Fauci: The Pushback Increases

I was drawn to this exchange at the White House CDC COVID briefing Monday:

MODERATOR: Next we’ll go to Chris Megerian at Los Angeles Times.

Q Hi, everyone. I was interested in your thoughts on the messaging around the vaccines. There’s a lot of conversation about how you need to keep doing the same things even after you get vaccinated — you know, like wearing a mask, not seeing your family, things like that. Do you think that’s preventing people from being more enthusiastic about getting vaccines? And may we see that change in the future?

ACTING ADMINISTRATOR SLAVITT: Well, I’m going to invite both Dr. Walensky and Dr. Fauci to comment on that, and then — you know, and then I will as — I will as well, if there’s anything to add.

DR. FAUCI: Yeah, I — actually, let — I’ll start — well, whatever. (Laughs.) I’ll start off and be very brief and hand it to Dr. Walensky.

I don't know if video of this conference is available -- I haven't seen it -- but from the transcript, it appears that Fauci is basically playing cute here, vamping and mugging (Laughs), sending a message that this isn't a serious question, but he's briefly gonna toss it off pro forma. So he basically repeats the latest Fauci line, the vaccine sorta-kinda isn't like, say, the smallpox vaccine or the polio vaccine, no, you gotta keep acting as if you'll still get sick and kill grandma no matter what.

But the problem for the others is that this isn't a question from Fox, it's a question from the LA Times. The other white folks take the threat more seriously, and they circle the wagons.

ACTING ADMINISTRATOR SLAVITT: And let me just follow up, to make a broader point. The broader point that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky both alluded to is this: . . . I will tell you that people are interested in taking the vaccine in large numbers for the same reason people are interested in taking the vaccine for MMR and for the flu: because they want to live. They don’t want to be sick and they don’t want to die. And that is a very important benefit that people don’t often talk about quite as much but that the public, we believe, clearly understands.

So beyond that, what we’re able to do as a society — the scientific team is going to continue to study based upon prevalence, based upon vaccination levels, and based upon the data, and we’ll come out with more.

Fauci does his cute routine at the start, but you can tell that all of these white people are angry at that question. The ultimate answer is the American people are smarter than you, bub, and they want to live. Whew! Maybe they should try to be less defensive and less reliant on their privilege, huh?

The problem continues to be, of course, that Fauci's remarks are inconsistent from week to week and have nothing to do with "science". Public figures from Meghan McCain to Sen Rubio are beginning to push back against Fauci publicly. McCain and Rubio are not heavyweights, but the lizard people ridiculed them on Twitter and fact-checked them posthaste.

An attack on Fauci is an attack on the foundations of how things are right now. Interesting indeed.

In fact, the two media golden boys of COVID, Gov Cuomo and Dr Fauci, who've bantered with each other about just that on CNN, are starting to lose their luster. The plebs has been sruggling to get appointments for the shot for weeks -- and based on our experience and those of friends and relatives, it takes weeks of effort -- only to find the goalposts moved yet once more. Get two shots, no big deal, you're still not gonna have your relatives for Easter.

There's a limit. The irritation of the white folks at the CDC Monday is an indication they're feeling it.

By the way, I wonder why Sally Quinn thought Dr Fauci was actually a Dr Lancer. There's gotta be MeToo lurking in the background here.