Parsing Dr Fauci

I once had a friend who started out in blue-collar work at the phone company. His superiors saw that he had a lot of promise, and they sent him to courses to prepare him for supervisory and management jobs. Among them were courses in speaking and writing. I never thought he had problems with communication skills, but at minumum, it showed how important at least some corporations thought they were -- indeed, they'll likely now pay lip service to diversity and inclusion, but they'll still want people who can communicate effectively. The need for those leadership skills doesn't go away.

So it's all the more intriguing that our public health authorities in the midst of a pandemic express themselves so poorly. Let's take Dr Fauci's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press. He answers a question from Chuck Todd with a remarkable tautology:

CHUCK TODD:

. . . How dangerous is this Delta variant for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:

Well, it's extremely dangerous for the unvaccinated because, if they get infected and if they stay unvaccinated and don't wear masks, ultimately they're going to wind up getting infected.

It's extremely dangerous, because if they get infected, they're going to wind up getting infected. He may have meant something else -- he may have meant to say that if they get infected, they might wind up getting sick -- but that's not what he said. But then he goes on:

If you are vaccinated, you are very well protected against getting infected.

This is, as far as I can tell, simply incorrect. Dr Walensky came somewhat closer to correct in what I quoted from her yesterday when she said what vaccines "can't do anymore" is prevent transmission, although this is actually another example of remarkably poor expression at the top. Vaccines don't prevent infection. They induce the body to produce antibodies against the virus when it infects. This has never changed. What Dr Walensky seems to think she's saying is that as of last week, the CDC has changed its messaging to reflect this. But Dr Fauci is still groping for what this may mean:

Since no vaccine is 100% protective, there will be what we call breakthrough infections. That's the bad news. The good news is that almost invariably that will be an infection that is either without symptoms or minimally symptomatic, which means the vaccine still protects extremely well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and deaths. But the interesting and unfortunate thing that we found out that gets to the mask issue is that this virus is so easily transmissible that, if a vaccinated person gets a breakthrough infection, which will happen, Chuck. You can expect that because no vaccine is 100% effective.

I was astonished that as of yesterday, Dr Fauci used the term "breakthrough infections". Everyone, vaccinated or not, can get infected with the virus. What the vaccine does is allow the body to produce antibodies that attack the virus and in most cases keep the body from developing symptoms. The infection isn't the breakthrough, it's the symptoms. "Breakthrough illness" might be a better term, but "infections" is more panic inducing, I guess. He goes on,

Now, we're finding that the level of virus is really quite high, which means one of the bad things about all of this is that even though you're protected from getting severe disease, if you're infected, you can transmit it to someone else even if you're vaccinated. And that's the fundamental basis of now saying people should be wearing masks in indoor public places when you're in a region that has a high level of infection.

I'll leave aside the question Chuck Todd didn't ask, which would be, "But cloth and paper masks are ineffective against the way COVID is apparently transmitted. We saw that throughout 2020. What good will they do now if they didn't work then?" If Todd were to ask it, Fauci would simply reply with the sort of word salad he's been giving throughout the interview.

But in fact, the medium here is the message. On top of the vagueness, the tautology, the ponderous and repetitious verbosity, is the thick New Yawk accent. This, at least in the mind of the elites, gives Fauci authenticity. He's so bright, he's reached the top in spite of his poor communication skills. Listen to what he says! Or at least, try to listen.

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. They change what they say week to week, because last week what they said didn't work. But if they make what they say impossible ever quite to understand, it doesn't matter.