White House Moves to Discredit Fauci as Disagreements With Trump Become Evident

Oh, for the love of decency!

Science is as science does; it doesn't care about politics! Why the sidelining of Dr. Fauci for such mistakes? [Rhetorical question; I know why.] Gah, #45 administration is soaked in turd!

/vent.

"Decency?" Trump and his flunkies do not know the meaning of the word.
Or science or truth or integrity.

They seem to forget that COVID is a new thing, and, particularly at the beginning, no-one knew much about it. Dr. Fauci, at least, is basing his opinions on what information he can find, unlike Trump and the 'wishful thinking' school of non-thought.

Lol, I agree.

Sadly, this was inevitable once Trump lost all interest in even pretending to care about the effects of this virus on actual human beings instead of the economy. His base isn't exactly dripping with concern for the poorest, the weakest and the most vulnerable among us.

As it's become clear where the populist sentiment is going in some quarters--towards re-opening schools, towards opposing or ignoring mask orders, and towards letting people go to Disney World, even as the virus rages in Florida. Fauci is a voice of caution and reason, and Trump always follows the populist sentiment over caution and reason.

I hate to say it but that's what Fauci gets for trying to rationalize the dark side.

There was clear evidence of asymptomatic spread well before Fauci decided to accept the evidence and call it a new revelation.

Because Fauci and the CDC (from the top directed) made recommendations that masks didn't help people outside the medical field, we now have the results in the US of that mixed messaging.

And they (CDC published, Fauci influenced or supported it) published official guidelines that only symptomatic people, or people directly exposed to a known case needed testing, again a false message that later caused significant issues.

Fauci had the chance to speak up, admit there was a shortage of PPE and testing materials. Instead he went along with the official BS that said PPE wasn't needed, blah blah blah.

Forgive me if I'm not empathetic with Fauci being turned on by Trump.

MaeZe said:

I hate to say it but that's what Fauci gets for trying to rationalize the dark side.

There was clear evidence of asymptomatic spread well before Fauci decided to accept the evidence and call it a new revelation.

Because Fauci and the CDC (from the top directed) made recommendations that masks didn't help people outside the medical field, we now have the results in the US of that mixed messaging.

And they (CDC published, Fauci influenced or supported it) published official guidelines that only symptomatic people, or people directly exposed to a known case needed testing, again a false message that later caused significant issues.

Fauci had the chance to speak up, admit there was a shortage of PPE and testing materials. Instead he went along with the official BS that said PPE wasn't needed, blah blah blah.

Forgive me if I'm not empathetic with Fauci being turned on by Trump.

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+1

With an additional "you knew he was a backstabbing venomous scorpion when you picked him up"... How delusional does a body have to be to think, after four years of witnessing the groveling and backstabbing and outright hostility toward science and reality on display, that he's going to be the one to change things, even fractionally?

MaeZe said:

Because Fauci and the CDC (from the top directed) made recommendations that masks didn't help people outside the medical field, we now have the results in the US of that mixed messaging.

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We've had pretty much the same recommendations at about the same time from all levels of government here. If you are looking for a screw-up, I'm betting you will find similar screw-ups across the globe. Then again, our PMs showed up at daily TV briefings wearing home-made facial coverings some time after when local businesses picked up on production.

MaeZe said:

And they (CDC published, Fauci influenced or supported it) published official guidelines that only symptomatic people, or people directly exposed to a known case needed testing, again a false message that later caused significant issues.

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There was little testing capacity back then. So yes, the testing focused on cases that would yield the best stats to base decisions on. Not a whole lot different from what we went through up here.

MaeZe said:

Forgive me if I'm not empathetic with Fauci being turned on by Trump.

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I'm not sure you will like his replacement better.


-cb

I'm astonished the orange wonder did not go after Fauci earlier.

Brightdreamer said:

+1

With an additional "you knew he was a backstabbing venomous scorpion when you picked him up"... How delusional does a body have to be to think, after four years of witnessing the groveling and backstabbing and outright hostility toward science and reality on display, that he's going to be the one to change things, even fractionally?

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What was his alternative?

I have to admit, even I didn't think the government would completely abandon every single person in this country, but they did. I don't think anyone thought the government would actually pivot to "it's okay if half a million people die."

Could Dr. Fauci have more effectively disseminated his message from a different position? Maybe. But that's hindsight at best.

Let's keep the blame where it belongs.

cbenoi1 said:

We've had pretty much the same recommendations at about the same time from all levels of government here. If you are looking for a screw-up, I'm betting you will find similar screw-ups across the globe. Then again, our PMs showed up at daily TV briefings wearing home-made facial coverings some time after when local businesses picked up on production.

There was little testing capacity back then. So yes, the testing focused on cases that would yield the best stats to base decisions on. Not a whole lot different from what we went through up here.

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You'll have to forgive me but this is personal for me. I watched this all unfold. I watched as the CDC Interim Guidelines, something I had always relied on, became unreliable when it came to COVID 19 recommendations.

The Lancet May 16 editorial: Reviving the US CDC

... has prompted pointed new questions about the inconsistent and incoherent national response to the COVID-19 crisis.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation's public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC's Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC's COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control. How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public's health?

In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected. It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them. CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.

The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. ...

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I think we all know that story, including the CDC's initial faulty tests and this:

The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear.

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The editorial ends with a plea to end partisan politics at the CDC but Trump continued meddling and installed more of his minions at the head of the CDC and related departments.

So what about Fauci? He started appearing at Trump press conferences providing rationalizations and excuses for Trump's actions. Eventually he started speaking out more and finally stopped appearing at the press conferences altogether. But he has yet to admit, let alone apologize for the damaging messages he was responsible for about testing, mask wearing and asymptomatic spread.

USA Today Feb 17: Top disease official [Fauci] : Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

By early April he was claiming we had "new" information about asymptomatic spread and everyone should wear masks. So was he not paying attention to the evidence?

Science News

How long are people contagious?
Researchers are starting to get hints of just when patients are most contagious. Infected people may test positive for the virus both before and after they have symptoms. But a preprint study, posted March 8 at medRxiv.org, of nine people who contracted the virus in Germany suggests that people are mainly contagious before they have symptoms and in the first week of the disease (SN: 3/13/20).

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Science News March 13: Coronavirus is most contagious before and during the first week of symptoms

All nine patients are employees of Webasto, an auto supplier in Stockdorf. They caught the virus from a male coworker, who became known as Patient 1. He originally got the virus from a business colleague from Shanghai who came to Germany in January for a series of meetings (SN: 1/31/20). Both Patient 1 and his Shanghai colleague transmitted the virus before developing symptoms, the first documented cases of asymptomatic spread.

As health officials tested other employees of the company, they found the study participants and placed them in isolation at the Munich clinic. In one case, Patient 1 sneezed during a meeting with one person, Wendtner says. “That was enough for infection.” In other cases, “they had simple business meetings, sitting together for 60 minutes, 90 minutes [at a table or] in front of a computer, with no physical contact — just one handshake, that’s all,” Wendtner says. “The infectivity is quite high.”

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(I posted earlier about the NEJM denying asymptomatic spread from that business meeting, but that's a different issue.)

That was a full month before Fauci admitted asymptomatic spread was an issue. In the meantime more research emerged that I knew about. I watched Fauci deny asymptomatic spread long after I knew that contradicted the research.

The CDC interim Guidelines in effect when we experienced this:"A nursing home in the Seattle [actually it was Kirkland] area is at the center of the US coronavirus outbreak" told us not to test anyone who didn't have a known exposure. After a couple deaths of patients from the Life Care Center, an astute ED doctor ignored the guidelines and tested the next patient who rolled through the doors from the Center.

It's still not clear how the virus spread to the Life Care Center in Kirkland, where more than 50 residents and staff have been experiencing symptoms and will be tested for coronavirus, King County health officer Jeffrey Duchin said. Some 180 people work there.

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This was Feb! Family members had to hold a press conference to get anyone to pay attention to the problem.

I'm sorry, like I said earlier, I'm very emotional about this. Fauci and the CDC (top) denied asymptomatic spread for another month. There were public health people here who knew the guidelines were wrong but they were required to follow them.

They could have said, there's a severe shortage of tests, use care deciding who to test. Instead Fauci and others said no need to test. They could have said there's a severe shortage of masks. Instead Fauci said no one should be going around wearing masks.

Okay, I'm done.

cbenoi1 said:

I'm not sure you will like his replacement better.-cb

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Not until Trump is gone and the swamp is drained of all his toxic appointees.

lizmonster said:

What was his alternative?

I have to admit, even I didn't think the government would completely abandon every single person in this country, but they did. I don't think anyone thought the government would actually pivot to "it's okay if half a million people die."

Could Dr. Fauci have more effectively disseminated his message from a different position? Maybe. But that's hindsight at best.

Let's keep the blame where it belongs.

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Don't get me wrong, all the blame lies with Trump who is now blatantly trying to scapegoat Fauci.

I'm just saying, let's not pretend Fauci had no faults here while we are blaming Trump.

But wasn't Fauci mostly following what the WHO was saying? They did drop the ball on some points themselves. We know a lot more now than we did in February.

Interesting that we're all now focusing on attacking Fauci as well.

The Feds are now sidelining the entire CDC, suggesting (among other things) states use the National Guard to help communicate data. Which is why I suggested we keep our eyes on the ball here: the chaos is worsening, and whatever anyone may personally think of Dr. Fauci, his sidelining is one more symptom of something deeply sinister.

It's difficult not to conclude this pandemic is being used to construct a *rump-led police state while we're all angry, confused, and afraid.

Friendly Frog said:

But wasn't Fauci mostly following what the WHO was saying? They did drop the ball on some points themselves. We know a lot more now than we did in February.

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lizmonster said:

Interesting that we're all now focusing on attacking Fauci as well.
It's difficult not to conclude this pandemic is being used to construct a *rump-led police state while we're all angry, confused, and afraid.

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I think Fauci did the best he could with the available data at the time. The situation changed, and so did his knowledge and suggestions.

It is very important to listen to him carefully. He distinguishes, carefully, between what he knows at a given time, and what is theoretical.

I'm also going to point out that I remember Fauci from much earlier, during the AIDS crises.

I trust him.

lizmonster said:

What was his alternative?

I have to admit, even I didn't think the government would completely abandon every single person in this country, but they did. I don't think anyone thought the government would actually pivot to "it's okay if half a million people die."

Click to expand...

It is pretty amazing that they've gotten to where they are actually saying this, at least. I never expected Trump, or his GOP toadies, to give an actual fuck about the pain and suffering of Covid-19 patients and their families. I did expect them to at least pretend they cared, though, because some of those Covid-19 patients (or their loved ones) vote. They've thrown in with their corporate masters 100%, though, and the corporate masters have determined that ignoring the virus and lying about its true cost are the best way to recover the stock market.

It appears to be working for the stock market, at least (though it's still volatile and dropped today). But one thing Republicans seem to have trouble grasping is that the stock market is not the entire economy. Maybe the minority of Americans who own stocks are doing well, but that doesn't mean everyone else is.

The GOP hasn't cared about the economic security of ordinary Americans for a long time, so they have doubled down on withholding data and distorting facts.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladi...guard-for-covid-data-collection/#40e55c24127a

They figure this will reassure people, I guess, so the masses can have their "bread and circuses" and go to Disneyland, and to bars and restaurants, and to tattoo parlors, and they can get their nails done and send their kids back to schools in the fall. Somehow, the masses will not notice or care that the hospitals are overflowing again and that people are still dying.

They are counting on the fact that nearly 3/4 of Americans still don't personally know anyone who has been diagnosed with Covid-19, let alone been in the ICU or died of it. If they actually think this far ahead (I have my doubts), they are likely hoping the worst consequences of bad choices, like forcing schools to reopen in September, won't be felt until after the first Tuesday in November, or maybe they figure people will be so inured to images of overcrowded ICUs by then that they will vote for the party that is pretending things can return to normal if we all bury our heads in the sand.

Could Dr. Fauci have more effectively disseminated his message from a different position? Maybe. But that's hindsight at best.

Let's keep the blame where it belongs.

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I mostly agree with this. Fauci has had mistakes, but I think he's been trying to serve the country's best interest. Overall, scientists and doctors aren't great at communicating about rapidly changing situations to the public in ways the public can understand. Scientists tend to be very cautious about subscribing to new hypotheses and doctors are slow to change the advice they give, until evidence for something new is overwhelming.

Generally this approach is safest, but I'd argue it might need some modifications during a crisis so long as acting on preliminary evidence does no harm clinically and may do some good. I've had discussions with my brother, an MD, about this regarding the ethics. He has pointed out that he gets cancer patients who want treatments based on some preliminary study in China or somewhere, when it could do more harm than good, and erring on the side of caution means favoring established treatment protocols until more data exist that justify changing them. I've countered that treating Covid-19 as if it spreads via aerosols or can be spread asymptomatically until we have good evidence it doesn't is erring on the side of caution in the case of a new infectious disease that is spreading quickly.

It seems to me that most of the justifications for being "conservative" with respect to evidence for asymptomatic spread or aerosols as a major factor are economic, as it would mean recommending more stringent social distancing and require more ppe in more situations in medical settings. I understand that medicine is always affected by economic realities, but scientists and doctors shouldn't be pressured into making recommendations based on economics.

The reason Fauci has become so prominent isn't just because of his expertise, but because he's better than most of his colleagues at this sort of thing. Still, Fauci is a doctor and epidemiologist, not a politician. I suspect he's made choices he himself isn't always comfortable with in order to stay in a position where he can give advice. If he'd come out too radically in favor of shutting everything down at the very beginning, he would have been shown the door. I imagine he rationalized he needed to stay in the administration's good graces as long as possible to do the most good.

I don't envy him being in that position. Yes, he knew Trump was a venomous scorpion, but some people have to deal with dangerous vermin to do their jobs.

Now he has enough prominence and respect from the public, the press, and from state and local officials that he can likely continue to give advice and be listened to, even if Trump "fires" him. I guess we'll have to see if he changes his tactics once that happens.