught with strained relationships and very little mask-wearing. The six doctors responsible for the previous administration's Covid-19 response reflect on the past year with CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a new CNN special report, "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out." Their reflections reveal a common theme -- there was contention behind closed doors and a lack of preparedness. Just as there has been growing divisiveness in the United States during the pandemic, there was divisiveness among America's leadership. 'I could see the avalanche coming' From the beginning, the doctors serving the White House could see the public health threat ahead of them -- but there were some Trump administration officials who "believed this wasn't as a big of deal" as the doctors were making it seem, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus response coordinator under President Trump, told Gupta. When Birx, a physician and public health expert, was tapped to join the White House's coronavirus task force in late February, she had an initial goal. "First, I wanted to make sure that we stopped saying that the risk to Americans was low," Birx said. "I could see the avalanche coming, and I could see that we were not prepared, and I thought I could do something." Credit by:https://edition.cnn.com