Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House Behavior Only Hurts the President | Hacker News Reader

Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House Behavior Only Hurts the President

theatlantic.com

29 pointsdankohn121 comments

Fauci has the enviable position of being objectively correct on almost everything he says, and being correct on a topic that pretty much everyone cares about and can see he's correct.

You can observe the difference in how resilient such a position is against political games and maneuvering, compared to a position that is based in subjective or differences of opinion-based matters (where the each side may have legitimate claims that have to be weighed).

When some issue draws heavily on subjective factors, you play games like this and you will lose against people who are more politically skilled than you.

But in this case, right makes might. I love it.

Fauci saying that masks are not effective protection from coronavirus:

https://streamable.com/oml2rf

I'm not sure it's so cut and dry that he's resilient to political games.

I follow right wing groups to understand the cognitive structure they use to understand the world and new events, and they're currently comparing him to Josef Mengele.

Well, let me qualify my remarks to limit to those people whose opinions are worthy of respect, and can hold sway over other reasonable people.

I don't know what the opinions of these groups are that you mention, but in this case they sound fringe to the point of being ridiculous. I hope. I really hope.

Btw, is there somewhere (non-gross) to read about such theories being circulated? Maybe my deeper interest is, what does someone's life have to be like to be receptive to these kinds of ideas? And how do we fix it?

This is very depressing.

How right wing, we talking dailystormer?

They might actually like Mengele there.

They’d still happily wield him as a rhetorical cudgel, probably, though.

Are these groups active in the QAnon LARP?

As an outsider watching this stuff happening it is always exciting but predictable. This is the end of Fauci, the narrative is being told, he is on his way out.

I don't believe that he's an appointee of the President, so it's not clear to me where things go from here. If the White House can fire him, they will, but can they?

Surely it hurts quite a bit more than "only the president"?

I'm reading it as "(only) (hurts the President)," not "(only hurts) (the President)."

From the article:

> “Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that,” Fauci told The Atlantic in a series of interviews this week. “When the staff lets out something like that and the entire scientific and press community push back on it, it ultimately hurts the president.”

There is always 2 sides to every story.

Here is an op-ed from a top level cabinet official coming straight at him. Specifically stating Dr Fauci has been wrong at every major call.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/07/...

As with everything, it would seem that the truth is somewhere in-between.

Skepticism seems to be the order of the day

> As with everything, it would seem that the truth is somewhere in-between.

I hate this sentiment. I agree it's largely true, but it makes a large difference whether that `correct point' is halfway in between or 95% on one side.

Whether your intention or not, naively suggesting the truth is in the middle without any further clarification comes across as a cheap political ploy.

The first link in the article you provide - the one which says that Fauci fought against the president wanting to ban flights from China - says the exact opposite - that no, Fauci, did not fight the president ie, Fauci supported banning flights from China.

Just because two people say different things doesn't mean the truth is in the middle. One side can just be completely full of it.

Did you click the links in the op-ed? Almost every claim is false, and the rest are inaccurate at best.

The only claim that wasn't refuted in the links was the Henry Ford Hydroxychloroquine study. Here's more context on that: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/07/navarro-doesnt-give-full-p...

> However, several of Navarro’s criticisms of Fauci — on the China travel restrictions, the risk from the coronavirus and falling mortality rates — were misleading or lacked context. As such, Navarro’s op-ed did not meet USA TODAY’s fact-checking standards.

And then there's the misinterpretations of "lack of evidence" and hindsight bias.

If you say water freezes a 0 degrees celcius and I say it freezes at 100 degrees, that doesn't mean it freezes at 50 degrees.

This sentiment of "there must be two sides that should be equally weighed" is absolute rubbish. It'd doesn't work for creationism vs. Science and it doesn't work in Trumps Administration vs. Science.

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