Fauci (mostly winning) in the Senate hearing
Yesterday in The New Yorker;In response to:
Fleeting Moments of Clarity in the Senate Hearing on the Coronavirus Response
By Amy Davidson Sorkin
May 13, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a beacon in many ways, and he had some fine moments during Tuesday’s hearing.
Tuesday’s Senate Health Committee hearing on the coronavirus response was gavelled into session by video from Tennessee, where the chairman, Lamar Alexander, was ensconced in a room with his dog, who was sleeping on a couch in the background. All four witnesses—Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control; Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner; and Brett Giroir, an admiral who leads the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps—were joining by video. Moreover, all the witnesses except for Giroir were undergoing some form of self-isolation as a result of contact with people who had tested positive for the virus—part of a frantic effort in the past few days to contain an outbreak that included Vice-President Mike Pence’s press secretary. Some of the other senators were participating remotely, too, and those who were present in the hearing room sat at least six feet apart. Most had worn masks when they entered, but were told that they could take them off once they were seated and speaking.
The physical absence of participants was not the only reason, however, that much of the hearing had a strangely detached air; the mood reflected a lack of consistent focus in the federal government’s response to the crisis. There are many examples of heroism in hospitals, where health-care workers have exemplified the best of the country’s spirit, and in essential businesses such as grocery stores and in warehouses, too. And yet it can seem that the power people have is inversely proportional to their sense of urgency; in those terms, Donald Trump is the pinnacle of negligence, mismanagement, and freelance destructiveness, but he is not alone. Last week, in The New Yorker, David Quammen provided a devastating look at what one of his sources called a “lack of imagination” in the C.D.C. and similar institutions. At the hearing, Redfield, who often conveyed the sense that the issue at hand was somebody else’s problem, did nothing to undermine that view.
Fauci has been a beacon in many ways, and he had some fine moments during the hearing. One came when Rand Paul complained that people were worrying too much about reopening, for which he partly blamed the media; as Paul saw it, children are not dying of COVID-19 and so reopening schools should be a simple matter. (Children, of course, are not the only people in school buildings and on buses—or in their homes.) Paul admonished Fauci, saying that he was not the “end all,” and that he needed to be “a little bit humble.” Fauci responded with an eloquent reminder that true humility includes an acknowledgment of what we do not know. He noted that there is now clinical evidence of an inflammatory syndrome that is associated with COVID-19, which appears to have killed at least three children in New York City, perhaps more. “I think we better be careful that we’re not cavalier,” Fauci told him.
In more than one of his exchanges with the senators, Fauci also acknowledged that rushing to reopen too soon could be a very bad idea, and possibly lead to “little spikes that turn into outbreaks,” and noted that “there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control.” He pointed to the White House’s guidelines for “Opening Up America Again,” which were issued in April, and advised against jumping over any of the benchmarks it offers for doing so, such as a “downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period.”
Fleeting Moments of Clarity in the Senate Hearing on the Coronavirus Response
By Amy Davidson Sorkin
May 13, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a beacon in many ways, and he had some fine moments during Tuesday’s hearing.
Tuesday’s Senate Health Committee hearing on the coronavirus response was gavelled into session by video from Tennessee, where the chairman, Lamar Alexander, was ensconced in a room with his dog, who was sleeping on a couch in the background. All four witnesses—Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control; Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner; and Brett Giroir, an admiral who leads the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps—were joining by video. Moreover, all the witnesses except for Giroir were undergoing some form of self-isolation as a result of contact with people who had tested positive for the virus—part of a frantic effort in the past few days to contain an outbreak that included Vice-President Mike Pence’s press secretary. Some of the other senators were participating remotely, too, and those who were present in the hearing room sat at least six feet apart. Most had worn masks when they entered, but were told that they could take them off once they were seated and speaking.
The physical absence of participants was not the only reason, however, that much of the hearing had a strangely detached air; the mood reflected a lack of consistent focus in the federal government’s response to the crisis. There are many examples of heroism in hospitals, where health-care workers have exemplified the best of the country’s spirit, and in essential businesses such as grocery stores and in warehouses, too. And yet it can seem that the power people have is inversely proportional to their sense of urgency; in those terms, Donald Trump is the pinnacle of negligence, mismanagement, and freelance destructiveness, but he is not alone. Last week, in The New Yorker, David Quammen provided a devastating look at what one of his sources called a “lack of imagination” in the C.D.C. and similar institutions. At the hearing, Redfield, who often conveyed the sense that the issue at hand was somebody else’s problem, did nothing to undermine that view.
Fauci has been a beacon in many ways, and he had some fine moments during the hearing. One came when Rand Paul complained that people were worrying too much about reopening, for which he partly blamed the media; as Paul saw it, children are not dying of COVID-19 and so reopening schools should be a simple matter. (Children, of course, are not the only people in school buildings and on buses—or in their homes.) Paul admonished Fauci, saying that he was not the “end all,” and that he needed to be “a little bit humble.” Fauci responded with an eloquent reminder that true humility includes an acknowledgment of what we do not know. He noted that there is now clinical evidence of an inflammatory syndrome that is associated with COVID-19, which appears to have killed at least three children in New York City, perhaps more. “I think we better be careful that we’re not cavalier,” Fauci told him.
In more than one of his exchanges with the senators, Fauci also acknowledged that rushing to reopen too soon could be a very bad idea, and possibly lead to “little spikes that turn into outbreaks,” and noted that “there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control.” He pointed to the White House’s guidelines for “Opening Up America Again,” which were issued in April, and advised against jumping over any of the benchmarks it offers for doing so, such as a “downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period.”
(continued in my next comment below)