In a still-cresting pandemic, in an epidemic by far the worst in the world, the White House releases opposition research — the kind of portfolio you compile to undermine a political opponent — on its own chief scientist. https://t.co/WK6MIIaxCo
— Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) July 12, 2020
If they want to fire or undermine Fauci they should do it in broad daylight and explain why. And if the media must cover this they should not give anonymity to powerful officials to help them do their dirty work.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) July 12, 2020
The rush to smear Dr. Fauci was never really about Dr. Fauci; it was a public exercise to demonstrate exactly how loyal each and every little minion was to Dear Leader…
The White House's efforts to disparage Fauci's credibility is less about Fauci himself than about Trump's desire to build a miasma of uncertainty around the pandemic which obscures where his administration has failed.https://t.co/2i2DeRTFFu
— Philip Bump (@pbump) July 14, 2020
… And it worked as well as these publicity stunts usually do, in our ‘Everything Trump Touches Dies’ era. From today’s NYTimes, “Fauci Back at the White House, a Day After Trump Aides Tried to Undermine Him”:
… The visit underscored a reality for both men: They are stuck with each other.
Dr. Fauci — who has not had direct contact with the president in more than five weeks even as the number of Americans with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has risen sharply in the Southwest — slipped back into the West Wing to meet with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, while his allies denounced what they called a meanspirited and misguided effort by the White House to smear him.
White House officials declined to comment on what was discussed in the conversation between Mr. Meadows, who has long expressed skepticism about the conclusions of the nation’s public health experts, and Dr. Fauci, though one official called it a good conversation and said they continued to have a positive relationship.
For his part, Mr. Trump made no effort to sugarcoat his rift with Dr. Fauci, declining to repudiate the criticism of him from his staff and saying that “I don’t always agree with him.” But the president also implicitly acknowledged how unlikely he was to get rid of Dr. Fauci, calling him “a very nice person” and saying that “I like him personally.”
Mr. Trump could formally remove Dr. Fauci from the official coronavirus task force, but that would be a relatively meaningless step because it no longer serves as the nerve-center of a pandemic response that the Trump administration has pushed governors to take responsibility for.
As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Fauci is a career civil servant. Firing him would require a finding of cause of malfeasance, and would most likely end up tied up in lengthy appeals, though the president could still seek to sideline Dr. Fauci in meaningless work, transfer him to another location or cut his budget in an attempt to get him to resign…
Dr. Fauci’s international reputation has not spared him from the White House attacks, which first appeared in The Washington Post and later in other news outlets. The criticism, which was distributed anonymously to reporters, detailed what the White House believed was a series of premature or contradictory recommendations that Dr. Fauci has made over the past several months as the virus bore down on the United States…
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, took ownership on Monday of the opposition research-style effort, saying that her office merely “provided a direct answer to what was a direct question” from The Post about whether Dr. Fauci had made mistakes during the course of the response…
“We love Dear Leader more than your life itself.”
By early April, Dr. Fauci had received so many personal threats that he was assigned personal protection. The N.I.H. continues to turn over threats to the agency’s security force, said one official familiar with them…
…[A]s Dr. Fauci’s public assessments of the outbreak became increasingly dire, Mr. Meadows and several press officials he brought to the White House began to tighten the access television reporters had to him, ignoring or blocking requests routed to them from the N.I.H…
The White House’s attempts to discredit Dr. Fauci raised alarm on Monday among health experts who have long known him as public health’s most important ambassador…
Lately the White House stopped approving most requests for Dr. Fauci to appear on TV, believing it would help reduce the public contradictions, but continued to sign off on print interviews, including the FT one last week where he said he hadn't briefed Trump in months.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 13, 2020
CNN, this afternoon — “Fauci spat illustrates what some fear is a directionless White House”:
… [W]ith a little more than 100 days until November 3, the fight with Fauci illustrated what, to many supporters of Trump, has been a disturbing pattern: ill-timed battles with little evident public support that do nothing to define the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, articulate a rationale for another term in office or contain a pandemic that is both crippling the nation and dooming his reelection chances.
Trump has insisted to friends recently that he hasn’t really started campaigning yet. Yet some of the President’s tactics lately have been so baffling to his allies that several have openly speculated about whether he’s actively trying to lose the election….
In Fauci, White House officials targeted a well-respected health expert whom polls show is trusted by a large majority of Americans. To some degree, that public renown explains their grievances: the President has long noted with annoyance to aides that Fauci’s approval ratings are higher than his own, gripes that some aides interpreted as permission to attack the doctor publicly.
In the West Wing, Fauci has earned detractors, including trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has questioned his expertise and his willingness to advocate for recommendations that have caused the economy to stall.
By Tuesday, the sparring had become a campaign issue — for Biden.
“Mr. Trump, please listen to your public health experts instead of denigrating them,” the former vice president said during a speech in Delaware, where he has been isolating during the pandemic…
By Monday, the decision by members of the White House press office to provide a list of Fauci’s past statements to reporters and to declare, anonymously, that several officials “are concerned about the number of times Fauci has been wrong on things” was viewed widely as a mistake…
Asked on a podcast Tuesday he if he’s ever wanted to throw his hands up and walk away, Fauci said: “I think that the issue at hand is so important that I think walking away from it is not the solution. I think that would just make things worse.”…
Not gonna stop the True Believers, of course. Speaking of the worst people in the world…
The anti-Fauci stuff may just be starting.
“We are working on a memo that shows how many times Dr. Fauci’s been wrong during not just [this pandemic], but during his entire career,” Stephen Moore tells ?@swin24? and ?@ErinBanco? https://t.co/TmVyV2cHws— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) July 14, 2020
Surely no leader in history has ever warned of a plot by doctors. https://t.co/oIR7PeRTJh
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) July 13, 2020
(The original Doctors’ Plot backstory)
Archon
Comedy equals tragedy plus time. I just turned 40, I doubt I’ll live long enough to find all this funny.
jl
For gawds sake, people. Fauci has only made a few mistakes, inevitable in real time disaster response, and only because of serious problems arising from working in Trump administration paralyzed by a problem completely beyond it’s ability or comprehension. He hasn’t been wrong all the time. Fauci really lacks the consistent performance Mr. Trump rightly demands. We need to face the facts.
Sab
There is a huge outdoor party going on at our little neighborhood park. Cars parked everywhere. People everywhere. Not a mask in sight despite the mayor’s order. Music blasting. Whole families.
The park is named Korona Park. Really.
People have lost their minds.
prostratedragon
“We are working on a memo that shows how many times Dr. Fauci’s been wrong during not just [this pandemic], but during his entire career,” Stephen Moore tells @swin24 and @ErinBanco
Bet it’s a much smaller number than 20,000.
MomSense
My mom said she heard something today about the trump administration telling states to report directly to them and not the cdc.
I hope this is not true.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
A customer with a Vietnam Vet hat came through my line yesterday. No mask of course. Didn’t think masks were necessary. I disagreed; I said that masks are for an important cause, even if uncomfortable. He responded with, “Who told you that?” I responded with “the CDC”.
According to him, “Fauci has been wrong about everything since this whole thing started.” I didn’t bother asking specifically what, although I told him that there’s a difference between incompetence and learning new information. Moron didn’t understand and just said it was incompetence.
I then simply asked who’s ultimately responsible for that (ans: Trump). Guy couldn’t see what I was getting at. Just responded with Fauci.
And of course he closed with “this will disappear after November.”
Hope he lives long enough for me to throw that in his face after November (hopefully and especially when Biden wins)
MomSense
@Sab:
WTF is wrong with people.
My good friend called me today so upset. She told me none of her coworkers are wearing masks and she has complained to her supervisor and is working up the chain and getting nowhere. She has diabetes and cares for her elderly father. The reality that her colleagues are so selfish after all the years she thought they respected her hit her so hard today.
jl
@MomSense: I think Trumpsters backed down on that because they got slapped around on it. Also, a commenter on thread below said the idea was illegal and infeasible in several ways.
The backdowns on National Guard nonsense, and foreign student attendance, reminds me that it is past time that the Democratic leadership be more aggressive when Trumpsters make some looney toon announcement. When challenged, Trump administration often just folds, because, shit, they didn’t expect to actually having to do any work to get what they want. That, in addition to complete inability to implement any plan, means they often fold very quickly and very bigly.
rikyrah
NotMax
“We are working on a memo that shows how many times Dr. Fauci’s been wrong during not just [this pandemic], but during his entire career,”
Append three zeroes, then cube that number and add to the result the number of stars visible to the naked eye at midnight in Death Valley to obtain a rough estimate of the number of times Dolt 45 has been wrong “during his entire career.”
Jinchi
Dude. We were ready to vote you out already. There was no need to go all in on the plague and the race riots.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@rikyrah:
They don’t have any legal authority to do that, correct? And these facilities can be held accountable if they cooperate, right?
This is so fucked up
Redshift
OT: This is pretty awesome. (h/t Joy Reid):
Ivanka Trump Thinks Unemployed People Should Try Not Being Unemployed
Jeffro
I love this
CNN:Fauci spat illustrates what some fear is a directionless White House
“Some”?
“Fear”??
“Directionless???”
We get mad at the snooze media for hyping shit all the time…in this case, they’re downplaying (by word choice) the impact of the phrase by, oh, a factor of eight thousand. They may well actually be saving lives by using such relatively calming words, instead of what it should say:
CNN: Fauci spat illustrates what has nearly all of us terrified…the remorseless killer is calling from inside the White House.
rikyrah
@Sab:
??????
Mike in NC
Pretty sure all of my doctors vote Republican (or at least the white ones).
rikyrah
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
This is bad.
Instead of having one place to get
reliable data, we will have to go state by state
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Interesting that he immediately connected Fauci with CDC, since Fauci is at NIAID, not CDC.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
????
Jeffro
@Redshift: (ten million out-of-work Americans: “What? Why didn’t I think of that?”)
Not much of a history buff, that Ivanka. Next thing you know she’ll be suggesting that they just, you know, chill out and eat a little cake.
Mart
“Trump’s desire to build a miasma of uncertainty around the pandemic which obscures where his administration has failed.”
Dear Mr. Bump,
Trump could not read nor comprehend that sentence. I am certain the very stable genius did not strategerize sliming Fauci. He just saw Fauci was better respected, so Trump smash. Quit putting big words in the toddlers mouth.
Peale
@rikyrah: I’m actually surprised the unemployment data remains as accurate as it is. But I’m guessing that won’t be long. The problem with Trumpists is that they can’t cheat a little. They have to cheat a lot. Some I’m guessing that come October 23, unemployment will be 2%, Covid deaths will be 0 even though we’ll all be sending sympathy cards, and they’ll just have Munchin print so much money to buy Index funds that it’ll be Dow 44,000.
Brachiator
Again, this drives me crazy. And the media continue to play into this nonsense! What alternative “experts” is Meadows relying on? What knowledge is Meadows bringing to the table?
Hell, I could say that I am skeptical that 2+2=4. But so what? I better be bringing some rigorous new math.
Trump is instinctively good with this stuff around rubes, but it’s still bullshit. He does not in any way acknowledge Fauci’s credentials as a scientist and instead reduces it to whether or not Fauci pleases him.
And as always, in Trumpland you are either “nasty” or “nice.”
It goes beyond saying that the media should reject this nonsense. But every Republican should be forced to go on the record as to whether or not they endorse this foolishness.
low-tech cyclist
@Jeffro:
Damn, ya beat me to it.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I heard something positive about the asshole move to kick out all foreign students before the fall semester. This was second-hand from my wife, who is an academic. I’m not sure where she read it.
Anyway, Harvard and I think MIT had taken the administration to court, and the administration (so she heard) backed down. So for the moment student visas are safe.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, I thought that interesting too. Probably a combination of his ignorance of how the government is organized and Fauci being the public face of the federal response to the pandemic
rikyrah
@MomSense:
I don’t get the mask thing. Why this is hard. It’s inconvenient, not hard.
Unless they work outside 6 feet from one another, they are in a Petri Dish if they are in an air conditioned open space.
She should write an open email to everyone in the company. Complete with graphs and videos about the cesspool that they are in
She literally should write in the letter- before this, I never thought that you wanted me dead. COVID-19 IS A DEATH SENTENCE FOR ME.
Maybe it won’t change anything, but she shouldn’t despair in silence. She needs to tell these muthaphuckas that they are endangering her life. Put it in black and white.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@low-tech cyclist: Catching up on the thread from bottom to top, and at first I read “spat” as in “Fauci spat” as a verb. Which I thought was an interesting development in the Fauci-Trump relationship.
Alas, it’s a noun.
trnc
So DT, asked about black people killed by police, said “So are white people,” and then complained that it was a horrible question. Of course, already being behind, he had to throw in, “More white people.” Of course, there has been the expected fact check that determined that, in fact, black people have been killed by police about 2.5 times more than white people.
OK, good that there’s some pushback, but what’s the ratio if you only include unarmed people?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@rikyrah:
More evidence that Trump has got to go
jl
@Jeffro: If mind-boggling incompetence and criminal malfeasance in handling the pandemic is the decisive issue for this cycle, the Trumpsters are headed straight down to the bottom of the ocean, in terms of the election.
If previous outbreaks are any guide, the mess in AZ, FL and TX won’t settle for two months. So, will be mid-September before end of news of another emergency shipment of PPE or meds to FL, freezer trucks full of bodies clear out, troops head home from TX. Hope CA can avoid that, because I don’t want more people sick and dead, I live here, and I don’t want a blue state interfering with the message.
AZ, FL and TX, with state governments slavishly following Trump’s murderous foolishness, have set themselves on an irreversible course. The horrifying mess just might come up during the campaign, since inconveniently will be happening at the same time.
If those states don’t impose strict controls like NY, Italy, Spain, etc., the sickness and death may stutter and shudder on up to the election.
Danielx
@rikyrah:
And do we suspect certain governors ****cough***DeSantis***cough**** might manipulate the data to suit their own ends and/or to please Dear Leader?
Of course not, only a deeply twisted paranoiac could think such things.
dmsilev
@rikyrah: We have that already. The whole reason the COVID Tracking Project was set up was because Trump’s HHS was too incompetent and/or too untrustworthy to do the job. At this point, a bunch of volunteers are already gathering and compiling the state by state data. Now, if the Trumpier governors start cooking the books at the state level (as has been alleged in Florida), that’s a problem, but it’s a problem regardless of what the Federal government is doing.
To me, the most troubling part of that story is not the data, it’s the ‘let’s scapegoat the CDC’ plus a side helping of ‘the data will be collected by an unnamed private contractor’ which of course screams incompetent grift.
Annie
Since the current policy of the Justice Department (so called) is that a president in office cannot be indicted I’m sure Tr*** wants to be re-elected. He just doesn’t want to do the work of being President and never has.
Baud
The worldwide conspiracy against Trump restores my faith in humanity.
Thank you, doctors.
Thank you, dead people.
Danielx
@Baud:
I see dead people.
dmsilev
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Trump administration backs off plan requiring international students to take face-to-face classes
There were a whole bunch of lawsuits; the Harvard/MIT one was the first to be filed and the first to have a hearing, and ICE backed down immediately. So, either they were completely incompetent at the whole procedural thing or this was just posturing for the anti-immigration/anti-intellectual base. Or a combination.
artem1s
WTH, he wouldn’t know what campaigning looked like if it hit him in the ass. When exactly has he ever done any campaigning? Free advertising and giant rally parties thrown in your honor aren’t campaigning. If the GOP had made him work hard for their nomination in 2016, he would have dropped out and saved us all this chaos. Donnie Free-ride doesn’t have the first clue what hard work looks like.
Martin
So, the mask controversy is becoming clearer.
Early on, the advice was that masks don’t really help. That was based on the assumption that like most diseases the degree to which you are exposed matters little, so if anything gets through the mask, you’re going to get sick. As such, reserve the good ones for front line workers so they don’t get sick.
What we’ve since learned is that the degree to which you are exposed matters a lot. So, if you get hit with double the viral load, you will get something like twice as sick. So you get a feedback loop. If you wear a mask the virus can permeate you might be just as susceptible to catching it, but you are more likely to become one of the asymptomatic cases, or at least be less likely to require a ventilator. If you are less symptomatic, it’s a bit harder to transmit, and if you are again masked, that reduces it as well. So, how much of a viral load that a person receives depends both on the person receiving it as well as the ability of the person to transmit it. So even with our increasing number of cases, if more and more people are masked, those cases may result in fewer ICU cases per infection.
So, the original guidance wasn’t wrong for most diseases, a cloth mask provides little protection, but this thing is a little different in that the intensity of the infection matters. This may also explain some of the reinfection claims – that the intensity of the first infection and your immune response may inform whether you can get it again through exposure to a much heavier viral load.
This is entirely too subtle a thing for Republicans to understand, IMO.
randy khan
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
It’s true. It’s not clear whether they realized everybody hated the idea, if higher ed put a ton of pressure on them, or if they had a really bad legal position, but whatever the reason they folded.
low-tech cyclist
@Peale:
I wouldn’t worry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pays the Census Bureau to collect the data. The business establishment survey that produces the employment numbers come from the Census’ economic directorate, while the Current Population Survey, the source of the unemployment numbers, is run by the Census’ demographic directorate.
Someone would have to reach way inside the Census Bureau in multiple places to monkey with the numbers. If they did it from BLS or from the top of the Census Bureau hierarchy, you’d have career statisticians at the GS-13 level, plus or minus a grade or two, who would know exactly what the numbers should have been.
Martin
@dmsilev: It was extortion to get unis to reopen. We called their bluff, and they backed down when it became clear it wouldn’t work.
Jay
Can we get it out to RedState, the Wingnut Welfare circuit and FaceBook that all Doctors and Denyists are plotting against Dumph, and so, because it’s obvious, they should never go to a Doctor or Dentist not matter what their health issues are.
they should instead visit ReThug Campaign offices, My Pillow Stores, Faux News stations, OAN and Sinclair stations, Police Stations or their local Faith Healer for medical care.
Carlo
If Fauci did resign, he could at least unload on the currenty most dangerous cretins…
From: Anthony Fauci, M.D.
To: Governors of TX,FL,AZ,GA,LA,MS, etc.
Dear Clueless People:
Could you please, for the love of God, lock the fuck down now? Your belief that you can wait until things are “bad enough” is scientifically illiterate. Because of the COVID-19 incubation period and hospitalization/fatality delays, your 20-30 day future is already locked in today. If you wait until your militantly ignorant idea of “bad” comes to pass before you hit the interrupt switch, things will get exponentially worse for about 20-30 days afterwards. I use the term “exponentially” advisedly, and invite you to look it up. “Bodies piling up in the street due to lack of freezer space” more or less captures the scenario that you are courting. Can you please take a break from your parallel universe where tweets and press releases have epistemic weight outclassing actual scientific knowledge, and save a few thousands of your constituents not yet fated to get mortally Ill?
Sincerely,
A. Fauci
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You should have come back with, “And the guy who tells you to drink bleach is always right?”
geg6
@Martin:
I’m stealing this and posting it on my social media. People need to understand this. You, of course, will be anonymous, as you are here. But I hope you don’t mind.
Martin
@rikyrah: We don’t have one reliable place to get the data. The best data is being collected at Johns Hopkins, the NYT <spits>, and The Atlantic.
The CDC data is garbage, not because the CDC is bad at this, but because the WH is determined to manipulate any data it doesn’t like or to bury it.
Martin
@geg6: I never mind. :)
Nicole
You and me both. I just got back from my first trip on the NYC subway since March 13, and mask wearing was… maybe 75%. And that’s with a constant stream of announcements telling people masks covering the nose and mouth were required. I was a raging bundle of nerves by the time I got off at my stop (waiting 20 minutes at Penn Station for a goddamn local train in that fetid air while people not wearing masks hung out on the platform with me didn’t help). And then I come home, make the mistake of looking on FB, and there are morons raging about the health conditions that preclude them from wearing masks ( “HIPPA” was invoked). I just finally started calling them out for making stuff up.
Masks are such an easy thing to do. Inconvenient? Sure. But it’s easy inconvenient. And I just do not understand why the people screaming the hardest about reopening everything are the same ones refusing to do the one thing that would make that possible to do safely. I swear, this year has really shown me how utterly, utterly stupid a not inconsiderable part of the nation is. I mean, just stupid.
Cheryl Rofer
@Martin: We actually know very little about viral load. There are some indications that what you describe is the case – the more virus you snort in, the sicker you get. But real evidence is lacking. It’s more a sense that the front-line doctors and epidemiologists are developing.
Wearing a mask is more about keeping your viruses to yourself than picking them up from others. I do agree with this, though.
Brachiator
@trnc:
The obvious reply: “So, Mr Trump. We know you don’t care if black men are killed by cops. So, you don’t care if cops gun down white people, either?”
I guess if white people keep quiet about police brutality, this is just another example of “tough” people “sucking it up” and getting on with things.
Explains why Trump doesn’t care about the unnecessary Covid-19 deaths.
Emma
At this point (and, frankly, many points ago), I do not understand why Fauci still works for this administration. Get out of there and do your own interviews. What good is he doing by affiliating himself with Trump at this point? Trump is gonna Trump, whether or not he appoints a wacko replacement for Fauci. I just don’t see Fauci’s continued presence stemming the tide of evil, if that’s the reason why he tells himself to stay in his position.
glory b
Please tell me why Trump and Fauci are “stuck with each other?” Trump figures the blowback from firing Fauci would be intense. Fauci, on the other hand, could tell Trump to shove it and be welcomed at any number of distinguished institutions.
Would anyone blame him?
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: Is that right? I didn’t think the viral load/exposure was directly correlated to how severe your illness was. That’s news to me. ETA I see Cheryl got here before me.
@glory b: Fauci wants to actually have an impact on the course of our national response. If he leaves and gives Trump the finger he’s going to lose his ability to influence the national government response, lose access to a lot of information and resources, and may lose his platform as ‘the’ Covid guy. At a minimum if he left the entire right would crow about how he botched it and left out of shame, and he’d have even less ability to help the response in red states than he has now.
Fauci is stuck with Trump if he wants to help people. Trump is stuck with Fauci if he doesn’t want a massive threat to his electoral prospects. But Trump would probably love it if Fauci left of his own free will.
dmsilev
@Martin: Costing, of course, a week or two of time, a huge amount of stomach acid in many many people, and however much money it took (though I imagine a lot of the fancy law firms involved donated their time).
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
Just say no.
Sloane Ranger
Just watched Jim Acosta on Anderson Cooper 360 talking about Trump’s stream of consciousness ramblings in the Rose Garden. I loved his description of the current White House staff, “We’re down to Coolaid drinkers and Next of Kin!”
Lovely (and unfortunately accurate) summary.
dmsilev
@Nicole:
Let me guess: So was the ADA. That combination seems to be the standard anti-mask script. Nonsense of course.
RSA
@prostratedragon:
If they want to know how many times Dr. Fauci has been significantly wrong in his career, all they have to do is fucking ask him.
That’s a funny thing that non-scientists may not be aware of, and politicians might think is crazy. But if you’re a scientist, you know when you’ve gotten something wrong, because it’s in the scientific literature, the equivalent of the public record. Should you be embarrassed? Hardly, as long as you gave it your honest best effort. And it can actually be a marker of quality: other scientists cared enough about whatever you were working on to find a better solution.
Calouste
Of course Fauci can still do print interviews, everyone knows the shitgibbon doesn’t read, so he won’t know about them.
Jeffro
@jl:
I think I saw, just today, that the Biden campaign is ramping up in those three states specifically. They really are going for the throat. It’s great (especially for Ds!)
It’s like watching New Andy Reid win the Super Bowl last year, because he coached nothing like Old Andy Reid. ;)
PAM Dirac
@Emma:
Fauci has authority over NIAID. He has no authority over FDA, HHS, or the myriad other federal agencies and Congress that are essential in dealing with the pandemic. NIAID plays a relatively small, but important role in dealing with infectious disease and the development of ways to deal with them. As far as I can see, the orange shithead has not interfered with NIAID function and that is where Fauci’s expertise and I suspect, interest lies. He could resign, but there is no one who will give him the resources that he oversees at NIAID. As long as he can make use of his expertise with those resources, I suspect that NIAID director is not only the best place for him, but also for the country.
ETA – Also realize that Fauci has dealt with stupid politicians for his entire career. It comes with the territory when you chose government service. Drumf might be the worst he has ever dealt with, but the general strategy of doing your job despite idiot politicians is something he has had to use for years.
Jeffro
@Annie: I had a good long walk with my daughter today, talking about everything but also politics and explained to her at length how trumpov is actually running to stay out of prison, not merely to win re-election.
She was like “ahhhh…that makes sense…”
We watched that 5pm fiasco of a “presser” today and I think she was madder at trumpov than I was. Which is saying something.
Jay
@Brachiator:
verbal judo, more progressives need to master the art.
Redshift
Given how frequently this pops up, I have to imagine there are a lot of Republicans saying to themselves “He has to be doing this deliberately, right? I can’t have been blindly following an incompetent boob who only won by dumb luck and illegitimate interference, can I?”
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of assholes. Reminds me of the old saw, “in every poker game, there’s a sucker. Look around the table, if you don’t know who it is, it’s you.”
Emma
@dmsilev: unfortunately, even among well-meaning people, there’s the impression that total medical privacy applies to everyone, everywhere, at all times.
Emma
@PAM Dirac: I hope you’re right.
Jeffro
@low-tech cyclist: plus, why would they bother trying to monkey around with the numbers?
Brachiator
@Martin:
Nicholas Reich is doing some good stuff at U Mass Amherst and has an interesting data hub, based on an aggregate of models.
Covid-19 Forecast Hub
Redshift
@RSA: And whether you’re willing to admit your mistakes or not is literally the indicator of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
All these clowns are doing by insisting that any mistakes must be disqualifying is proving that they’re incompetent.
Jay
Ken
Not surprising, considering how few of them understand the concept of “incubation period”.
Redshift
@Jeffro:
Because they need more than their cultists. Similar to how they think forcing everyone back to work will mean “the economy” is better, they probably think that if they just suppress the data, there will be no more news stories about how bad things are, and people will believe it’s getting better.
Sab
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I heard it on NPR. Harvard and MIT brought a lawsuit and a couple of hundred colleges supposedly were planning to join in (IANAL) so ICE backed down.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Was there anything actually different about this “presser” or was it just the normal whining, lying, and making stuff up about Biden?
MisterForkbeard
@Jay: I guess the goal is to get Nazis into the national security apparatus.
Gorka: “I found this really great group of people online. Passionate and with a lot of history of focusing on domestic threats. No one minds forehead tattoos, right?”
Jeffro
@MisterForkbeard: Nope, that was it. I mean, it was surprising in that trumpov went full-on with the Biden-bashing almost right away, and included so much ludicrous stuff. (I mean, is the guy old and senile or is he the most criminal mastermind EVAH since the She-Demon Hillary, trumpov? Which is it?)
Anyway, we all laughed when CNN and MSNBC cut away from it. I think Wolf Blitzer actually said something about it “turning into a rambling political event”.
Did anyone see Jim Acosta’s hot mic moment, when someone asked him whether the WH staff just sit there and shake their heads at the insanity, and Acosta goes, “No…at this point it’s just kool-aid drinkers and next of kin” (in the WH)
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
That’s RIGHT, wingers – there’s no one there to put the brakes on or to help the Ill Douche “pivot”. Just Ivanka telling tens of millions of Americans to ‘try something different’.
In my dreams tonight, I’m going to drift off picturing the Secret Service just…just opening the gates to the mob. Torches and pitchforks and everything.
Amir Khalid
Then again, Donald Trump is no leader.
gwangung
@RSA: How many time Fauci got it wrong is a dumb measure. When you’re at the top of the field, you get things wrong A LOT OF TIMES. Hell, Major League Baseball players get it wrong at the play SEVEN TIMES OUT OF TEN.
What makes you an expert is how many times you get it right compared to everyone else.
Jay
PAM Dirac
@RSA:
Very good observation. I think that the general public mostly wants definitive answers and anyone who has done research knows how hard it is to even get useful tentative answers. Being wrong is always going to be part of the process. You just work to to try to make sure that you are wrong in ways that still keeps things moving forward. Like you say, is it interesting enough to follow up on.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Jeffro
@Jeffro:
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Yup, that’s the one! I need to go see the clip, because the quote was just The Bomb.
Chyron HR
@Jay:
I think the first week of the Biden administration should just be bringing these shitheads into the Oval Office one by one and asking them, “Have you ever heard the expression, ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes?'” before breaking their legs.
Baud
@Jeffro:
Agreed. Acosta will be trending.
Baud
@Chyron HR:
The Delaware Way.
Jay
@Chyron HR:
Sadly, since Dubya Dubya Me Too, I have grown fond of the idea of summary executions. Use the DOJ missmemo for good purposes. Spread some blood and bullet holes on the Resolute Desk.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I think a big part of what’s happened with masks is that people have changed their idea of what the purpose of masking is. At the beginning, people were thinking about masks as a means of protecting the person wearing them. For that, cloth masks were seen as ineffective, and there was a widespread idea that the limited supply of higher-grade masks be saved for medical professionals who were operating in more dangerous environments.
Now, though, masks are understood to function mostly by protecting others. The goal is to stop droplets and aerosols from contagious people escaping into the environment. Cloth masks aren’t perfect at that, but they’re good enough to make a big difference. The other key is that we now know that a large part of the spread is from asymptomatic or presymptomatic carriers, not just people who are obviously sick*. That means it’s critical that everyone wear a mask whenever they’re in an environment where they might infect others, since they might be infectious without knowing it.
*This is why checking people’s temperature is mostly theater; it will miss a lot of contagious people.
Obvious Russian Troll
Plot by doctors?
I gotta admit the comparison does not make Trump look good.
catclub
The way an intelligent Trump would get re-elected when Covid hits is to say: “I don’t care anything about getting re–elected. I will do things that are unpopular, if they help us fight this and fewer people die from it.The only thing that matters to me is stopping this with the least loss of American lives.”
Luckily we don’t have that kind of Trump.
joel hanes
@Jeffro:
why would they bother trying to monkey around with the numbers?
Because Trump regards lying public relations statements as the best weapon he has. Gaslighting is his MO, his default strategy in all situations. To the extent that he controls the message, it will be a lie. Look at McEnany. Look at the 20,000 lies Trump himself has uttered on the record in less than four years. Lying is what he does. He lies to himself, and apparently believes his own lies.
It’s always worked for him before. He’s not bright, he’s not rich, he’s not tall, he’s not blonde, he’s not tan, he’s not in good health, he hasn’t created jobs, he doesn’t “win” in actual negotiations, his golf handicap is not better than Nicklaus’s, he’s never made a good trade deal … but he says he is all those things, and forces the people around him to say that the emperor’s clothes are luxurious and flattering.
On his locker door at one of his clubs is a little plaque that says that he won the club championship in a year in which he did not even play in the tournament.
Roger Moore
@Emma:
The reason he’s still associated with the administration is that public speaking is only a small part of his work. His main job is running NIAID, which is the branch of NIH dedicated to working on infectious diseases. IOW, he’s the head of our research into COVID. That’s extremely important, and we don’t want a political hack put in that job. As long as the administration is only keeping him from talking rather than making him spread their lies, he’s almost certainly a lot of good by keeping his job.
catclub
Also, shout out to: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.
John Bel Edwards is the democratic governor of deeply red Louisiana.
The others? GOP
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cheryl Rofer:
The masks are also for protecting yourself from others too
glory b
@PAM Dirac: I’m sure, but as I recall, all of the other presidents he’s worked under have appreciated his efforts and said so.
He’s gotten accolades and awards, Poppy Bush said he was his most admired person.
Trump isn’t just a random stupid politician, he’s malevolently evil. Whole ‘nother level.
Ruckus
@artem1s:
Come on now, why so tough here? Thinking, and yes, breathing are extremely hard work for shitforbrains. So much so that he has to devote 99% of his mental energy to thinking about just breathing. No one works harder at thinking about breathing than shitforbrains. It leaves no room for maths, for any emotion other than hate/racism, for any concept of style, for any bodily function other than masterbation – for which he also has to waste brain malfunction figuring out how to do this with such a tiny dick. So really don’t be so tough on shitforbrains, just being him should be more than tough enough.
Martin
@Cheryl Rofer: UC researchers seem to be moving toward a consensus that it does work this way, leading with UCSFs infectious disease folks.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Almost as versatile as new Shimmer!
:)
raven
Tubberville won, what a fucking asshole,
Martin
@raven: Aw, cherish the further humiliation of Jeff Sessions for now. We can start beating up on Tuberville tomorrow.
TS (the original)
@raven: Seems like a state that loves Trump.
Does Doug Jones have a chance against Tubberville?
MisterForkbeard
@TS (the original): I seem to remember that Tuberville has some vulnerabilities, but Jones was running a longshot either way.
TS (the original)
@MisterForkbeard:
thanks – I read he is short of cash but expecting lots now he has won (and he did it with ease from the figures I saw).
egorelick
The oppo research for Fauci is not to discredit him; the idea is to build the case for firing him. They hate that the media and even some right wingers feel that Fauci is too important to fire and that they would take a big hit if they did. This is just part of the kabuki where when they fire him, they point to their “case” against him. It won’t change anything except it gives them a lie they can sell themselves.
trnc
Good point. Also, it would be interesting to hear the response if someone asked him to name one. I assume it would be, “I could. I really could if I wanted to … argle bargle …”
Ruckus
@Emma:
He’s 79 yrs old, probably doesn’t wan to start over and is/was planning on retiring at some point in near future. What he does probably does not have a lot of opportunity outside of government. And with shitforbrains and all his failings, with all his BS, he needs someone with what the doc has to offer.
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: The maddening thing is that there’s just not enough time to establish well-verified scientific consensus about things like precisely how or how much masks protect people–all we’ve got are these anecdotal impressions and suggestive preliminary results–and as long as that’s true, your uncle Ralph or some contrarian doctor can hold forth about how cloth masks are actually useless and one can’t really knock him down with a flood of citations.
(I’ve noticed two distinct variants of this. There are the Trumpy anti-maskers, and then there are the people whose N95+goggles combos are WAY MORE AWESOME than yours and want everyone else to know that their puny cloth masks are useless. I want to say “fine, yours is better; here’s your medal, now stop telling other people to throw their masks away; you’re not helping.”)
Sm*t Cl*de
It’s interesting how Fauci has been elevated to the Loonisphere Empyrean of Big Bads, along Gates and Soros. The right-wing conspiracist alliance of antivaxxers, Covidiots, Qanons, gun-lickers, fetus-fondlers, twitter bots and Facebook troll-farms (but I repeat myself) have converged around the view that Fauci should be sacked from any Govt. advisory position. The grievances against him seem to be more symbolic than factual, directed against the fact that he’s competent at a time when competence implies a potential for disloyalty… it is as if he embodies the inconvenient truth of “inconvenience” and “truth”.
Chyron HR
@raven:
Does that mean they’re going to deactivate Sessions now?
Patricia Kayden
Why not? It’s 2020.
trnc
Perish the thought that they might be concerned with, you know, his actual ability to lead.
marklar
@PAM Dirac:
This may be the best explanation of “Why does Faucci stay” that I have yet to read. Thank you.
egorelick
@Ruckus: I know for a fact that Fauci has opportunities outside government. Many medical schools or universities would hire him in a second. He has turned down these kind of opportunities within the last 5 years.
Uncle Cosmo
@Patricia Kayden: This is “dog-bites-man” news. Bubonic plague is common amongst the small mammals of the Desert Southwest, and is readily treated & defeated using antibiotics that have long since been rendered ineffective for anything else, e.g., streptomycin. MDs need to be a tad more alert for symptoms, but beyond that it’s not a BFD.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Patricia Kayden: We have plague positive squirrels in the western US every year
ETA: Uncle Cosmo got there first(shakes fist at Uncle Cosmo).
Jeffro
@glory b: he is indeed that. He has actually made this mostly lifelong atheist wonder if there really isn’t something about all that Satan stuff
Gvg
@Martin: um, I am no expert, but the lectures we are getting on zoom here at my big state University employer, that are called townhalls, from disease experts, early on thought the viral load you breathed was significant and not unique to this virus. There is apparently a lot of variations between different viruses, but this is not unique and the disease specialist who lectured in April was pretty confident in predicting it.
Getting a full face close sneeze or cough from someone is very bad. The smallest droplets can float long enough that you can walk through where someone was, and get some from them, but the less there is, the better chance your body will fight it off. Outside is better. I think natural UV light helps too but that wasn’t certain.
This winter is going to be challenging.
Nicole
For a change, no. But, in my trying to politely tell the guy why everything he said was dumb, I brought up the ADA myself (along with the correct spelling for HIPAA) and explained why people still have to wear a mask going into a shop.
Amir Khalid
@egorelick:
Fauci is career civil service. He’s not a political appointee Trump can fire at will. Fauci can only be fired for some kind of serious wrongdoing: correcting Trump’s falsehoods doesn’t count, and neither does disagreeing wth Trump. It’s a civil service process taking many months.
Bill Arnold
This denigration of Anthony Fauci is so annoying. He’s basically a (correctly) highly-regarded older scientist, a bit conservative with a small c. [1]
His mistakes, such as they were, were (IMO to be clear) demanding a too-high standard of evidence for a few things that the precautionary principle should have changed the evidence-needed calculation for in a pandemic, notably airborne spread, asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread, and masks for source control. Once evidence for these was sufficient by his standards, he and also the CDC shifted and the CDC changed their guidelines. (Lack of evidence for indirect contact (fomite) transmission is another weakness, which might be causing wasted/misdirected pandemic theatre, surface cleaning, hand cleaning etc.)
Fauci doesn’t deserve this treatment. Particularly not from Stephen Moore, who is uhm not qualified to say that other people are wrong.
[1] Oh my look at those h-index numbers. Not a fan of that metric, but Fauci’s numbers look good.
((Semantic Scholar) Anthony S Fauci, (h-index 126))
(Google Scholar) AS Fauci, NIAID, nih.gov (h-index 220)
Another Scott
@Brachiator: That’s a very well done site. Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I live in fear that Trump might realize the Yellowstone Super Volcano is more popular Trump is.
joel hanes
@Patricia Kayden:
There are plague cases somewhere in the western US almost every year. Rodents are the reservoir — prairie dogs were a particular concern last I knew.
It’s completely curable with antibiotics.
Here’s the CDC page.
egorelick
@Amir Khalid: I had not considered that. Thanks. Can he be reassigned so as to sideline him?
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: The BBC had a good video on a story on why Japan is doing so well on infections compared to other countries.
The full video from NHK World is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UASi5OUv9Pg (1:06)
Wear your mask!!
Cheers,
Scott.
PAM Dirac
@egorelick:
True, but I would bet a large sum of money that none of those positions come with ~$6 billion budgets.
PAM Dirac
@egorelick:
Yes. The civil service protects his employment, his salary, pension, etc., but not his actual job. The authority to pick the NIAID director is in the Director of NIH, which is now Francis Collins. I’ve worked with Collins and I think there is a very good chance that he would refuse to fire Fauci. I have personally seen him refuse to give in to a politician’s demands. The stakes were a lot lower, but so was the visibility. It would have been very easy to just go along and not make waves, but that’s not what happened. Of course drumf could fire Collins, but I don’t know if anyone would agree to take his place, at least anyone with anywhere close to the usual credentials for the job. Would the Republican lackeys in the Senate confirm a totally unqualified hack? It would be interesting.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: Don’t be so sure he’s looking to retire. Some people stay in federal government service as long as they’re able.
E.g. 75 years of service to the Navy.
Fauci is still very sharp. There’s no need for him to leave if he doesn’t want to.
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
Sessions really got waxed. Was it just his failure to worship Trump enough? Or is there some other reason the R voters of Alabama don’t like him?
Amir Khalid
@PAM Dirac:
I saw a video conversation on Covid-19 that Collins and Fauci did together, and they look like old friends as well as long-term colleagues.
dww44
@TS (the original): IMO, Jones might have a better chance against Tuberville, even in football crazy Alabama. But, I’m not an Alabamian, so that’s just a gut take.
@Martin: I take no pleasure in any humiliation of Sessions. He did the right thing when it counted, and for that he deserves to be so acknowledged by the historians. Did you see his concession speech? I thought it was classy, at least the excerpt that I saw.
@egorelick: I think you probably have the hit on the probably outcome of the Fauci attacks. Plausible deniability when the admin fires Fauci. If that happens Fauci, Vindman, Yovonovitch, Hill, Bill Taylor all go on my Biden list of recipients of Medals of Freedom. With other appropriate restitution if that can be done.
Steeplejack
Candidate for tweet of the day:
egorelick
@PAM Dirac: Oh, I agree although they would be within an order of magnitude for the bigger systems I imagine (UC, Harvard, Stanford, UT, Vanderbilt). I was replying to @ruckus that Fauci is there by choice and not because he lacks opportunity outside of government. He is not trapped in any sense.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I read the other day– somewhere, maybe here, probably on twitter, so FWIW– that Fauci wants to stick around until a vaccine is found. I don’t know what kind of input or supervision he would have, but I can understand his desire, and I want as many professionals and decent people around for that process as possible.
And not all doctors are created equal. Ronnie Jackson, MD, who went birther after he got forced out of the White House when his buddying up to trump revealed his addiction problems, just won a primary in what Steve Kornacki said is arguably the reddest CD in the country. So he’ll be in Congress in a few months.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Martin: multiple billions of dollars in reserve that can be spent on the next election cycle that you are already losing, can be amazingly focusing to the republican mind, such as it is.
prostratedragon
@Jeffro:
Religion is poetry. Like any good poem, it describes something real.
chopper
@Another Scott:
dang if i put in 75 years my pension would be T.I.G.H.T.
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
man, remember when all y’all jackals were talking about what a POS that guy turned out to be and adam got so pissy we were talking smack about A FLAG OFFICER that he deleted the whole thread? and then sheepishly undeleted it?
good times. now he’s a full-on nutcase and a-headin’ to congress.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@TS (the original):
Alabamian here. Yes, he does. He’s been low key and a solid Senator. The Evil Elf got smacked down ’cause the Kool-aid is strong with GrOPers, but Tubberville is no prize. Jones can win this, but it’s going to be a fight.
egorelick
@chopper: Never will collect. Sarkis Tartigan passed away without retiring in April of this year. Given the timeframe, it could very likely have been covid-19.
https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/2140458/navsea-bids-farewell-to-longest-serving-civil-servant-in-dod/
ballerat
@Sm*t Cl*de: Trump is our Pol Pot.
Sm*t Cl*de
@ballerat:
And his voters are the Khmer Orange.
yellowdog
@Emma: My theory is that the shitgibbon told Fauci that if he got out of line that he would be replaced as the head of National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Immunology by an anti-vaxxer. Technically, shitgibbon can’t fire him, he’s civil service.