Tony's Diary Package — page 125

As scientific fact forces the culture to shift away from desire to reality, we have a chance to honor the line between pop culture influence and genuine expertise. We know what life looks like when we blur that line. It looks like Drs. Oz, Phil and Drew, men who became media personalities because they were often willing to tweak facts for the sake of ratings and are now being slammed for their inability to stay silent about things they do not understand. Like COVID-19, because, guess what? None of them are immunologists or epidemiologists, and "Dr. Phil" doesn't even have a medical degree. "We need our mojo back," Oz said recently on "Hannity," before suggesting that getting kids back in school was worth raising the COVID-19 mortality rate. As if some bizarre form of national swagger was worth making schoolchildren canaries in a coal mine. (He has since walked back his remarks after overwhelming criticism.) We have a chance to return expert culture to actual experts. The emergence of personal testimony as a valuable social force -- whether through memoir, daytime talk show or the blogosphere -- was a democratizing triumph of popular culture. Millions of people, ignored by or refused entrance to traditional means of disseminating information, were suddenly being heard. And it changed the world. It also made everyone an expert. But the personal is a complement to, not a replacement for, the empirical; feelings can stem from or help create facts, but facts exist apart from feelings. So while many of us may have felt that COVID-19 was just a form of the flu, Fauci and others knew, through their expert ability to analyze data, that it was not. With any luck, Fauci's expertise will not just save us from the pandemic, but it will also remind us that there are times when expertise is the most important commodity. Not strong branding, social-media influence, likability or audience connection. In our rush to become the next YouTube/social media/"America's Got Talent" star, some of us have forgotten the importance of skill sets that have less to do with personality and more to do with perseverance. Dr. Fauci is 79 years old; he has served as the director of the NIAID since 1984. He knows what he's talking about