Tony's Diary Package — page 706

Phenomenal article in the Sunday New York Times about me by Frank Bruni: Opinion So Anthony Fauci Isn't Perfect. He's Closer Than Most of Us. We owe him gratitude, not grief. By Frank Bruni The phrases "public servant" and "public service" are exhausted to the point of meaninglessness. They're tics. They roll off politicians' tongues as readily as requests for money, suggesting that adulation and power aren't the more potent draws to elected office. They're invoked in regard to other government workers, as if decent paychecks and generous pensions weren't a significant lure. But if anyone ever deserved to be described in those terms, it's Anthony Fauci. That was true before the coronavirus. It's truer now -- despite the times when he has revised his message on how to deal with it, despite assessments of the pandemic that didn't bear out and despite Republicans' efforts to use all of that to turn him into some bespectacled Beelzebub. Shocker of shockers: Fauci isn't perfect. But he has been perfectly sincere, perfectly patient, a professional standing resolutely outside so many of the worst currents of American life. More than that, he has been essential. We owe him an immeasurable debt of gratitude, not the mind-boggling magnitude of grief that he gets. If anything, that grief has grown more intense of late. It was on garish display during a House hearing just over a week ago, when Representative Jim Jordan, doing a fan dance for Fox News, tore into Fauci as a doomsday addict less intent on saving people's lives than on scrapping people's liberties. "Dr. Fauci, when is the time?" Jordan, an Ohio Republican, asked, meaning the moment when we can all start behaving as if nobody's getting infected or dying anymore. (For the record, on a given day, more than 60,000 Americans are still testing positive for the coronavirus and an average of 700 lose their lives