There are precious few reliable national voices on the pandemic and now, it seems, one is being pushed aside. As BoomerCafé’s co-founder and executive editor Greg Dobbs writes in this Boomer Opinion piece, there’s a debate right now about whether he should stay put, or fight back.
So now Trump’s trashing Fauci. Arguably the least trusted public figure in America, smearing one of the most trusted: “Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.”
Fauci’s made a lot of mistakes? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. If you needed more proof that this sick self-centered man in the White House puts his welfare ahead of the nation’s, you’ve got it.
Dr. Anthony Fauci appears to react to something stated by the president.
But hypocrisy here is not the most urgent issue. Trust is. Wisdom is. Science is. Survival is. The White House already has all but removed Fauci from public view and now, if its escalating campaign to discredit America’s most persuasive pandemic pundit succeeds, we’ll have no one left to listen to. No one to believe. The implications for that— from more abandonment of responsible measures to prevent contagion, to more rejection of the CDC’s common-sense guidelines to flatten the spread, to more skepticism about the potency of a vaccine once we’ve got one— are too chilling to contemplate.
A sign in support of Dr. Fauci beside a road in Rockport, Mass.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Back in mid-April, the president retweeted a hashtag from a smalltime Republican politician that said, “Time to #FireFauci.” The White House assured us afterward, don’t worry, the president isn’t firing Fauci. But come on! Just recirculating the hashtag to undercut and intimidate the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, as Trump did, spoke volumes. Just as he recirculated another mad and menacing message about the pandemic the beginning of this week: “Everyone is lying,” a television game show host the president admires had tweeted, as if that’s where the leader of the free world should be getting his best ideas, “The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors.” By putting it out there again, Trump took another selfish and savage step to sabotage Americans’ faith in actual expertise.
Screen grab of retired TV gameshow host Chuck Woolery’s tweet, retweeted by the president.
Even more egregious, Trump is deliberately giving these dangerous ideas more exposure in the same week when the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has started going up again, the same week when several U.S. states and the nation overall set new records for new infections, the same week when hospitals began ominously reporting— again— a dearth of protective gear for medical workers and an overflow demand for intensive care beds.
What Trump obviously wants us to think is, there’s really no one to believe but him. The “stable genius.” The man running for his life to get reelected.
Heaven help us.
But again, we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s all about him. From time to time Dr. Fauci has contradicted crackpot claims of the president. Which is why, here we are, still in the midst of the crisis, and the president and his treacherous team are targeting one of the people best suited to combat it. One report in the past couple of days has this self-centered president “annoyed” with Dr. Fauci’s “good press.” In another, some White House officials say they don’t think Fauci is working in the president’s best interests (as opposed to, say, the nation’s?). And the most recent revolting report, from a CNN interview: there are concerns within the White House “about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.”
Funny, they don’t seem to be keeping count on Trump.
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Yes, a few times early in the pandemic, Fauci was wrong. On masks. On not changing our routines. All were part of his own learning curve on a whole new virus that no one had ever seen before. But here’s the difference between Anthony Fauci’s learning curve and Donald Trump’s. Fauci has learned. Trump has not. Fauci has told the truth, as best anyone understands it, about what we should do and what we shouldn’t. Trump has not.
Greg Dobbs
Some are debating today about the future of Dr. Fauci (and Dr. Deborah Birx too). One school of thought is, both should resign from the government with their honor intact, rather than let it be dismantled by a president whose ego supersedes their expertise. The other school of thought is, they should stay where they are, even if their visibility and their voices are markedly diminished, because at least they still might be a moderating force on a man bent on following his instincts rather than their experience.
I’m torn. I believe more in the second school than in the first. But on the other hand, if they were to quit, they could then publicly berate the treacherous anti-science temperament of this administration.
The one thing they wouldn’t have to berate is a proclamation from the president back in April, defending his performance on the pandemic, which he all but repeats to this day: “We have done a job the likes of which nobody has ever done.”
True. Just not in a good way.
My father was a career federal employee. As chief underwriter for the Federal Housing Administration, he held the agency’s highest non-political office. He always resisted more lucrative political appointments when offered.
During the Nixon Administration, he experienced enormous pressure to make FHA loan guarantees more favorable to banks and builders. The more FHA home loans guaranteed, the better. Banks and builders prospered without risks. Dad resisted this incessant pressure from his boss, a Nixon appointee.
Political appointees could not fire my father because the federal civil service system protected his job from capricious political retribution. Instead, Dad’s boss pushed through a reassignment requiring my parents to relocate from their Kansas hometown to Houston, Texas, one of the least desirable FHA territories in the nation at that time. Having no other option but to resign, Dad professionally and ethically served out the remaining five years of his career in Houston and then retired on the day of first eligibility for full benefits.
Dad blunted political pressure to discard the original loan benchmarks that would help buyers get home loans but with stringent standards for initial down payments and personal financial wherewithal. Loosening those guidelines eventually spawned the 2007-2009 Great Recession and mortgage lending debacle that my father anticipated and tried to prevent decades earlier.
Dr. Fauci cannot easily be fired, but his career can be sidelined and made less appealing. He can be muzzled or rendered irrelevant. His influence at this critical time may diminish accordingly. Or he can resign.
I believe that Dr. Fauci made very few mistakes in judgment by choice, such as initially discouraging mask wearing. He knew that Donald Trump wanted to make the pandemic go away; the president harbored magical thinking about a negligible, insignificant impact of COVID-19.
Dr. Fauci may have attenuated his own informed instincts to “play politics” with the president from the outset. Fauci has spent decades learning when and how to sidestep political meddling, even before disagreements over policies become fully expressed. When information about the novel coronavirus was less clear-cut, Fauci may have gone against his own educated, cautionary instincts and chosen instead to placate an unreasonable, ignorant leader. That was Dr. Fauci’s only mistake but, nevertheless, a necessary survival strategy for those protecting their careers in the federal civil service.
This piece is so on the money. I’m divided as well on the question of whether Dr. Fauci should stay or go. I’m rooting for the latter, hoping public outcry and the media can help to keep his name and advice in the forefront . No matter what self-serving tack Trump and cronies take.
On the subject of masks, my daughter lives in the worst hit region of Italy, Lombardy. She has been working from home since February when companies there were already being advised to have staff self isolate and work from home if possible.
From the beginning it was made clear to everyone in Italy what they needed to do in order to avoid contagion. When my other daughter, who lives in Switzerland was finally able to visit her, she was amazed to see how many people were wearing masks out on the street. Masks are still compulsory on all public transport, in shopping malls, supermarkets and individual shops.
Italy is a very divided country politically but it is meritorious that no party has sought to use Covid in order to gain votes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Italy’s daily total of deaths is now down to single figures and that is because of herd obedience and not herd immunity.