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How Much Does Dr. Fauci Really Care?
Dennis Prager spoke the hard truth Monday morning: Dr. Fauci is a lifelong government employee with a salary and benefits package perfectly insulated from the economic consequences of his words. He has absolutely no skin in the game. If Dr. Fauci truly believes it is necessary to put hourly workers, waiters, bartenders, and small businesses out of work, destroying them economically, then let him and the head of the CDC ante up.
Dr. Fauci’s easiest path is completely shutdown of our economy, doing maximum damage to people who were just starting to see real success and a brighter future. He can claim noble motives, even as he seeks to avoid blame for early failures. Words of concern and supposed sympathy tripping off a career bureaucrat’s lips ring hollow and are bitter to those he ruins.
So, President Trump needs to put this to the coronavirus crew immediately, giving them the chance to volunteer giving up their salaries until the federal guidelines no longer limit American jobs. Then, if they push back, he needs to drop it on them in front of the cameras. Let’s all see their real faces and real positions when they are made to live with the real consequences of their words.
We have already seen Dr. Fauci tripped up on his own words today. He pushed for schools to be closed, but then stumbled over himself as a real reporter asked why daycare centers would be open, since the reason for shutting schools applies to daycare. He finally acknowledged the obvious and left the microphone with “we’ll look at that again.”
President Trump can do this in the context of virtuous examples from professional sports, where team owners are promising to keep paying people who work their home venues, to protect them from the consequences of stopping games. This is the way Americans respond to hard times. Rudy Gobert has already pledged over $500,000 to his home arena workers and others. He is the NBA player who was the unlucky first to be found infected. Here in Arizona, one of the two major utility companies just announced they will not shut off anyone’s power or charge interest until this government made economic catastrophe ends. Time for Fauci to put his paycheck where his mouth is.
If Dr. Fauci and the rest of the crew face real economic pain right now, and suddenly have to worry about paying bills in the months ahead, then they will be motivated to truly act in the real public interest. This may not change their recommendations, but it will certainly go a long way towards buying them credibility with a public they lecture and chide about being serious. This is of a piece with governors ordering restaurants and bars closed, while keeping their party’s primary election on schedule for this week. Everyone can see the obvious contradictions. Those governors should lead by example.* Their salaries, along with Dr. Fauci’s should all go to direct economic relief for the smallest businesses and most economically vulnerable workers.
* President Trump was too sharp to fall for a White House press-member asking him to call on governors to postpone elections. This would immediately turn into claims of dictatorship and plans to cancel the November election, when the latest coronavirus might be back.
Published in General
I have a different take on this. I predict that the whole thing will blow over within a month when people start to notice that bodies are not piling up, and Trump will be hailed as a great savior for taking all his decisive action. Kind of like Rudy Guliani after 911. The whole thing will bounce back on the media and Democrats, five times worse than the damage they sought to inflict on Trump.
I too worked hard in the IT world to ensure Y2K was a non event. One of my mainframes systems was remediated and we replaced 6 separateHR/Payroll/Benefits mainframe systems with one client-server based system. Twelve hour days and six day weeks for months in parallel testing.
The Y2K “hoax” talk always leaves me highly irritated. But we get to thank our stellar media for mischaracterizing that situation and its impacts.
Maybe so. Sometimes political leaders do rise above base desires. That’s what I’m praying for.
If it weren’t for the media hyperventilating and presenting possible worst case scenarios all the time (That’s my impression. I very well could be wrong about that.), I’d agree with you a lot more easily. As it is, I certainly hope you’re right. I think things have a much better chance of bouncing back the shorter the craziness lasts. Maybe America’s seemingly Sim-like (in other words, shorter) attemtion span will work in our favor for once. I hope so.
OK, so this goes on and most small to medium businesses fail. I don’t agree with that first step, but I will grant it to you. Then what? Unemployemnt as Great Depression levels? Worse. Unemployment at Great Depression levels did not turn us into Communists last time. And, in no way is that going to happen.
Really, these seem as much hyperbole as the idea this is the 1918 flu.
No.
How is someone a slave for 9 months a year and free the rest. One is a slave or not.
use of the word “slavery” is hyperbolic in and of itself.
I don’t think things are going to be that bad because I don’t think the White House is that stupid, but it is interesting to see Trump Defenders turning on him in this big away, so maybe this will give the democrats what they have wanted, even if Trump does the right thing.
This seems unlikely to me. If they could do this, they would not have Biden.
Only works if Trump supporters turn on him and decided to listen to the MSM. That is possible, as you and other Happy Warriors seem ready to abandon Trump before the dust is even settled. So maybe you are right here.
See #2. Not sure there are any.
Because we have never, not once, ever, seen liberty eroded and then restored, in the history of this Republic. I mean, remember how once Wilson used thugs to beat people up, that just became the norm?
I gave up worring about end of the world predictions for Lent.
Keep in mind that I think the disease will blow over like Richard Epstein says, no matter what Trump does. But because most of the public is scientifically and medically illiterate, he will be seen as a savior. Though he is doing a great job. And I know, you should never start a sentence with But, Though, or And. Because those are the rules!
Because South Korea did everything right. They were extremely aggressive in testing, contact tracing and quarantine.
Just like Singapore. Just like Hong Kong.
You stop this early, or you end up with disaster.
Exactly. It seems like I’m seeing the argument “These measures are unnecessary. Just look at how mild the impact is in these other nations which also took similar measures.”
Uhm, that sounds entirely too nice to be a suitable Lenten penance.
Might have to do that year-round.
Well, I am just a Methodist. Everything we do is watered down.
As long as we end up with a reasonably small number of deaths attributable to the virus (And I personally think that’s baked in the cake already) all the panic-mongering in the media will rebound to Trump’s credit before the election. The number of dead is a concrete number that won’t be in dispute.
My personal completely uninformed opinion is that it will be well under 100,000. If so, the Dems and the media (but I repeat myself) will have a hard time portraying this as a management disaster on the part of the White House.
Now, how the economic fallout will play politically is a completely different question. I think we’re in for a world of hurt there that’s going to last well past the election, unless the turns into a big nothing really quick (before the end of April).
Got it, Bubala. Apples, meet oranges. I get your point and agree with you. I think that’s covered in my “which is an insane estimate, BTW” comment. So, yeah, I also don’t think we’ll see anything like those numbers that are being thrown around.
I’m not singling you out, because I know you’ve taken a lot of flak on this, but there hasn’t been a disaster in any country so far. Italy has by far the highest infection rate plus the highest mortality rate from the Corona virus. They’ve got about 31,000 cases and 2,500 deaths to date. Yet according to this study in the “International Journal of Infectious Disease,” Italy lost a total of 68,000 people in two recent flu seasons.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285
In fairness, this thing has not stopped yet in Italy, but they still have an awfully long way to go to match those numbers. On top of that, the flu took many young victims, which this epidemic does not seem to affect.
No, it wouldn’t. Italy levels remain quite low, with only about 27,000 total cases. It will get a bit worse, and might get a lot worse, but the trendline is quite favorable over the past few days.
The danger are the estimates that were being made, by apparently serious experts, that we should expect around 100 million cases in the near future. None of the data are trending that way.
Well under 100,000? Wow! If you’re talking American deaths, you are giving a lot of lee way there. If World deaths, that could be about right. I just checked the World death total for Corona as of this writing. It is at 7,297.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Roderic, it is not realistic to expect the current rate of growth to continue. It has not done so in each and every country that is further along than the US. Not in China, not in Japan, not in S. Korea, not in Italy.
That said, I have more understanding of Dr. Fauci and the other experts. Based on results thus far, mainly from S. Korea and Italy, the WuFlu seems to spread at an exponential rate with a roughly 33% daily increase for the first 10-15 days after a country passes 200 cases. Then it levels off. This is well established in S. Korea, and Italy is trending in this direction, though we’ll know more about the Italian trend in the next 3 days or so. My impression is that Italy reached the inflection point over the weekend, and the latest report yesterday was very encouraging with a reduction in the number of new cases, but there might be another surge.
The real challenge to the “experts” is what to do around day 5. This is to take the US back just one week, to March 10. At that point, you see exponential growth of about 33% per day. You look at Italy, which was on day 15, looks close to this rate — day 15 itself was a bit better than expected in Italy, but that might be a reporting or testing delay.
So what to do you do?
Note that these figures are just for the day reported — it would trend higher, even if the rate thereafter declined.
Now that Italy is on day 22, we can see that it is trending far below a 33% exponential growth curve. But we did not know that a week ago.
I
I’m comparing to “predictions” in the fearmongering media of over a million deaths in the US. The more they push that, the better Trump looks when (! – okay, IF ) the numbers come in orders of magnitude lower for the US.
Oh, I totally agree that most of the public is scientifically and medically illiterate (and no, I don’t think I’m much better in those areas myself). That’s precisely why I fear the media’s hyperventilating will keep the panic going much longer than it normally would even if it becomes obvious that things aren’t as bad as initially feared.
That’s exactly what I’m praying and hoping for – that the panic will run its course within a month, preferably less.
Yes. The bigger danger I see between the media’s portrayal of the situation and the actual situation is the media’s hyperventilating . Continuing to talk about worst case scenarios and how bad things might get without any information to balance the picture only serves to feed the fire. Maybe I feel so strongly about it because I live in an area that’s had its restaurants, theaters, and other places closed down ’til at least the end of the week and quite possibly longer. That’s had quite an emotional impact on me as I think about what that’s going to mean for the owners and employees – quite an impact.
(At the moment, restaurants can offer delivery and pick-up/carry-out. but their dining rooms must remain closed.)
First, this was a response to how “could” it happen. It wasn’t a prediction. I can argue the fine points, but bottom line, I’m not adandoning Trump by any means.
As to competence, perhaps I have to be extremely specific. Perceived competence – and that would probably exclude nearly every Democratic candidate from this entire cycle.
In a non- crisis or ‘perceived crisis’ environment, they couldn’t easily replace Joe with someone else and win. But in this emergency environment, they can. With enough chaos and media vilification and lies, with desperate Democrat voters and a decent candidate with “a plan” ( not a crazy plan either) Dems could win and then implement the real plan of socialism.
Thats how it can happen.
AND, I disagree strongly with your last statement. Oh maybe once liberty was restored, maybe twice, but I don’t think it’s common that liberty gets restored. It sounds unbelievably naive to me coming from someone like yourself who seems to understand what’s going on. Look at trying to reform intel agencies, the Patriot Act, the TSA, moves to ban guns. The list is long.
Name some right that has been “restored in the last 25 years. I’ll wait.
The trouble with the ‘data’ on this is aggregating all kinds of different cases into one giant bag is pseudoscientific. Seattle had 27 cases in one badly run nursing home, skewing the number for Washington and the entire USA.
Northern Italy had a large ex-pat migrant Chinese population from Wuhan, larger numbers of elderly smokers, a slow reaction and a government run health care system.
Gun rights.
Right to work
There is a myriad of unquantifiable misery coming from this whole thing. My daughter is a senior in college. Her dance performances, in which she is featured, are canceled. Every high school and college athlete like the 64 teams in the NCAA their friends and families up in smoke, never to be recovered. Plays in NYC dark, people who just got their first break on Broadway ( daughter knows some of these people). All her friends from high school at various Universities around the country have their graduations canceled and are trying to get their first jobs in this environment. Businesses recently started. Weddings, reunions the list is endless.
People have all kinds of plans that are impossible to recreate or recover.
Is that a right? I didn’t know that!
Gun rights? Are you kidding?
So I guess you win. You’re able to cite two (spurious) exceptions. Here’s hoping we will get all our freedoms back after they take them away. I’m still waiting for a very long list to be restored. Hey, I don’t like giving up my rights, even temporarily. I do not trust these people.
Furthermore, the technological landscape has changed. Now they can control things they couldn’t before.
No, it’s not true that one is a slave or not. Historians have shown that there have been many types and gradations of slavery, to the point that sometimes it has been hard to draw the line between slavery and non-slavery. But I’ll grant you your hyperbole if you grant me mine. Deal?