The Guardian reports Fauci sidelined as Trump’s White House steps up briefing campaign.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Trump’s director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has come under increasing fire from the president and his proxies. Trump told Fox news interviewers that Fauci had “made a lot of mistakes” and said he “disagreed” with Fauci’s claim that the US was in a bad place in its coronavirus response.
Fauci had found himself in the uncomfortable position of gently correcting Trump’s false or misleading statements for months. As far back as April the president retweeted a call for him to be fired, although that threat appeared to have receded.
In any case, Trump cannot fire Fauci, who enjoys support on both sides of Congress and has a public approval rating for his coronavirus response of 67% – almost three times that of Trump’s. Instead the strategy appears aimed at damaging his standing while keeping him out of the public eye by cancelling media appearances.
In the latest salvo of a coordinated briefing campaign, a White House official told CNN on Saturday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr Fauci has been wrong on things”.
Fauci, who has diplomatically navigated Trump’s often chaotic and sometimes bizarre response to the pandemic, has long been the target of pro-Trump rightwing media in the US, where he has been denounced as “Dr Doom” or accused of being leftwing.
We Are Not Doing Great
Anyone who disagrees with Trump on anything is accused of having TDS or being leftwing or both.
This latest feud started on July 9 when Dr. Fauci told FiveThirtyEight ‘I Don’t Think You Can Say We’re Doing Great. I Mean, We’re Just Not.’
Anna Rothschild 538: So are you saying that in these states, are you saying that it’s a mix of politicians not following guidelines and people not following orders?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Yes. It is both. I mean, it’s not a unidimensional thing. It’s complicated. There are some governors and mayors that did it perfectly correctly. They stayed exactly. They wanted to open up, so they went through the guidelines of opening up their state. But what happened is that many of the citizenry, said, “You know, well, I’m either going to be locked down or I’m going to let it all rip.” And you could see from just looking, documented on TV and in the papers of still photos of people at bars and congregations, which are a perfect setup, particularly if you don’t have a mask.
AR You know, for a few months, masks were quite a partisan issue, though in the past few weeks politicians on both sides have advocated for their use. Do you think America’s hyperpartisan environment has made it more difficult to suppress the virus?
AF: You know, I think you’d have to admit that that’s the case. We live, I mean, you have to be having blindfolders on and covering your ears to think that we don’t live in a very divisive society now, from a political standpoint.
Congratulations!
With today’s increase, Florida overtakes Arizona to become the state with the most new #Covid cases per million, per day. So, I dunno, congratulations? pic.twitter.com/gcsJWTTERQ
— Ian Shepherdson (@IanShepherdson) July 13, 2020
Very Diplomatic
Facuci was far more diplomatic than he might have been.
OK Fauci made mistakes, but who didn’t?
It was Trump who from the beginning never treated things seriously. It is Trump who said we would soon be on our way to zero cases. It was Trump who told Michigan and other states to open up.
And it was Trump who refused to wear a mask, setting a poor example for the nation.
If Trump wants someone to blame, he should look in a mirror or complain to Fox News about himself.
And I am still waiting for a peep from Hannity. For details please see Dear Sean Hannity: Who Owes Whom an Apology?
Mish
Cos Trump is so perfect in everything he says and does.
The virus controls the economy now and Trump is a quitter who crumbled. He can’t handle anything that requires teamwork because he is incapable of building a team. Our economy is destroyed and he does nothing but complain about people who speak the truth. It’s gut wrenching to see refrigerated trucks for dead bodies in Arizona and Texas and probably Florida soon. Can you imagine your beloved being stacked in a truck in the parking lot because mortuaries can’t handle the massive volume of dead people? Trump will maintain his delusions but dead people piling up in trucks and blown out hospitals all over the country will 100 percent destroy our hearts and our economy.
I know this is not a popular opinion but I do happen to agree on the subject of Fauci’s incompetence. He was extremely offside during the early days of the pandemic and indecisive. When he is asked a question, he tends to revert to legal language ie. Hydroxychloroquine has not been evaluated as “safe an effective” which you’d more likely hear from a pharma rep trying to avoid an FDA fine. Additionally, this guy seems be to outclassed by some informed laymen.
He do not seem to have any plan for the country to move past this crisis and many of his responses indicate a willingness to keep the US in emergency mode permanently. As opposed to the start of the crisis, we have some decent mortality and morbidity data and the virus is not as lethal as thought. Morbidity and mortality data suggests Covid-19 is akin to the flu in anyone under 45. The median age of mortality in the US now sits at 82. How does this justify continuing to conduct policy in the way Fauci is suggesting?
So the best the Trump administration could do in finding someone to act as “hit man” on Fauci was an economist?! It’s hard to decide whether that is more frightening or more hilarious.
I’ve taken issue with some of the things Fauci has said over time too … but I’m not about to turn my back on what he has to say and start listening to a pathological liar like Trump or an economist (do a little research on his “Ron Vara” fraud in his books) whose primary qualification seems to be Trump sycophant.
Now that some labs in Florida was grossly over-reporting positive tests and under-reporting negative tests, will Mish be apologizing to Hannity? I doubt it, as he’s probably written a few dozen anti-Trump stories already. Will anyone on here admit to being wrong at least a little bit? No!
Breaking News!!!
Trump is Fauci is Trump.
That’s all.
Follow economists’ methodology: that is the advice for epidemiologists. We all know how successful economist’s predictions and advice have been in the past. Surely, this article is a jest.
Epidemiology is at least, at the core, an empirical/scientific endeavor. So it’s not fundamentally futile to perform studies and fit curves.
Empirical “economics”, OTOH, amounts to nothing more than performing ever more elaborate “studies”, in some vain attempt to empirically “prove” that 2+2 = 5. And then, to believe that if you should finally manage to do so, the problem is not with your study…
Some of the methodologies developed by empirical economists and econometricians, in their doomed to be forever futile, never ending pursuit of chasing the literally impossible; could very well prove useful in epidemiology, though. I’d trust Krugman to come up with realistic models for various facets of covid, before most others. If he would just care enough to bother doing something useful, instead of just playing children’s games with the idiots in the sandbox which politicians, lobbyists, ambulance chasers, banksters and The New York Times are, for lack of a better brain, relegated to.
Looking to another country–Israel:
If you ask Siegal Sadetzki, the head of the nation’s public-health service, who served as an Israeli Dr. Anthony Fauci for the past six months and quit her job on Tuesday, the government “has lost its compass.”
“Israel is heading to a dangerous place,” she wrote in an 8,000-word indictment of the government’s failure to prepare in any way for a resurgence of illness.
“Despite systematic and repeated warnings through various channels, and discussions in several forums, we are watching with frustration as the hourglass of opportunities runs low,” she warned.
“I have come to the conclusion that in the newly created conditions under which my professional opinion is not accepted—I can no longer help to effectively cope with the spread of the virus.”
All this may sound familiar to Americans in the many states where the virus infections are now spiking. But … it gets worse.
During the six wasted weeks, the period singled out by Sadetzki, schools were chaotically reopened and then, as infections soared, re-shuttered. Parents were unable to foresee re-entering the workforce. The public was instructed to wear masks—but no system of enforcement was put into place. The lists of permitted and prohibited activities shifted daily, with little or no explanation. While Netanyahu actively pursued his (since scuttled) dream of annexing significant parts of the occupied West Bank, the number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 multiplied by 499 percent….
….Criticizing the government’s “hesitant response,” Ran Balicer, a professor of public health and a member of Israel’s national Epidemic Management Team, said in an interview that “no place on earth has seen a spike in morbidity [the disease rate] like Israel’s.”
Tuesday was Israel’s worst day of contagion, with 1,400 new cases of COVID-19 announced, a record since the start of the outbreak.
Event spaces, bars, and gyms have been re-shut but instructions regarding public transportation remain unclear, and the transport and finance ministers squabble on the airwaves.
On Tuesday, in testimony to the Israeli parliament, Udi Kliner, Sadetzki’s deputy, reported that schools—not restaurants or gyms—turned out to be the country’s worst mega-infectors.
(Again, this should be of interest to Americans who have been told by a presidential tweet in all caps that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”)
I don’t know who is correct on this or why, here is the opposing view
” provided they follow appropriate social distancing guidelines and take into account rates of transmission in their community”. Well, dammit that’s the problem isn’t it? Here in TX the virus spread again quickly because people said to hell with masks, distancing and I need muh bars.
If adults can’t manage this how can we expect kids to do it?
People who use this argument to reopen schools are being either disingenuous or willfully ignorant. They merely quote the headline but not the substance.
Immunity to COVID-19 in recovered patients may only last a few months, a new study conducted by King’s College London has suggested.
According to the research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, immunity antibodies decrease significantly in the three months following infection, leaving patients susceptible to reinfection year after year – similar to the common cold.
In what is believed to be the first longitudinal study of its kind, researchers looked into the immune response of 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust.
While the analysis revealed a “potent” level of antibodies could be found in 60 per cent of participants while at the peak of their battle with coronavirus, sequential blood tests showed only 17 per cent sustained that same level of potency three months later.
Antibodies decreased 23-fold in some cases, and were depleted entirely in others.
Curious as to the implications for an effective vaccine. It does not sound like good news.
Studies in China and Italy reveal the same. In fact those getting reinfected are because the immune response to the initial covid-19 was weak. It seems the studies indicate those that get the sickest and survive are the ones to get the best immune response and better resistance. What a perfect virus. It keeps attacking until you can truly survive the worst of it.
And it seems the second time around is worse…possible antibody enhancement? Could make an ill-conceived vaccine downright dangerous. Hopefully a medication will be found or created that is proven to be effective…
There’s no immunity, a vaccine isn’t going to work and we need to let the virus run its course (like we should have from the beginning). Some people are going to die and some are not. Those that don’t will have some kind of natural immunity or a stronger immune system. This is how Nature has always worked.
At this point I don’t think the covidiots will ever accept that the corona virus is a serious health threat to the US population. Depending upon which of them you listen to it is either not much worse than a common cold or at worst comparable to the flu.
Between 12,000 and 56,000 people in the US die from the flu in an average year and that is without any stay at home orders, social distancing or mask wearing. So far the Covid virus has claimed approximately 137,000 lives and estimates suggest we will see at least another 23,000 fatalities in the US. And that is with shutdowns, social distancing and mask wearing. The one thing that is clear is that the US fumbled its response to the virus. Even now we are hearing of delays in the availability of test results. The bottom line is we blew it. One final thought. Even if we had foregone lockdowns the economy would still have tanked.
Covid-19 Model predicts 208K through November 1, 2020, 163K if universal mask wearing. Good luck with universal mask wearing.
More like another hundred thousand deaths.
137k is less than 5% of the usual 3 million or so who die in the USA every single year. It’s nothing to get excited about. Man-up, get some perspective and stop trying to drag everyone into your fear.
You really don’t get it do you. This virus has killed well over 500,000 globally and that number is seriously under counted. Does anyone really believe the numbers from China? We could easily be looking at 250,000 deaths here in the US unless adequate precautions are taken. Are you seriously so callous that you pooh Pooh 137,000 deaths from this virus?
OK, so call it 2 million deaths globally. Against 7.5 billion world population that’s what, .0000026%? R U serious?
So the other millions won’t be dying? That’s good to know. There will be no other deaths to count other than covid-19!
Official Covid-19 Statistics Are Missing Something Critical” . “At the moment, official record-keeping offers only three options when it comes to Covid-19: infection, recovery, or death…. But these official statistics miss quite a lot. Specifically, they fail to represent Covid-19 morbidity — the harm that the disease causes, even in people that it doesn’t kill. In terms of measuring the long-term impact of the disease — and accurately evaluating risk — that’s a big problem…. All these early reports point to the possibility that Covid-19 causes acute infection, but also long-term inflammatory damage. Inflammatory diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. If Covid-19 worsens these conditions — or causes its own long-term inflammatory damage — the result could be millions of additional deaths from heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and the like, especially in already vulnerable populations. These effects of the disease may not be apparent for years or decades.”
You do not seem to be aware that a bunch of soiopaths are intentionally trying to
collapse the global economy to rebuild it in the wet dream of the green Socialist, and being executed by the WEF, UN, Paris Climate Agreement, BIS, Gates Foundation, and Soros’ Open Society – link to zerohedge.com.
Falsely scaring people for decades that gloBull warming was going to melt the poles and flood the planet was an unsuccessful strategy. However, the fear of another Black Plague (that is less deadly than the flu – link to xandernieuws.net), coupled with billions of dollars of bribes from Soros and Gates, appears to be the right elixir to allow the public to swallow BS.
It’s all available for the masses and your lying eyes to see – link to armstrongeconomics.com.
That much is obvious. The current deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. People with SARS had a significantly higher mortality even as long as ten years after “recovering”.
“OK Fauci made mistakes, but who didn’t?” Are you f*cking kidding me. Yeah, like all of the colluder’s and brain dead politicians like Cuomo who stuck all the sick patients in nursing homes, guaranteeing massive deaths.
I guess you still haven’t heard of “The Great Reset”, Janet Mikovits, seen Gates’ Ted Talks, are aware of the funding Gates gives to Fauci, Redfield, and other along the sordid path of Covid-gate???
I notices you conveniently left out the # of deaths. Of course the number of cases are rising, as most of the country that doesn’t already of co-resistances are going to get it. That’s how herd immunity is achieved.
You are obviously a willing participant (useful idiot) in collapsing the global economy to rebuild it in the wet dream of the green Socialist, and being executed by the WEF, UN, Paris Climate Agreement, BIS, Gates Foundation, and Soros’ Open Society – link to zerohedge.com.
Falsely scaring people for decades that gloBull warming was going to melt the poles and flood the planet was an unsuccessful strategy. However, the fear of another Black Plague (that is less deadly than the flu – link to xandernieuws.net), coupled with billions of dollars of bribes from Soros and Gates, appears to be the right elixir to allow the public to swallow BS.
It’s all available for the masses and your lying eyes to see – link to armstrongeconomics.com.
It’s obvious what’s happening. Trump failed miserably on Covid-19 the entire year of 2020. Now it’s backfired badly on him. Trump is desperately looking for scapegoats, and just throwing dirt out there in random directions, hoping it will stick, including Dr. Fauci. It might work with some people, but I doubt it will work with most Democrats, educated on CNN / MSNBC, and I doubt it will work with many independents. Even his base was responsive to Lincoln Project ads that targeted Trumps miserably failed Covid-19 response.
Interesting. What will basement Joe’s secret strategy be in regards to managing the virus? Surely NYT and CNN will praise any Biden policy to the sky regardless of whether it works or not. I doubt if Basement Joe or his Left Wing Associates have any better solutions. Expect an avalanche of criticism for Basement Joe.
Yep, independents will have no forgiveness this November for Trump’s mis-leading on Coronavirus.
Trump and many other politicians panicked and reacted to the scare mongering death predictions made by a variety of health officials.
This is a very pertinent paragraph from the article below that applies to Fauci and all the other scientists who have been stepping outside their wheelhouses to make economic recommendations.
“Divination, accurate or not, is harmless in and of itself: that’s obvious. But when made by scientific dignitaries, in particular in the process of informing politicians amid crisis circumstances, it often leads to knee jerk reactions at all levels. The causative factors cited are, or should be, well known to economists: they include use of poor data or the wrong use of high quality data; improper or incorrect assumptions; wrongful estimates of sensitivity; wrongly interpreted past results or evidence; problems of dimensionality; and groupthink/bandwagon effects.”
What Economists Can Teach Epidemiologists
AIER >> Daily Economy >> Healthcare >> Economic Education >> Crisis
Peter C. Earle
– July 11, 2020
Let us stick to basics. Assume Taiwan got it right. Evaluate Fauci and Trump against Taiwan model. I give Fauci a B. Trump gets F (or worse, for being actively harmful). What grades would you assign? Trump and his followers muddy the waters by having two buckets – perfect, imperfect; they always put themselves in the perfect bucket.
tRump F-, Fausi B+
I would tell you that you cannot compare a country that has a population of 24 million and a single, central government to a country of 330 million with essentially, 50 separate governments.
Taiwan is an island with two international airports. Shut those airports down and limit ship passengers ingress (always small) and you seal the country off. Also Taiwan has a high quality civil defense force which is constantly prepared for an invasion from the PRC. They are prepared for toxic chemical attacks and have huge supplies of PPE equipment. Also they have a good system for tracking citizens. They also do not take in immigrants who invariable damage national unity. There is your answer.
Or, in brief, they just aren’t fully, 100%, completely incompetent at absolutely everything.
Dr Fauci and Trump both deserve to be fired. Fauci for initial lying and saying facemasks don’t work and for favoring the expensive Remdesivir while using flawed studies stating the dirt cheap HCQ does not work. Trump for absolutely horrific crisis management. (Bloomberg) link to msn.com
Remdesavir has been tested in China, in Japan, and in the US by the NIH. In China they used it in February already, but no important results observed. All the studies found remdesavir had 0% effect on mortality, which is the most important effect from the point of view of a patient.
I has significantly more side-effect than HCQ and only flawed studies supporting the current marketing (62% change in mortality), which were engineered subsequent to other large-scale studies showing 0%.
Remdesavir is a hoax, but also a very revealing story about the corruption of science and public health institutes, the mix of propaganda and share-holder interests abetted by public bodies, often involving a lot of people with conflicts of interest.
pfft!! The rich will pay for it all
Super-rich call for higher taxes on wealthy to pay for Covid-19 recovery
Exclusive: Group of 83 wealthy individuals demands ‘immediate, substantial and permanent’ higher taxes ‘on people like us’
Good luck. Also these people are delusional. They have people like the Koch brothers to counter.
Of course covid “recovery” in the feeble minds of progressive idiots, is simply another Newspeak term for “saving the System.” With “The system” being the very institutions which have, and are, robbing everyone else in order for them to get and stay rich in the first place.
End the Fed and all activity taxes, $20/ounce gold, any and all revenue raised by government raised as property taxes, and no bans on supplying anything by anyone anywhere, whether that be cell phones, guns and ammo nor houses; and both covid “recovery”, “jobs” recovery, and any other recovery will easily take care of itself. No childish, self promoting PR stunts by the usual army of clueless-idiots-first-in-line-to-obtain-loot-at-the-New-York-Fed-welfare-office required.
As if some pittance of taxes could “pay” for these trillions and trillions of overspending.
At some point the entire world is going to figure out that there’s a whole lot less wealth and production on this planet than most have been presuming.
The Trump glorious (not!) history:
link to s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Death rate dropping ??
sssssh, you do not want to go against the ministry of truth narrative “virus Forever”
So? Just a small blip in the USA longer term decline. Not unlike blips in a stock chart.
You don’t seem to be getting the message. Deaths lag, cases are still peaking.
You are a willing participant (useful idiot) in collapsing the global economy to rebuild it in the wet dream of the green Socialist, and being executed by the WEF, UN, Paris Climate Agreement, BIS, Gates Foundation, and Soros’ Open Society – link to zerohedge.com.
Falsely scaring people for decades that gloBull warming was going to melt the poles and flood the planet was an unsuccessful strategy. However, the fear of another Black Plague (that is less deadly than the flu – link to xandernieuws.net), coupled with billions of dollars of bribes from Soros and Gates, appears to be the right elixir to allow the public to swallow BS.
It’s all available for the masses and your lying eyes to see – link to armstrongeconomics.com.
Its the heat. Wait for winter time in the US. Seriously. Also, if you dont get a flu vaccine, you better do it this year. A multi disease inflammatory cascade from this years influenza and covid is not something that I am personally up for.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or you’re mocking the hordes of people who claimed summer heat would kill the virus.
Heat probably would slow the spread except that the sunbelt communities are all air-conditioned now. In Florida you leave your air-conditioned car sits in your air-conditioned garage. You drive that air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned store or workplace where you sit in air-conditioning all day. Then reverse at the end of your shift. If it weren’t for self-service gas pumps you’d probably never see the sky in summer.
So Mish, you say Fauci made mistakes, yet everybody gives him a pass. And you say Trump never took it seriously, but he went along with shutting down the economy in response to the experts’ recommendations. So the experts get the pass, and Trump is the idiot. Same old lines.
On March 23 Trump was already talking about opening the economy back up, literally days after it had closed, and said that the 15 days to stop the spread would not go past March 30th. Think if we had followed through on his idiocracy.
Think about the idiocy of Biden and the libs calling him a xenophobe for shutting down at all. Think again.
a “reality” tv host becomes president of a “free” nation then disregards advice from esteemed infectious disease experts for advice from a former tv game show host and fools applaud…
The success has been amazing. Wait, the dow just dropped a few hundred points in minutes = “it’s Trump’s fault!”
So you have no answer to the question of what executive power, other than tweets and speeches? Weak.
To him it was not a mistake. He always has a reason for setting up conflict and division. It may be self serving but it is a real reason. He is not stupid.
regarding “stupid”, i do not think it means what you think it means
I see your point.
I meant to say what is stupid WRT taking care of anyone else probably benefits him in his mind. Tactics which the Dems underestimate (diversion) provide cover for his other agendas. Sloppy, heavy handed but effective.
If Trump had a brain it would be lonely.
If he did, he wouldn’t be President. Nor, with overwhelming likelihood, wealthy.
“By idiots, for idiots,” don’t leave much room for non-idiots in high places.
Enough Trump, please stick to what you know best, ECONOMICS.
I would argue that President Trump and the Federal Reserve are currently the two most important influences in both the US and the world economies. Do you disagree? If so, why?
Economics. That is debatable.
People that are paying attention know where Dr. Fauci and the President both stand. History will not be kind to this feeble, inept, destructive, divisive, corrupt, narcissistic President.
No one pays attention to history any longer. You’re gonna need a stronger argument.
Au contraire, they do pay attention to parts of history that they are offended by. When they are offended, they rip it down, burn it, and replace it with some fantasy that they feel better about.
So Trump will be removed from the historical record, you say? That wouldn’t be a good thing if we want to learn from history and not allow the same mistakes to happen again.
Think how Obama would have handled this, wearing a mask on national TV soon into the pandemic.
Think of the puerile politicization of masks.
Think of the lives (and money!) lost because of the mind of a 14 year old bully-dozer.
They’re still tilting at windmills like Obama’s “socialism” and the threat of his darker skin. We can quietly await their next proposed comparison of the Obama and Trump economic record.