No surprise here

President Donald Trump’s advisers undercut the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, over the weekend, anonymously providing details to various news outlets about statements he had made early in the coronavirus outbreak that they said were inaccurate.

The move to treat Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for decades, as if he were a warring political rival came as he has grown increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in coronavirus cases, as well as his lack of access to Trump over the past several weeks. It has been accompanied by more measured public criticism from administration officials, including the president.

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White House officials pointed to a statement by Fauci in a Feb. 29 interview that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.” But they omitted a warning he delivered right after.

“Right now the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”

In the same interview, Fauci also warned that the coronavirus could become “a major outbreak.”

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It was an extraordinary move for the White House to provide news organizations with such a document about a health official who works for the administration and retains a high level of public trust.

Fauci declined to comment.

  Boston.com

Smart.

A poll conducted for The New York Times by Siena College last month showed that 67% of Americans trusted Fauci when it came to the virus; only 26% trusted the president.

And that would not change, no matter what Fauci might offer as a response.

Despite claims early on in the fight against the virus that they enjoyed each other’s company, Trump has long been dismissive of Fauci in private, according to White House officials, taking note of the amount of time he spent on television and of when the doctor contradicted him during press briefings. Trump began growing frustrated with Fauci when he expressed concerns about the efficacy of using hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, to treat people who had the coronavirus. Trump has continued to evangelize in support of the drug, even after the Food and Drug Administration withdrew an emergency authorization allowing it to be used in coronavirus cases.

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“Dr. Fauci is not 100% right, and he also doesn’t necessarily — and he admits that — have the whole national interest in mind,” Adm. Brett P. Giroir, an assistant health and human services secretary, said in an interview aired Sunday on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” “He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.”

Hmmm. How SHOULD a doctor look at it?

If sidelining Fauci isn't working, he may have to be fired.

It’s insane that the White House is editing claims from Trump’s own top health official to create the deceptive impression that he has not actually been far more correct about the coronavirus than Trump has.

More to the point, Fauci admits he made mistakes early on. As The Post report details, he underestimated the virus’s spreadability and at first counseled against mask-wearing to preserve masks for health workers.

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Yet all this has really accomplished is to unleash intensified media scrutiny of the tortured relationship between Trump and Fauci. The result: a spate of fresh reporting on that relationship — reporting that only illustrates Trump’s pathologies with new depth and vividness.

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Much of the discussion has been about how unusual it is that the White House would leak campaign-style oppo research about Trump’s own top health official. But less attention has focused on how deranged it is that Fauci has become the enemy — that is, the target for counter-punching — in the first place.

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Fauci has become the enemy, of course, because he has prioritized his efforts to understand a pandemic that has killed nearly 135,000 Americans and sickened millions over the imperative of protecting Trump politically at all costs.

Fauci’s efforts may have been flawed at times, but by all appearances they were undertaken in good faith. And that’s the cardinal sin here: Since handling a public health emergency in good faith requires a sincere — if sometimes tactful — effort to inform the public about it, this has inevitably put him in Trump’s crosshairs, because it has reflected badly on Trump.

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Mr. Trump has long been dismissive of Dr. Fauci in private, according to White House officials, taking note of the amount of time he spent on television and of when the doctor contradicted him during press briefings.

The attentive reader will note that this expressly concedes that Fauci’s conduct is being evaluated mainly through the prism of how it reflects on Trump. Fauci is spending too much time on TV and contradicted Trump about the virus.

  WaPo