There’s no other word for what Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force is facing other than sexism.
How else could you explain House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent slight against one of the country’s most influential doctors, the substance of which amounted to nothing more than, I don’t like her?
In an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Pelosi was asked to confirm or deny a report that said she had criticized Birx in a closed-door meeting with White House officials.
“I think the president is spreading disinformation,” she said, before adding, “and she is his appointee, so I don’t have confidence there, no.”
The initial report, by Politico on Friday, quoted Pelosi as privately saying to White House officials, “Deborah Birx is the worst. Wow, what horrible hands you’re in.” She went on to praise a man, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a “hero.”
There is literally almost no difference between Birx and Fauci in terms of the information they have provided the public. Both have been hit-or-miss on the fallout of the spread of the virus. Both have appeared at the White House press briefings to answer questions from reporters, never contradicting one another. And both work in the Trump administration.
Hmm, what might ever be so bothersome about Birx?
This is no different than the treatment the New York Times gave to Birx in an article two weeks ago, wherein she was cast as a bimbo, and Fauci was puffed up as a tragic hero.
That 5,000-word article characterized Birx as a failure in grasping the magnitude of what the virus would bring, a bumbling optimist who didn’t recognize the magnitude of the problem at hand.
The Times said that Birx functioned as a form of “affirmation” for White House officials and the president, who desperately wanted to see infections and deaths from the virus recede so that attention could turn to restoring the economy. “She was a constant source of upbeat news for the president and his aides, walking the halls with charts emphasizing that outbreaks were gradually easing,” the story said.
It noted that Birx “freely roamed the West Wing, fully embracing her role as a member of the president’s team.” It was a clear suggestion that the doctor was a ditz living it up in the White House. After all, anyone who isn’t attacked by the president or doesn’t distance themselves from this administration won’t be taken seriously by the media.
On the task force guidelines for states to begin relaxing their social distancing mandates on businesses and public spaces, the Times said before being published, the guidelines were “held closely by” Birx and “most task force members did not see them beforehand.” The implication: The dummy should have gotten input from smarter people.
If Birx were in an important meeting and spoke up to add something, the Times would be the caricature of a man who would say, “What the doctor is trying to say is …”
In the Times’s story, Birx is the woman in over her head, and Fauci is the genius to whom we should have been listening to all along.
“Unlike Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx is a strong believer in models that forecast the course of an outbreak,” the story said. “Dr. Fauci has cautioned that ‘models are only models’ and that real-world outcomes depend on how people respond to calls for changes in behavior — to stay home, for example, or wear masks in public — sacrifices that required a sense of shared national responsibility.”
The story was also sure to point out that Fauci is “a voracious reader of political histories” who “learned to rely on reports from the ground” when assessing public health emergencies.
The condescension doesn’t even come with a courtesy disguise.
There’s no one who’s been following the pandemic who can honestly say that our leaders, including Birx, did a bang-up job in meeting the coronavirus challenge.
But it’s laughable for Pelosi to prop up Fauci as the hero. He made plenty of mistakes of his own.
He was initially adamant that widespread use of masks was useless. Now he swears they’re saving lives. He said in late February that there was “no need” for anyone to “change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.” Now he’s a permanent advocate for extreme social distancing, advising people to stay away from friends and crowds indefinitely. And the media seem to forget, but Fauci was even an early, cautiously optimistic booster of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus infections, the same drug that Trump touted only to be blasted for weeks by the media since it has not proven 100% effective.
Fauci isn’t a hero, but Pelosi is certainly being a sexist.
