Pandemic Advice for Team Biden: Bench Fauci & Walensky. Put Dr. Francis Collins On the Mound
The CDC and Fauci Have FUBAR'd Vaccine and Pandemic Messaging. Time for Dr. Francis Collins to Step Up
I’m in no position to influence the Biden Administration. On Anything.
I didn’t support Joe Biden for President. I describe his presidency as an “unfolding disaster.”
But I wish them success. I want Team Biden to learn the errors of their ways and put the COVID pandemic in the rearview mirror permanently. I want to save lives and see all Americans voluntarily become vaccinated and help get us all back to normal - no masks, no social distancing, packed sports arenas, and unrestricted family gatherings. Even hugs. No “new normal.” Just “normal.”
One way to do that is to get the messaging right. I give the Biden Administration reasonably good marks for not messing up vaccine distribution. Almost two-thirds of adults have been jabbed at least once; nearly 40% are fully vaccinated. And the vaccines - all three of them - have proven efficacious. That’s excellent news, and President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed deserves much credit.
But the Centers for Disease Control and especially the White House’s chief medical officer, the excessively ubiquitous Dr. Anthony Fauci, have completely FUBAR’d (F’d up beyond all recognition) the messaging of the vaccines and moving on from the pandemic. Result? Vaccination rates are declining amidst continued advice to keep wearing masks, avoid public gatherings, and otherwise remain socially distanced. Talk about undermining the effort to get people vaccinated. Vaccines were always the key to getting back to normal. So, if we’re vaccinated, why the mask and other mandates, including school closures? It all reeks of politics, and worse.
OK, the CDC has just finally recommended relaxing mask mandates in most cases (not all) for the vaccinated. We’ll see what states do now. Even on my late afternoon power walk here in Arlington, Virginia yesterday, more than half of the people wore masks while walking, running, or biking, often alone. I wanted to tell them that they look foolish. More than 60% of Arlington’s residents are vaccinated. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head as I powered past them in the lovely outdoors. So many people living in fear here in my very blue jurisdiction. Sad. Pathetic, actually.
I’ve never worn a mask outdoors, except in Hawaii, where that is still mandated while moving about, including outdoors and even while running on treadmills indoors, despite this new guidance. Hawaii’s government is a clown car, at least on COVID. If you’re planning to travel there, I’d wait. Or just go elsewhere. You have plenty of options. Unless you live in the southeastern or mid-Atlantic states and plan to drive.
In sports vernacular, it’s time to bench both Fauci and his incompetent counterpart at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walenski. When you lose the most moderate and least political of Republican US Senators, Susan Collins (R-ME), you need to be benched if not replaced. Just watch or read this transcript (go to the 1:05 mark for Sen. Collins’ question) from a Senate hearing where the ordinarily kind and pleasant Collins eviscerated Walenski and her agency like an Alaskan Halibut processor.
The CDC’s reputation has badly suffered, not just under Walensky but the equally challenged Dr. Robert Redfield, who did enormous damage during the early pandemic response. How? By screwing up the approval of the first coronavirus tests. It cost us two months. Trump unfairly took much blame for it.
When you’ve lost Senator Collins, well, you’ve lost.
And don’t get me started on Fauci. Just go to any search engine (I recommend duckduckgo.com) and type in “Fauci wrong.” You will get a litany of well-documented examples of when Fauci has been contradictory, inconsistent, inflammatory, or wrong over his overrated 40-year career, from HIV Aids to, of course, wearing masks. I’ll share some examples, here, here, here, and here. People are tuning him out and for good reason.
Anthony Fauci’s 15 minutes are long gone. He should retire and go learn how to throw a baseball.
So, how does the Biden Administration fix their messaging issue, starting with a messenger that people can trust, someone who has bipartisan appeal, a gentle bedside manner, and the scientific chops to regain Americans' confidence?
That would be Dr. Fauci’s boss at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins.
Dr. Collins is an accomplished geneticist. He successfully led the Genome Project, is articulate, has excellent communication skills, and can appeal to some anti-vaxxers, given his strong Christian belief. That’s right, a scientist who is a Christian. Some of us see no conflict in that.
Dr. Collins, brimming with gravitas, recently was interviewed by radio talker Hugh Hewitt, a successful attorney, law professor, and former Reagan Administration official. He is a master interviewer.
Hewitt’s website provides a transcript for most of his interviews. Just read or listen to this. You’ll understand why the Team Biden needs to bench Fauci and his massive ego and go with the humble, gentle, and persuasive Collins. I’ll highlight this exchange between Hewitt and Collins:
HH: Have you been accessed to the conversations in the White House, and I am trying to help out the Biden White House on messaging vaccines, because I believe we’ve got to get vaccinated. It’s 100%. I’ve had my two Pfizer shots, stood in line, all that deal. My son had the Johnson and Johnson, so I have no doubt about its efficacy. And my bother is a 30-plus year toxicologist who’s retired now. We’ve talked about all the science. There’s nothing wrong with these vaccines. Everyone should get them. But one of the concerns that I heard in those conversations was that black Americans especially had a concern that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine wasn’t as good as the other vaccines, because it was one shot, not two. Have you heard that concern?
FC: Oh, goodness, I could give you a list of concerns that would be many pages long. And that is certainly one of them. I’m with you. I think the J & J vaccine is fantastic opportunity, and my two grandkids, a boy, 19, and the girl, 21, both chose it because they liked the idea it was just one dose. You don’t have to come back later. You’re one and done. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. Certainly, the African-American community has other concerns about the vaccines in general, and the sort of way in which in the past they aren’t, haven’t always been well-treated by medical research. Tuskegee comes up. And of course, our whole health care system has clearly not always treated them very well, so why should they be confident that this time we’re offering something that’s good for them? So there’s all that reasons. You know what? I think we need to listen really carefully to each person’s concern. They’re not all generic. They’re not all the same. There are good answers to each of their questions, but we have to be sure to provide them. I think if people go to this website for the COVID-19 community corps, which has hundreds of organizations representing underserved groups, things like the National Urban League, there’s a lot of answers there. Just go to Google and type in We Can Do This, and you’ll see what’s up there, which I think will be a help to a lot of people. The other thing is, Hugh, I think we need to spend more time and reminding people about the benefits of getting vaccinated. I know you’re doing that. Gosh, I mean, I was able to have dinner last night with another couple. My wife and I, we sat around the same table. We took off our masks. We broke bread together. We prayed together. We had an experience of hugging each other on the way out the door. This is like being liberated, and I think people who are holding back probably are missing out. It’s clear there are going to be other advantages. People are going to be given Safeway discounts from the grocery store if you have vaccination status. There will be a lot of public events where I think private institutions running concerts are going to expect proof of vaccination. Let’s just do this, and let’s get this pandemic behind us. And that takes all of us, not just some of us.
That is how you persuade people to get vaccinated. Read/listen to the entire interview, where Hewitt asks questions I’ve heard from people reluctant to get vaccinated.
The question is, why isn’t Dr. Collins front and center at the White House media briefings on the pandemic? He clearly should be.