Dr. Fauci Vs. The Ceausescus

Under the dictatorial communist reign of Nicolae Ceausescu, everyone had to defer to him, and play along with the titles he granted himself, e.g., “Genius Of The Carpathians,” despite his ignorance. And they had to pretend that his wife, Elena, was a brilliant chemist, even though she had only an elementary school education. (Fun fact: behind her back, Romanian scientists called her “Codoi,” meaning “co-two,” because that’s how she pronounced “CO2”, carbon dioxide.)

I thought about how it must have been for scientists to deal with the impossibly vain Ceausescus when I read this Science magazine interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. They thought they knew everything, and were accustomed to being flattered and deferred to. If you wanted to keep your head, you had to go along with the lie. Excerpts:

Q: How are you managing to not get fired?

A: Well, that’s pretty interesting because to [Trump’s] credit, even though we disagree on some things, he listens. He goes his own way. He has his own style. But on substantive issues, he does listen to what I say.

Q: You’ve been in press conferences where things are happening that you disagree with, is that fair to say?

A: Well, I don’t disagree in the substance. It is expressed in a way that I would not express it, because it could lead to some misunderstanding about what the facts are about a given subject.

More:

Q: You’ re standing there saying nobody should gather with more than 10 people and there are almost 10 people with you on the stage. And there are certainly more than 10 journalists there asking questions.

A: I know that. I’m trying my best. I cannot do the impossible.

Q: What about the travel restrictions? Trump keeps saying that the travel ban for China, which began 2 February, had a big impact on slowing the spread of the virus to the United States and that he wishes China would have told us 3 to 4 months earlier and that they were “very secretive.” (China did not immediately reveal the discovery of a new coronavirus in late December 2019, but by 10 January, Chinese researchers made the sequence of the virus public.) It just doesn’ t comport with facts.

A: I know, but what do you want me to do? I mean, seriously Jon, let’s get real, what do you want me to do?

Q: Most everyone thinks that you’re doing a remarkable job, but you’ re standing there as the representative of truth and facts, but things are being said that aren’ t true and aren’t factual.

A: The way it happened is that after he made that statement [suggesting China could have revealed the discovery of a new coronavirus 3 to 4 months earlier], I told the appropriate people, it doesn’t comport, because 2 or 3 months earlier would have been September. The next time they sit down with him and talk about what he’s going to say, they will say, “By the way, Mr. President, be careful about this and don’t say that.” But I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let’s try and get it corrected for the next time.

And:

Q: At Friday’s press conference, you put your hands over your face when Trump referred to the “deep State Department” (a popular conspiracy theory). It’s even become an internet meme. Have you been criticized for what you did?

A: No comment.

Read it all. 

To be fair, I think Dr. Fauci is biting his tongue because he’s a patriot and a professional. He understands the depth of the crisis, and is putting his own professional self-respect in abeyance to serve the country. He does not lie for the president; he only refrains from speaking. I don’t blame him at all for the path he’s taken, because it seems reasonable to me given all the circumstances. Now is not the time for a man of his expertise to throw a fit over the president’s behavior (tempting though it must be). Still, it’s embarrassing, and even a disgrace, that one of the country’s most distinguished scientists, a man who has trained all his life for this moment, has to be subordinate to a vain, ignorant politician. In a normal country, the president would be harmonized with his senior public health team, would defer to their scientific expertise in briefings, and not put them in a position to be humiliated by having to be respectful and deferential to him, even though he at times talks like a boob.

Don’t read this me cheering for the Democrats. Look at what the House Democrats are trying to slip into their bailout bill:

Also, guys, let’s maybe focus on restricting stock buybacks and executive compensation with taxpayer loans and save the woke-scolding for later? pic.twitter.com/6iv0TKbbwU

— Rachel Bovard (@rachelbovard) March 23, 2020

The Democrats are going to use this pandemic to try to restructure the world according to their preferred egalitarian model. As Rahm Emanuel said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

Still, after having spent most of the past year reading about the lies and self-effacement that doctors, scientists, and other professionals working under communism had to live with, and not object to, it’s awful to watch a version of this play out in the United States in this moment of unprecedented national crisis.

Speaking of science having to surrender to nonsense, the militantly anti-woke left-wing mathematician James Lindsay predicts how the crazies on that side will exploit Trump’s pig-headed clumsiness:

Yeah, so I”m in a very grumpy mood today. Even with hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, and our entire economy, the political bullsh*t never ceases.

UPDATE: Oh FFS!

On a Thursday conference call featuring more than 200 members of the House Democratic caucus, lawmakers one by one laid out a sweeping wish list of provisions they want to see included in the nascent package, including a boost in infrastructure spending, an expansion of Social Security benefits and funding for states to set up an all-mail voting system in the event the pandemic extends into November’s elections.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told lawmakers, according to a source on the call.

UPDATE: Reader C.L.H. Daniels makes a good point:

I read that entire interview earlier today. While I mainly agree with your assessment of Fauci’s responses, what struck me was the sheer partisan malice of the interviewer. After that first, anodyne question (“How are you?”), ten of the next sixteen questions were designed to bait him into saying something critical of Trump, things Trump has said or done, Trump’s policies, etc. I’m not surprised Fauci cut the interview short.

If this were, I don’t know, Politico, the questions would make a lot of sense (they’d still be partisan, but it’s also normal for a political publication to emphasize the political aspect of the pandemic response). This is Science Magazine though. Shouldn’t the interviewer have been a little more interested in, I don’t know, the science? There were maybe two or three questions that had anything to do with the actual nuts and bolts of the pandemic response in the whole interview and the rest was basically concern trolling.

The Democrats have to make everything about Trump. The Republicans have to defend everything Trump does. Nothing ever changes.

By the way, I don’t post comments that use the phrases “Orange Man Bad,” “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” “TDS,” “But Gorsuch,” “But her e-mails,” or any other flippant substitutes for thought.

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