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Dr. Fauci and icuaF .rD
Gateway Pundit is crying AWFUL! Disgusting Dr. Fauci UNLOADS on Trump on EASTER SUNDAY — “Lives Could Have Been Saved!” (Video). Well, yeah, kind of, maybe. Dr. Fauci has become a presence in our lives. He has his admirers and he has his detractors. Some see him as a political operative and part of the Deep State. Others see him as a pure and virtuous civil servant who is selflessly putting in grueling hours at an age where he could be off enjoying (from his isolation) a comfortable retirement.
Gateway Pundit has been waging a jihad against Dr. Fauci for awhile now. They credit him for scuttling the economy and putting President Trump’s re-election in doubt. They see him as a duplicitous agent of evil who is succeeding to do what Clinton-Comey-Mueller-Schiff-Pelosi-Schumer and the MSM could not heretofore accomplish. They publicize his effusions in the past for Hillary and his supposed hand-signaling to press members who give the President difficulty.
The truth is that Dr. Fauci is both credentialed and accomplished in the way we have admired for decades. He is a part of the elite that many have come to suspect are the ground troops of the progressive movement. And his calling — public health — is a progressive domain. His worldview no doubt is closer to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump. But the only question we should be concerned about is whether his advice to the President is calculated to destroy him politically as opposed to being sound public policy that incidentally carries with it political risk.
I don’t think Dr. Fauci is manipulating the President. No doubt his advice is not much different from his public pronouncements. And judging from those, the good doctor hedges any statement that makes a headline in a way that makes it plausible that he was advocating completely the opposite of what was broadcast, or that any result is consistent with what he predicted.
President Trump is probably as adept as anyone in resisting manipulation. As Bill O’Reilly documents in his book The United States of Trump: How the President Really Sees America, President Trump trusts no one except for family. His critics would say that his own schemes and manipulations make him look for schemes and manipulations in others. That could be fair, but recent history also suggests he has received a Master Class in opposition scheming and manipulation, regardless of whatever karma he gathered before running for public office. So I don’t believe that President Trump is overly influenced by Dr. Fauci’s agenda (whatever that is) and looks instead to how the advice he gets should be acted upon or rejected.
As a lawyer by training, I am well aware of the reputation we have for equivocation:
Dr. Fauci may have a medical degree, but he apparently has earned an honorary law degree because he has mastered the two-handed approach.
[Note: Links to all my CoVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Everybody has to make everyone else look bad. As you say, Dr. Fauci is probably correct. Can we please move on, please, and stop the continual blame game??
The same headline in red is on Drudge today. It’s stupid, he didn’t download on Trump. He answered some questions in a very diplomatic way. Of course if you started earlier you’d have had better results. The question answers itself. What else was he going to say?
Yes. The good Doctor played his hand very well towards his agenda (whatever that is) but he will run out of cards…and likely leave the table…long before the President does.
You forgot the gripping hand.
The Left, since they lie themselves, probably thought he’d make something up.
If my disaster predictions turned out to be two orders of magnitude too high, I would want to distract from that as well. His problem is not that Trump was too slow, but that Fauci’s playbook appears to be worse than the disease. This is a move to prompt Trump firing him so that he can do the circuit feeding whatever line pays best. First and foremost, shooting at Trump.
Gateway Pundit is always hysterical. Although some of the work on the site can be useful, I wouldn’t trust it as a reliable source of information. I’m no fan of Dr. Fauci but not part of the movement to demonize him.
There are diseases we have been dealing with for centuries, and doctors still cannot give an answer that is guaranteed to be correct for every patient. In the case of COVID-19, we are dealing with a disease that the world had never seen 9 months ago. Of course public health officials are giving uncertain answers. The only people who project an image of being confident that they know exactly what to do are full of . . . malarkey, to use Joe Biden’s word. Public health officials are largely walking through fog, making their best guesses with insufficient data.
Furthermore, if you ask 50 people to all make a prediction regarding how many people will get sick and how many people will die if we do X, someone will come closest to what plays out. Will that mean they were smarter than all the others or just luckier in their prediction?
Jim Hoft came back from his near-death experience six years ago a changed man, and not for the better. His anger levels at anyone who disagreed with him exploded exponentially, like the COVID-19 virus under the watch of Bill de Blaiso. When he decides there’s a person or group he doesn’t like, the hyperbolic attacks just don’t let up. (Being from Missouri, Hoft already seems to have thrown in with Sen. Josh Hawley for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Don’t know how things are going to go at Gateway Pundit or for Hawley a few years from now, if Trump wins re-election but indicates he’s favoring someone else in ’24).
Of course more lives would have been saved if we took action sooner. It goes without saying the earlier you identify an issue, the earlier you can address it. It appears China knew about the Kung Flu fairly early, but didn’t warn other nations until it had already spread.
As for Dr. Fauci, I can’t figure him out. I don’t think he’s manipulating Trump. However, he may be giving him bad advice based on trying to prevent every single death using worst-case scenarios. At some point we have to grit our teeth and get back to work, even if the virus lingers on. People can make their own choices about how to live their lives, whether to go back to work or continue self-isolation.
Update: I see some news items claiming Trump intends to fire Fauci. Expect the usual criticism from the usual sources. Draining the swamp isn’t easy, and certainly not a job for anyone who yearns for media adulation . . .
Wow. Knock me over with a feather. Maybe we could have saved lives if we did something about this 2 years ago. If the good doctor continues to make such amazingly profound statements (Lives could have been saved!!! Really?) I may have to ask him about the origin of the universe.
I think that as the virus “curve” is now running its course downward the left will move (like this week) to asserting that the President could have done more (and didn’t because ) and people died and that there should be no re-opening the economy until there are no new cases and/or a vaccine. I guess anyone could also ask when that magic day was when it was clear that a virus had come or was coming (November 17? December 12? December 19?) and that it was dangerous as heck and that we should close our borders right right the next day. Regardless of his credentials I think Dr Fauci is not without political biases and is still looking ahead to his next gig.
He’s 79. Why is he worried about his next gig? Don’t these people ever shut up?
I like Dr. Fauci very much. I’ve known a few excellent doctors like him in that they say something to the effect of, “This is my best professional advice. Take it or leave it, as you wish.” The excellent doctors I’ve worked with as both a caregiver or as a patient smile and offer their invaluable perspective. I respect that attitude very much. The better the doctor, the less pressure they put on patients and caregivers. Dr. Fauci speaks very similarly to the top doctors in the medical field. That he has been alarmed about this virus tells me that underneath the physician’s veneer is a real human being, not just a plastic bureaucrat.
Financial advisers and lawyers operate under the same types of professional constraints. They can’t control people, only advise them. And they aren’t going to give people advice that is off the books for their profession. “I advise you not to sell all of your Apple stock today, but I’ll put through the order if you still want to do that.” :-)
He has been in DC too long, working in the same agency and position since the Reagan administration
Fauci may be a swell lab guy, but he is not a very good public speaker and not very good at public health. He is not good at communicating consistently, he is not good at communicating the certainty of his ideas and I have never heard him discuss the lessons from past pandemics. Then on public health, he seems ignorant of the costs of any of his recommendations. He is in the wrong job.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it “bad” advice, so much as one-dimensional advice.
Imagine you own a factory. You’ve got someone who is in charge of safety. His recommendations are going to be on maximizing worker safety, with little regard to cost or productivity. The person is charge of production is looking for ways to maximize production, and not necessarily thinking about worker safety at all. You’ve got accountants asking why are we paying $x per ton for some raw materials when something similar can be gotten cheaper. They may not appreciate that there is a reason you are not buying the cheapest stuff possible. All of these specialists are bringing you their best advice, based on the area they know best, often without much regard for other areas. It’s your job as the factory owner to take in all of their advice and figure out the proper balance. I think this is what President Trump is doing; listening to the people who know disease and the people who know economics and trying to find the balance that works for the greatest number of people, and adjusting on a week-by-week basis and more data comes in.
Except that in this instance public health encompasses far more than infectious disease. It most certainly includes suicide, addiction related death, and loss of life expectancy. So, Dr. Fauci’s advice has been fundamentally unprofessional from day one, as the President, and not the “medical expert” has had to repeatedly raise these known deadly side effects of the relentlessly advocated course of treatment.
He loves being on TV
He is too political. It’s impossible not to be when he has worked in DC for as long as he has. At this point he is more bureaucrat than he is a doctor.
When is the last time he treated a patient?
When is the last time he supervised a clinical trial?
Does he have the qualifications to critique epidemiologist models? It’s more statistics than it is science.
What is the difference between what he does and what Deborah Birx does?
I think the main the going forward with Fauci is how is he going to react when Trump starts urging governors to begin targeted reoprnings. The extreme here is the Zeke Emanuel position — where American businesses, parks and recreational facilities and schools can’t reopen again for 12-18 months, until
people get enraged at being couped up inside for so long and elect Joe Biden presidenta vaccine can be found and administered to the public, while I don’t know of anyone who’s advocating for reopening everything in the U.S. at the same time. But there has to be a security versus freedom balance, and a certain level of risk is going to have to be accepted, just as a certain level of risk is assumed by the public every winter flu season.If Fauci’s not willing to concede at least some risk is going to have to be built into the reopening of the economy, if the decision isn’t to let COVID-19 hold the nation hostage through mid-2021, then there’s going to be a blow-up coming down the line between him and Trump (and here, avoid that blow-up might be helped if state governors take proactive measures on their own. If Greg Abbott does OK targeted reopenings on Tuesday, there’s no way Fauci and Trump don’t get asked about at the Tuesday evening presser. Let’s see what happens then).
The CDC screwed the pooch on several fronts. They are undoubtedly already in a defensive crouch against coming scrutiny and many there will happily reach out to Adam Schiff when he requests dirt, innuendo and spin to pin anything and everything on Trump. Whatever Fauci’s merits as an epidemiologist, he has been in DC long enough to know how to play this game.
I think the soon-to-be-unveiled plan to stage the re-opening of the economy will allow Fauci some room to take an anti-economic priority stance and thus allow the MSM/Dems to blame Trump for causing deaths, hating minorities, I.e., the usual shtick repeated in the context of the WuFlu.
If Fauci is good at public health, I don’t expect him to be good at a) public speaking, or b) socio-economic costs. It’s not his job to be good at either of those. It’s his job to advise the president on public health. It’s the president’s job to weigh public health against economic and other societal considerations. (Hopefully he has people advising him on those issues, too.)
Individuals who have been in government their entire careers have no idea of how the working population lives. It is really easy for them to declare a full stop to economic activity, since their jobs or livelihoods are never threatened. They should get out more, and live for a while with someone who has to worry about whether their savings will last through a forced vacation of many weeks.
Thank you, @cliffordbrown, for the save.
I was trying (and failing) to not post a comment that was far more prurient.
Do I detect sarcasm? Hehe . . .
Gateway Pundit is clearly partisan and highlights the worst of the socialists and petty tyrants. That’s why I visit every day!
I would never rely only on that outlet. They can be alarmist( but not more than other MSM platforms), and I know what I’m getting when I visit that site.
Fauci my or may not have special connections and a special agenda. It really doesn’t matter that much in determining if he’s undermining Trump and grandstanding. And I think he is.
Doctors already tend to be entitled after experiencing years of constant deference. It’s normal. The vast majority have large deficits in their real-world experiences and knowledge. They spend their formative years stressed, cramming, over-worked with almost zero free time. Most don’t have enough time to read the daily newspapers, ( for years! From around 18-28 …maybe they see the headlines and the chyrons running on CNN) and they have to keep up with medical developments in their free time. In some crucial areas, doctors are dumb as rocks. I know several personally and have dealt with many over 67 years.
Certain people really enjoy attention and strive to be liked. Dr. Fauci is exactly that type. He is trying to satisfy the media snakes, who he absolutely wants to keep on his side.
And he’s starting to play outside his lane. We may never shake hands again as a society, he tells us. I say he’s very wrong, and it’s not his place to make such statements anyway. ( I will never shake hands with him, that’s my prediction).
I’ve been put-off by this guy from the outset. He’s a technocrat. We’ve seen these people in action. Mike Bloomberg for one. They tend to be on the left, thinking up processes to “improve” society, to save lives. Such champions for us all! They rarely, if ever have the kind of deep background needed to even begin to understand how their “improvements” might have other consequences, much less consider them into their claims. Conservatives do this, and once the alternative scenarios are explored, they often find it prudent to resist these types of changes.
Trump is using Fauci to get the dire message out, he’s the authority everyone seems to accept, to go along with these scientific prescriptions as necessary. It’s good/cop bad cop. Fauci the pessimist, Trump the optimist. Trump almost always counters him in pressers.
But allowing the media to break-out Fauci and grill him without a counter is a mistake. Fauci is prone to making blanket statements and then providing disclaimers.
The media can decide which “hand” they want to cover, as usual. Of course it will be whichever one they think will hurt Trump politically, because they actually believe that – if you really look at how they act -more people will die from Trumpism than from this virus. They think they are noble and justified.
Of course lives could have been saved if we acted sooner. We could have probably contained this in China or even Wuhan if the Chinese were honest. Dr. Fauci is a big name in biosafety circles, and he specializes in infectious diseases. He’s the kind of guy who can provide advice on what will work as a containment measure and what can be used as a cleanup measure. You want someone like him on your team, because he knows more about these kind of diseases than nearly anyone. That does not mean he is infallible, and he has not been elected a leader. If he has an agenda, it is probably just ending his career with a success.
Trump is the final decision maker here.
Dr. Fauci has a very clear agenda. Public health. Period. And he will promote that to the best of his ability, as he should. It is up to policy makers to balance the multiple agendas.
Pres. Trump’s agenda is a lot harder to determine. On what does he spend most of his time?
And note that the president cannot “open” the economy. And neither can the governors. Only people can do that and until people are comfortable they will choose not to engage. Trump prefers to use his “gut” as opposed to experts. Frankly, not something I trust.