Tuesday, December 29, 2020

The Facts, Doctor



There is a good- though unintended- message here:


Authorities don't yet know whether Anthony Quinn Warner was a terrorist but it appears he was a suicide bomber, given that he was killed in the Christmas Day attack in Nashville.

And it is a time, as it usually is, for brutal honesty. Instead we get..... Dr. Anthony Fauci. On Christmas Eve, a brave and bold New York Times reporter wrote

At what point does a country achieve herd immunity? What portion of the population must acquire resistance to the coronavirus, either through infection or vaccination, in order for the disease to fade away and life to return to normal....

Recently, a figure to whom millions of Americans look for guidance — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, an adviser to both the Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration — has begun incrementally raising his herd-immunity estimate.

In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”

In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

We've been down this road before with Anthony Fauci.  In an interview in June he had stated

Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.

Shorter Fauci: Not trusting the American people, I lied.

Dr. Fauci lied about masks and he lied about herd immunity. No doubt he is an infectious disease expert. He knew masks would save lives back when he discouraged ordinary Americans not to wear them and he realized over 75% of individuals need to be immunized when he was touting the 60-70 percent number.

He may also be a very good doctor, although opinions vary about what that entails.   Sometime in your life, you probably have switched doctors because you thought she was not very good- yet she still has many patients, some of whom swear by her effectiveness.

Fauci also is excellent on television- probably why President Trump kept him on- and strikes an elegant image sitting poolside.

But it's time to get over this hero worship, promoted by CNN, MSNBC, Politico, and others of Dr. Fauci. The country would benefit if Fauci were a little less celebrity and instead tried to will level with us, speak the hard truths, and challenge us to do better.


 


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