... There really is no denying it. Fauci has made countless mistakes during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Targeting Fauci - for whom, like everyone else, Covid-19 was a learning process, appears to be calculated to transfer responsibility from the politicians who undercut the medial experts and bungled badly.
Assess the vehemence of a Fauci Hater, and you invariably expose a diehard Trumper.
New emails and documents released by a congressional committee investigating the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic show the extent to which top White House officials interfered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to warn Americans about Covid-19...
Trump and his allies in the White House blocked media briefings and interviews with CDC officials, attempted to alter public safety guidance normally cleared by the agency and instructed agency officials to destroy evidence that might be construed as political interference.
The documents further underscore how Trump appointees tried to undermine the work of scientists and career staff at the CDC to control the administration’s messaging on the spread of the virus and the dangers of transmission and infection...
In a press conference in February 2020, [National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Nancy] Messonnier told reporters that she expected community spread within the U.S. and that the disruptions to everyday life could be “severe.” It was one of the first blunt assessments from a high-level CDC official about what was in store for the U.S.
That warning frustrated Trump, according to documents released by the congressional committee Friday.
“I believed that my remarks were accurate based on the information we had at the time,” Messonnier told the committee in her interview. “I heard that the President was unhappy with the tele-briefing.”
scientists at the CDC, well aware that the virus was transmitting at a high rate and could infect easily, stepped in early to speak to the American people directly in an attempt to warn the public about what was coming.
From that point, the White House took the lead on the federal response and controlling all communications and messaging about the virus, denying CDC requests to hold its own briefings.
“We would submit a request to the others to do a briefing and it was declined, and then — or we didn’t get approval to be able to do one,” Schuchat said, referring to specific requests she received from the media for an interview. Schuchat said the White House also denied several agency telebriefings in the spring of 2020 that would have allowed CDC scientists to explain emerging evidence about how the virus moved and infected different populations.
As CDC scientists continued to try and push out their field reporting on Covid-19, White House officials attempted to morph messaging and at times downplay the significance of the spread of the virus.
The documents released by the committee lay out a timeline for how the Trump White House began to downplay the dangers posed by Covid-19.
www.politico.com
The information that the Public Health Community was continually developing was suppressed by the politicos who cast Dr Fauci as their scapegoat. His advice to the nation reflected the evolving understanding of the novel virus. Their spin did not.
Some of Trump's pronouncements concerning the spreading pandemic that would take over three-quarters of a million Americans' lives:
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.”
Feb. 10: “[A] lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.”
Feb. 23: “We have it very much under control in this country.”
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
Feb. 29: “Everything is really under control!”
March 4: “[W]e have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country... we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.
March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”
March 10: “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
Despite Trump's insistence and contrary to the consistent position of public health experts, it did not just "go away." Over 760,000. Americans died.
