Lay Off Anthony Fauci

 I remember in early January 2020 when the first reports appeared in the news about an outbreak of disease in Wuhan, China that had similarities to SARS. Margan and I thought here we go again with memories of the response that was mounted in 2003 for SARS. It quickly became apparent this was SARS on steroids with the added problem of infected people being infectious before they were symptomatic.

We all remember what happened. The president, Trump, declared repeatedly this was not a problem and would be gone by Easter. It wasn’t. Covid-19 spread like wildfire with huge morbidity and mortality. Public health authorities responded with their playbook for pandemic respiratory disease because that is what we had on the shelf. Unfortunately, Covid-19 did not play by that book’s rules. It took time to fully understand that SARS-CoV-2 spread by aerosols, just like measles, rather than by respiratory droplets and contaminated surfaces. By the time it was realized that what was needed was the use of good masks and adequate ventilation, millions were sickened and many died. As of today, the estimated number of cases is 644 million with 6.63 million deaths worldwide; the United States has 101.2 million cases with 1.1 million deaths. The one good thing that happened under the Trump administration was Operation Warp Speed, which provided excellent vaccines for SARS-CoV-2.

The rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 was somewhat of a surprise. It had been thought that coronaviruses were less able to mutate than other respiratory viruses such as influenza. Wrong. As we have learned painfully, this virus can mutate rapidly to produce variants that are able to evade the immune response our original vaccines provide. Vaccination does seem to continue to provide protection against severe disease but it certainly does not prevent transmission.

The man who has been at the forefront of dealing with Covid-19 is Anthony Fauci, who has just retired from an astounding career as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease at NIH. Dr. Fauci deserves the grateful thanks of everyone for his herculean efforts to advise and guide the response to Covid-19. However, he is not getting that but instead is being defamed by a large population of right-wing trolls.

Senator Rand Paul (R-QAnon) has clashed repeatedly with Dr. Fauci at hearings. Paul, a libertarian firebrand, is also a physician who appears to have slept through many of his medical school classes. Republicans in the House are itching to bring him before hearings and cameras to grill him on his responses and guidances for covid; Fauci has stated he will cooperate fully. That is exactly the response I would expect of Dr. Fauci. He epitomizes the Navy's core values of Honor, Courage, Commitment, even though he never wore the uniform.

And he and his family are under fire from the right-wing trolls who inhabit the looneysphere of social media. Credible attempts on his life have occurred. He and his family are harassed online and he has a security detail assigned to him when he is out and about (even walking on the Chesapeake Canal Path). 

The nutjobs abound on social media but their words are dangerous. We have seen before how unhinged people who believe in lies and conspiracy theories have turned their anger and hatred into physical violence (remember 6 January 2021?). Currently, a chief villain is none other than Elon Musk, the apartheid billionaire who bought Twitter and is turning it into a cesspool of hate. His post this morning is proof positive he is despicable. This is it:

It is directed at Dr. Fauci. It is meaningless because nothing, nothing, that Dr. Fauci has done regarding the Covid-19 response gets close to a crime meriting either investigation and prosecution. This is a cheap way for Musk, a sociopath just like Donald Trump, to get the attention his fragile ego requires 24/7. It is a threat to Dr. Fauci and his family; Musk has 121 million Twitter followers, and while a good number of them are bots and Russian trolls, many are people who simply love to have their anger stoked. Musk is stoking away.

Brian Klaas, a professor at University College London, nailed who people like Musk and Trump are in his tweet today; con men like Musk and Trump are Secret Geniuses who are good at one thing – convincing a lot of people that they are in fact geniuses and if others can’t see that, well, they are dumb. Klaas alludes to what he has described as the Dark Triad:

Power, like wealth, is a magnet that attracts dangerous hucksters, and then rewards them. As I’ve written in my latest book, Corruptible, three traits known as the Dark Triad tend to, unfortunately, produce success. The three traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and being a psychopath) are disproportionately correlated with obtaining power, and by extension, wealth. I’ll leave it to your judgment to determine how many of the three apply to, say, Elon Musk.

As Charlie Warzel wrote today in The Atlantic, Musk has become nothing but a far right activist. Warzel points out that Musk believes only in what he thinks will keep Musk on top. How Trumpian. Musk has not a scintilla of the importance of Anthony Fauci. His $44 billion to buy Twitter may have seemed a good idea at the time. He will be left with a bunch of bots, trolls, and angry nincompoops who will eventually start to see through him, just like the MAGAts are awakening to the idea of the emptiness of Trump.