White House economic adviser Peter Navarro broke from the administration on Wednesday and released an opinion article criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been advising President Trump throughout the coronavirus pandemic. In the article, Navarro alleges that Fauci has been wrong about almost everything, and he urges people to treat Fauci’s advice with skepticism.
Navarro’s approach deserves criticism. He went behind the White House’s back and published this piece without the president’s approval, according to White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah. In doing so, he created a faux rift between Trump and Fauci that shouldn’t be there.
But the truth is that Navarro just said what many people in the United States have been thinking: Can we trust the health experts? Fauci is certainly qualified, and I believe he has the best intentions. But he has been wrong about several things throughout this crisis, as have many other leading experts we trust to guide our policy decisions.
Take, for example, face masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the country at the very beginning of this outbreak that masks were unnecessary and that only the infected would need them. Now we’re being told that everyone, whether you’re sick or not, should wear a mask while in public.
The CDC has also changed its guidance in regards to how the coronavirus is spread multiple times. First, the agency said that the virus spread through “droplets” from coughs and sneezes. Then, it added the possibility that the virus could spread via surfaces. Now we’re not sure how long the virus can live on a surface, if it can live on a surface at all, or if COVID-19 actually spreads as rapidly as we first thought.
Some of these changes were understandable and even necessary. We knew very little about the coronavirus, how it spread, or who it would affect, back in March and April. As the CDC and other experts learned more about COVID-19, they changed their opinions and guidance. But some of the mistakes that our experts, including Fauci, made were not just the result of ignorance, but of negligence.
In his article, Navarro points out that while he and others in the administration were preparing the president for the possibility of a widespread pandemic, Fauci was telling people not to be worried. Fauci also objected to Trump’s ban on travel to and from China, Navarro alleges. And Fauci has publicly changed his opinion on reopening so many times that it’s unclear what he really wants the U.S. to do.
To his credit, Fauci has also shown humility. His statements have often come with caveats. For instance, in late February, when he urged against people changing their behavior, he made clear that he was only talking about that snapshot in time, and he acknowledged that guidance could evolve. “Right now, at this moment, there’s no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis,” Fauci said on Feb. 29. “Right now, the risk is still low, but this could change. I’ve said that many times even on this program. You’ve got to watch out because although the risk is low now, you don’t need to change anything you’re doing. 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.”
Also, unlike Trump, Fauci has been willing to admit error, such as when it came to changing guidance on the use of masks, which health officials initially cautioned the public against using. “We have to admit it, that that mixed message in the beginning, even though it was well meant to allow masks to be available for health workers, that was detrimental in getting the message across,” he told NPR. “No doubt about that.”
So, this isn’t to say that Fauci should be sidelined or ignored. In fairness to him, scientists are still in the early stages of trying to understand the coronavirus, and it is behaving in surprising ways. Some reasonable assumptions might end up being proven wrong.
However, it’s also true that Fauci should not be above criticism. And “listen to the health experts” shouldn’t be used as a catchphrase to shut down all debate when a lot remains unknown about the virus. Even a well-meaning expert such as Fauci is capable of error.
