Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been the public official whom Americans across the political spectrum can most trust to provide accurate and scientifically supported information on the coronavirus pandemic. That’s why, amid anxiety and uncertainty, he enjoys an approval rating of nearly 80%. Yet now there’s debate over whether President Trump should fire him, or over whether he will do so.
Firing somebody of Fauci’s experience and knowledge at the height of the worst pandemic to hit the United States in a century would be a grave mistake.
The debate is being driven by two sets of people. One is a subset of Trump supporters who scapegoat Fauci for tanking the economy with what they argue to be an unjustified lockdown recommendation. This first group is actively advocating for Fauci to be dismissed.
The other group is the media, which has heralded Fauci while working overtime to play up tensions between him and Trump.
Conservative critics point to a number of examples to undermine Fauci’s credibiity, even though he has served in the same position since his appointment in Ronald Reagan’s first term. But their criticisms leave out important nuances and context.
Some point to a Jan. 21 interview with Newsmax, in which Fauci said of the coronavirus, “This is not a major threat to the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States should be worried about right now.” But when Fauci made that statement, he was acting from misinformation from China. The Chinese had admitted only a day earlier that the virus could be transmitted from human to human, but they still downplayed the threat.
We now know that China’s tyranny had been lying for weeks by then, but at the time, it was reporting only 291 confirmed cases and only six deaths. So, it made sense for Fauci to say Americans didn’t need to worry “right now.” It’s also worth noting that in the same interview, he cautioned, “Obviously, you need to take it seriously.”
Critics have also attacked Fauci for saying 100,000 to 200,000 Americans could die from COVID-19. They point to a model used by the White House, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, that later downgraded its midpoint estimate to around 60,000 deaths. But at the time of his statement, Fauci himself warned that models are not reliable and that he was reluctant to make firm predictions based on them.
“To be honest with you, we don’t have any firm idea,” Fauci said on CNN on March 29 when asked by Jake Tapper about the possible damage. “There are things called models. And when someone creates a model, they put in various assumptions, and the model is only as good and accurate as your assumptions.”
He said that looking at prevailing evidence, an estimate of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths seemed reasonable, but he said, “I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection when it’s such a moving target that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people.”
He went on to say that “what we do know is that we got a serious problem in New York, we have a serious problem in New Orleans, and we’re going to be developing serious problems in other areas.”
In other words, federal government guidance did not hinge exclusively on models, which Fauci himself was cautious about, but was grounded also in observable experience, first from China, then from Europe, then from New York. The idea that Fauci is discredited just because a model adjusted its death projections downward is absurd.
For this strain of critic, it must also be noted that Trump could fire Fauci tomorrow morning, declare America “open for business,” but it wouldn’t magically revive our economy. People will remain concerned about the spread of the virus, and they won’t just go back to business as usual until assurances are credible.
News media have also vigorously sown discord. There is a pattern in the daily coronavirus briefings and Fauci’s interviews; Trump will say something, and reporters will then try to get Fauci to contradict him. When Fauci gives a nuanced answer, journalists write deliberately simplistic headlines designed to make the two seem at odds. Fauci himself has vented his frustration at this cheap media game.
“The president has listened to what I have said and to what the other people on the task force have said,” he explained in a radio interview last month. “When I have made recommendations, he has taken them. He’s never countered or overridden me. The idea of just pitting one against the other is just not helpful. I wish that would stop and we’d look ahead at the challenge we have to pull together to get over this thing.”
But the cycle keeps repeating itself. On Sunday, Jake Tapper asked Fauci to comment on whether, as the New York Times reported, he had recommended issuing guidance on social distancing restrictions in the third week of February and whether doing so would have saved lives.
“We look at it from a pure health standpoint,” Fauci said. “We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not.” When pressed about whether lives could have been saved through earlier drastic measures, he reluctantly said, “It’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is — is complicated.”
It’s pretty clear that what Fauci was saying was that hindsight is always clearer. For a president balancing multiple concerns, as he should, including people’s livelihoods and the public’s willingness to cooperate with drastic policy responses, it must have been far from obvious in February that such measures were wise. This was true of officials in most jurisdictions. New York City’s schools did not close until March 15, just five days after the city’s mayor was encouraging people to eat out.
This is especially true for policies so completely dependent on public cooperation. On Feb. 21, there were just 20 confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy, which had not yet started its lockdowns. The U.S. would not even record its first death for another week. Think how you would have felt if the president ordered your office and your child’s school closed at that time? You’d have thought it absurd. In fact, you were probably still irritated when it happened a month later.
Thus, as Fauci noted, even though it may have theoretically led to fewer deaths had the U.S. locked down earlier, there were clearly other factors to consider at the time.
Despite the nuance here, Fauci’s comments led to ridiculous headlines suggesting that Fauci was blaming Trump for not having acted sooner. When Trump unfortunately retweeted somebody who had used the hashtag “#FireFauci,” it led to another wave of stories about the supposedly growing feud.
If you are against the virus, then none of this nonsense is helpful. Trump benefits from the counsel of Fauci, and Americans benefit from having such a distinguished public servant in a leadership role during this unprecedented time.
