by MPeriod
Posted 3 years ago
Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s foremost infectious disease expert, who helped run the Covid-19 response under former President Trump recently sat down for an interview where he exposed some of the horrors of working under Trump during this outbreak.
Fauci who serves as, the evergreen director of Washington’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a medical adviser to seven consecutive US presidents. Originally taking up the position under President Ronald Reagan, and helping guide the country through outbreaks of Ebola, Sars, Zika, and others. He also was one of the first doctors to identify AIDS in the early 1980s and became a hero after working tirelessly to wake the nation up to the outbreak.
Fast forward to 2020, Dr. Fauci has become increasingly open about his time working for former President Trump. Many times President Trump actively undermined his own government’s battle against the Covid-19, and as Dr. Fauci said when asked about Trump's tendency to spread misinformation about the virus "What am I supposed to do, tackle him". When asked about the media characteristics of Trump's failures in addressing the virus, Fauci said does not consider this characterization of Trump’s conduct unfair. ‘No, no, no,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately it’s the truth.’
Donald Trump was initially sceptical of the threat from Covid-19, but Fauci and his fellow scientists did manage to persuade him to back state-by-state lock-downs, and approve social-distancing measures. He also restricted Chinese visitors to the country. By the spring, however, Fauci’s relations with the president had soured as Trump began listening to outsiders with no scientific knowledge and fretting about the damage to the economy and – by extension – his re-election hopes.
Fauci says he watched on with horror as the President allowed and sometimes even demand dangerous misinformation to be released, issues to be ignored, and medical policies to be set by non doctors, saying: "when it became clear that in order to maintain my integrity and to get the right message [across] I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things – or allowed things to happen – that were terrible." He describes his White House as a Covid-19 ‘superspreader’.
Fauci has also outlined as Trump slipped further into his post-election lost delusions, things became even worse, even as the pandemic spiked across the country. ‘We [the scientists] were trying, but we were acting almost alone, in the sense of without any direction. When President Biden walked into the White House we were having 300,000 to 400,000 cases per day, 4,000 deaths per day, and our hospitals were on the brink of being overrun." Fauci said.
Fauci outlined the difficulty of watching the US spiral out of control, under Trump saying "when your main job is to save lives and alleviate suffering, and you see some of the things going on around you that are not only not alleviating suffering but are making things worse".
Trump's delusions and insecurities had dire consequence for the United States. Trump would complain, about Dr. Fauci, ‘He’s got this high approval rating, so why don’t I have a high approval rating, with respect to the virus?" Leading the often vengeful ex President to lead a crusade to undermine his own administrations medical advice in an attempt to bring down Fauci. This resulted in at one point Dr. Fauci being accused of inviting Covid-19, of being part of a Bill Gates and George Soros conspiracy to destroy Trump’s presidency. Even ask mask-less gathers caused spikes in Covid cases across the country, as Dr. Fauci correctly predicted would happen if people did not listen, anti-lockdown protesters chanted ‘Fire Fauci’. Steve Bannon, Trump’s erstwhile strategist, called for his head on a pike. The Trump inspired threats and hate become so intense the doctor was given round the clock security.
On one occasion Fauci opened a letter and a puff of white powder blew into his face. ‘If it was ricin, I was dead,’ he told The New York Times. He summoned hazmat officials, but the powder proved harmless. Fauci said, in dealing with the hate as well as celebrity he had to develop tunnel vision, saying "What I had to do was not to get so caught up in thinking I was a hero or some sort of icon, which I’m not, nor get intimidated by crazy Right-wing maniacs. I had to put blinders on and focus on what my job was."
Fauci is much happier today. The pandemic still rages, but he is back in the fold. He talks frequently to Biden and the new White House Covid-19 task force. He addresses press conferences again. He is delighted not just with Biden’s strategy for defeating the virus, but with his whole approach. Soon after his inauguration Biden told him, ‘We’re going to let science rule. We’re going to go by the data, the evidence and the science. We’re going to make some mistakes, and when we do we’re not going to blame anybody. We’re just going to fix it…
And hopefully for America, and so far Covid trendlines say it is, having an administration finally letting a doctor who has successfully helped the country navigate through virus outbreaks and health crises for decades being allowed to do his job will pay off and keep us all safe.
Topic: US News
Tags: Covid-19 Donald Trump Dr. Anthony Fauci Dr. Fauci Trump Covid Failure Trump Failure