Tony's Diary Package — page 683

Mike Gerson wrote an amazing column in the Washington Post about me: Opinion: Why tearing down Fauci is essential to the MAGA myth Opinion by Michael Gerson Columnist April 5, 2021 at 4:35 p.m. EDT MAGA political philosophy is not systematic, but it is comprehensive. Right-wing populism offers a distorted lens to view nearly all of life. Through this warped lens, progress toward equal rights is actually the oppression of White people. Free and fair elections, when lost, are actually conspiratorial plots by the ruthless left. But perhaps the most remarkable distortion concerns the MAGA view of covid-19. We have all seen the basic outlines of pandemic reality. Experts in epidemiology warned that the disease would spread through contact or droplets at short distances, which is how it spread. The experts recommended early lockdowns to keep health systems from being overwhelmed, and the lockdowns generally worked. The experts said Americans could influence the spread of the disease by taking basic measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing. The disease was controlled when people did these things. The disease ran rampant when they did not, killing a lot of old and vulnerable people in the process. There were, of course, disagreements along the way about the length of lockdowns and the form of mandates. But on the whole, American citizens have witnessed one of the most dramatic vindications of scientific expertise in our history. We have been healthier when we listened to the experts and sicker when we did not. This is the context in which the MAGA right has chosen to make Anthony S. Fauci -- the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 -- the villain in their hallucinogenic version of pandemic history.