Tag: Anthony Fauci

Emails show HHS official trying to muzzle Fauci

Emails obtained by POLITICO show a top aide at the department dictating what the nation’s top infections disease expert should say during media interviews.

A Trump administration appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to prevent Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, from speaking about the risks that coronavirus poses to children.

Emails obtained by POLITICO show Paul Alexander — a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs — instructing press officers and others at the National Institutes of Health about what Fauci should say during media interviews. The Trump adviser weighed in on Fauci’s planned responses to outlets including Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and the science journal Cell.

Alexander’s lengthy messages, some sent as recently as this week, are couched as scientific arguments. But they often contradict mainstream science while promoting political positions taken by the Trump administration on hot-button issues ranging from the use of convalescent plasma to school reopening. Continue reading.

Dr. Fauci Raises Alarm About Trump’s Lax New CDC Testing Guidelines

Dr. Anthony Fauci raised alarms on Wednesday about a new change to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s new COVID-19 testing guidelines, which seem to discount the risk of asymptomatic transmission of the disease.

The guidelines were changed on Monday and have increasingly drawn concern from the medical community. They now state: “You do not necessarily need a test” even if “you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms.”

But critics argue that asymptomatic transmission of the virus is one of the primary vectors through which it spreads. Discouraging tests for people who have been exposed to the virus but don’t have symptoms could make it much more difficult to keep the spread of the disease under control. When people don’t have symptoms and they’re unaware they’re infected, they may be more likely to spread the disease because they go out in public and interact with other people. Arguably, people who are sick need the tests less, because their symptoms are reason enough to avoid other people. Continue reading.

Fauci says family has faced threats, harassment amid pandemic

The Hill logoAnthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said he and his family are getting death threats because people don’t like what he says about COVID-19.

“Getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security is just, I mean, it’s amazing,” Fauci said during an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta on Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles are so set against it and don’t like what you and I say, namely in the world of science, that they actually threaten you,” he added. Continue reading.

Fauci amplifies Birx’s warning about ‘new phase’ of coronavirus spread in U.S.

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Washington Post logoAnthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, defended and amplified Deborah Birx’s statements about what she characterized as a “new phase” of the pandemic in the United States.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Fauci said that the kind of spread some states are experiencing is extremely difficult to contain. “When you have community spread it’s insidious, there are people who are spreading it who have no symptoms at all … It’s difficult to do identification, isolation and contact tracing,” Fauci said.

Fauci’s comments came the same day President Trump lashed out at Birx, seemingly over her weekend remarks on CNN in which she warned that even rural areas would suffer. “It is extraordinarily widespread,” Birx said. Continue reading.

Loudmouthed Bully’ Jim Jordan slammed for mounting ‘stunningly lunkheaded’ attack on Dr. Fauci

AlterNet logoU.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) played to the cameras Friday morning as he bullied, belittled, and attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci during a House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing on the coronavirus crisis.

Jordan tried to politicize the immunologist and public health official’s testimony – and tried get Fauci, who has served for decades as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to say that the federal government should shut down the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests under the guise of combatting the pandemic.

Do protests increase the spread of the virus?” Jordan pointedly asked. Continue reading.

After Fauci Touts Europe’s More Effective COVID-19 Tactics, Trump Says He’s ‘Wrong!’

President Donald Trump on Saturday further shared his own interpretation of the coronavirus crisis, lashing out at Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, for explaining how Europe has been more successful at containing COVID-19 than the U.S. has.

“Wrong!” Trump tweeted from his golf resort in Potomac Falls, Virginia. He again brought up the rate of testing in the U.S., which he has repeatedly claimed “creates” more cases, arguing that the situation only looks worse here because more data is gathered.

More than 154,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S., which is the highest national death toll in the world and nearly 23% of global coronavirus fatalities in a country with just 4% of the world’s population. Continue reading.

Five takeaways from Fauci’s testimony

The Hill logoWhen Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases doctor, testified before Congress a month ago, the U.S. had just set a record with 48,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day.

Now, the country is averaging nearly 65,000 new cases a day. Outbreaks in the South appear to be leveling off, but worrying trends are emerging in the Midwest. And the nationwide death toll recently topped 150,000, a once-unthinkable number that is only going to increase as the pandemic rages on.

But when Fauci and other top health officials testified before Congress on Friday, they struck a hopeful tone on the prospects for a COVID-19 vaccine, faster testing and getting the virus under control, so long as Americans are vigilant about wearing masks and avoiding crowds. Continue reading.

Fauci Again Challenges White House Over False Optimism On Virus

Dr. Anthony Fauci painted a worrying portrait of White House’s coronavirus task force in a new interview with ABC News, suggesting it is sharply out of touch with the reality of the pandemic

In the interview, Fauci “was pressed to explain why, months after COVID-19 first reached U.S. soil, the U.S. government is still struggling to provide adequate testing for Americans and sufficient personal protective gear for essential workers” — and the immunologist responded, “We keep hearing when we go to these task force meetings that these (issues) are being corrected. But yet, when you go into the trenches, you still hear about that.”

Fauci told ABC News he doesn’t have a “good answer” and “cannot explain” why the U.S. government has been dropping the ball when it comes to coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment. Continue reading.

Anatomy of a character assassination: Trump goes all-in against Dr. Fauci

AlterNet logoDonald Trump has targeted a new pandemic villain: Dr. Anthony Fauci. Among his transgressions, the nation’s leading infectious disease physician relied on facts and science to contradict Trump’s talking points and criticize his policies. Even worse, he has outperformed Trump in public opinion polls.

So rather than declare war on a coronavirus outbreak that he has mismanaged at every turn, Trump has attacked Dr. Fauci and the truth.

Round 1: Trump vs. Dr. Fauci on Hydroxychloroquine

Mar. 19: Despite the absence of scientific evidence proving its safety or effectiveness, Trump touts hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19. Continue reading.

We asked right-wing flack Michael Caputo why he’s in charge of Dr. Fauci’s schedule. His response: ‘What’s with the attitude?’

AlterNet logoLast week the Washington Post published a report titled “Fauci is sidelined by the White House as he steps up blunt talk on pandemic,” which revealed that President Trump had not sought the counsel of the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in more than a month.

But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

The 2,500-word report only briefly touches on the official who does that scuttling: a man named Michael Caputo, a 2016 Trump campaign aide who has been described as a conspiracy theorist with racist views and is closely allied with former Trump adviser Roger Stone. Continue reading.