Scientists vs. Fauci, Not Trump vs. Fauci that is what we should be understanding from the media. President Trump inherited Dr. Anthony Fauci as an advisor. It is increasingly apparent Fauci gave the president bad advice on lockdowns.
So far there has been no price he has paid for that. The press lionizes Fauci which makes it hard for the president to pivot away from lockdowns. D. AXE, W. BRIGGS, J. RICHARDS published essentially this article in the Stream.org Oct. 26. It has been shortened somewhat to fit this blog format.
By taking on Fauci directly allows the media to frame the dispute as Trump versus “the science.” Fauci is framed as the stand-in for the science. There is a rea debate, though. It is between Fauci and the growing body of scientific evidence contradicting his advice. There are thousands of scientific experts who are ready to talk about that evidence.
The influence of a few scientists is the result of what we call the tyranny of experts. Being a public health official is not a gold medal for scientific acumen. It confers no advantage when it comes either to smarts or to public policy. Officialdom has been allowing narrow specialists to exercise power in areas outside their competence.
What has happened is an immunologist who worked for decades in the federal government told the president that if he doesn’t shut down the country, 2.2 million people would die. Now understand, that advice came, not from evidence, but on a computer model. The model other expert modelers later describe as “a buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming.” Now grok that advice was protected from critique by other reputable scientists.
Scientific consensus?
That is what happened in March. Dr. Anthony Fauci and someone else, not yet identified, gave just that dubious advice to President Trump. At the time, the president had no access to experts who would have challenged Fauci’s claims. He was also under siege by a hostile press championing Fauci and the lockdowns. The president had little choice but to act on the advice received.
Soon the president came to realize scientists weren’t speaking with one voice. Many scientists had disputed the lockdowns from the very beginning. Trump appointed Dr. Scott Atlas as his COVID-19 advisor. Atlas, unlike Fauci and others, is an expert on weighing the costs and benefits of a public health policy. Atlas has taken to his new role with bravery and gusto.
The media, and social media giants, are doing their best to marginalize and censor him. The president needs to do everything in his power to make clear that the debate is not between him and science. The debate is between scientists themselves. Atlas isn’t a lone voice crying in the wilderness.
De, Atlas speaks for hundreds of experts who argue that lockdowns inflict great pain for little if any gain. President Trump was wise to bring Atlas in. But it’s a first step. The election will be, in part, a referendum on the lockdowns.
Biden is not a decision maker… he’s a figure head… at best
Joe Biden claims that he, unlike the president, listens to “the science.” The president needs to do everything in his power to make clear that the debate is not between him and science. The debate is between scientists themselves.
On one side are those who claim lockdowns work and who call for more of them. On the other side is an army of scientists and other experts who argue that the lockdowns are a disaster. Even the World Health Organization now more or less agrees with this.
Trump should cite scientists such as Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta, and Stanford Medical School’s Jay Bhattacharya often. He should deliver a prepared speech making the scientific case against more lockdowns. Joining him on the platform should be the forty or so top co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. This calls for an end to the lockdowns and a sensible strategy of “focused protection.”
One of those scientists: Stanford biophysicist and structural biologist Michael Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Trump should elevate the platform of Levitt and these other scientists. Let them argue with Fauci et al. This would re-frame the debate. It shifts the focus to allow the public on November 3rd to weigh in on the wisdom of lockdowns themselves.
