Attacks from the White House and conservative media against Anthony Fauci, the government’s authority on infectious diseases, always seemed counterproductive. But what he said over the weekend deserves every bit of ridicule that it can find.
Fauci claimed with a straight face on Friday that New York has been a shining example of how to beat back the coronavirus.
“We’ve got to do the things that are very clear that we need to do to turn this around, remembering we can do it,” he said on PBS. “We know that when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We’ve done it. We’ve done it in New York. New York got hit worse than any place in the world, and they did it correctly.”
Here’s what it looks like to have done it “correctly”: As of Monday, New York had more than 32,100 coronavirus-related deaths, which is more than any other state. Total deaths in New York are twice those of New Jersey, which stands at a distant second place.
We’re hearing a lot about sharp rises in cases in Florida, Texas, and Georgia (because they have Republican governors, so of course), yet the total number of deaths in all three states combined comes to less than half of New York’s coronavirus deaths.
That’s a shortsighted version of doing things “correctly.” It would be unfair to lay 100% of the blame on Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but it’s quite something to see him credited for handling the coronavirus well when more people under his supervision got sick and died than in any other place.
Maybe Fauci really is losing it.
