Fauci drops out of White House Correspondents Dinner over COVID concerns

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The White House Correspondents' Dinner is back, but Dr. Anthony Fauci will no longer be there.

President Biden's chief medical adviser was planning to attend the dinner on Saturday as a guest of ABC News, but he will no longer do so due to COVID concerns, CNN reports. Fauci told The New York Times he decided to drop out "because of my individual assessment of my personal risk."

The White House Correspondents Dinner gathers journalists and politicians each year, but it hasn't been held since 2019 because of the pandemic. The Daily Show's Trevor Noah is set to host this year. It's tradition for the president to attend, and although former President Donald Trump repeatedly skipped the dinner during his administration, President Biden is planning to go.

Still, after Fauci pulled out, Politico wondered if Biden would do the same or if he'd be "disagreeing with his chief medical adviser" by still going. Fauci, 81, is only two years older than Biden, 79. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that "just like many Americans," Biden "makes risk assessments," adding, "That's an event he's attended many times in the past, and he made a decision through consultations that it was an event he could attend and wanted to attend again."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fauci-drops-white-house-correspondents-150802032.html

[JohnSJ]

1. I don't think President Biden should go either at this critical time

[FarPoint]

2. Could they not just reschedule?

I'm glad it is back but lets play things safe.

[Omnipresent]

3. They should have invited tfg....

And told him, he was going to receive a prestigious award.

[HUAJIAO]

4. One day Fauci says we are finished with the pandemic. The next day he says we're not.

[Ohio Joe]

5. Him being a critical part of the show, that is the only way to take what he actually said...

[Ms. Toad]

6. Watch what I do, not what I say . . .

I got attacked yesterday for expressing disappoinment at his assertion that the pandemic is over. It is incorrect, on its face, since the determination that something is a pandemic is not based on the status in a single country. Further, it provides an out for pandemic-weary individuals who are looking to be able to cite an authority to justify abandoning critical public health measures which are directed to minimizing transmission.

And, today - by his actions, Dr. Fauci confirms I was right. This action is even stronger because he is not only saying he will go, but take precautions (e.g. wearing a mask and not consuming food or drink) - he is saying it is not safe for him to go at all.

I am glad he is acting responsibly, but I wish his actions matched his public pronouncements.

[HUAJIAO]

7. I agree with you 100%.

In my view he is not the best "public voice' for this situation and never has been.
That is not to say I don't admire his expertise. Just too much politics involved.. like last spring when he and the CDC we're saying masking is a 'choice.'

[Ms. Toad]

8. Yup.

He works from the premise that (1) we are all good at assessing personal risk, and acting in our own best interests and (2) we are all interested in caring not only for ourselves, but also for others. So when he issues advice about individual risks (e.g. at the time he made the announcement, there were individuals for whom mask wearing was not personally necessary), he is then shocked, and has to walk it back, when his assessment related to personal risk is taken as a general statement that we can toss our masks.

The other difference I have with him seems to be that I have never had the luxury of waiting until the science is settled to make decisions about health care for my family or me. I have had to develop skill sets which allow me to assess the strengths/weaknessess of correlative or even case studies, put the results from multiple such peeks into the great unknown together, make a decision about the care for the rare disease I'm dealing with, and move on.

He is used to speaking cautiously until there is more robust data available. So while I reviewed and assessed what was available early on (March 2020) about COVID transmission and mask wearing and came to the conclusions that

(1) masks are helpful for both (a) minimizing risk to those around the wearer AND (b) the wearer and

(2) that the main mode of transmission was aerosolized particles which meant that (a) wearing masks was more important than 6', and (b) infection can occur for some period of time after the infected person left the room - so mask wearing even when you are in a room alone is important if it was recently occupied by someone else.

Dr. Fauci ultimately arrived at those same conclusions - but only after waiting for more data to confirm the initial less robust studies I relied on.

As I said - because I've never had the luxury of waiting for better data before I acted to protect myself or members of my family, I got there first. For example, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer a little over a year ago. It is rare, and even rarer to diagnose as early as I was diagnosed. In the 3-month window to decide on radiation v. no radiation, I had to base my decision on the handful of case studies then available - I didn't have the luxury of waiting for more robust studies. Because I collect medical unicorns, I have had to make similar decisions - with similarly sparse peer-reviewed studies - on similar timelines repeatedly.

The pandemic with a brand new disease created the need for public medical voices to be able to make similar decisions to inform public policy with similarly sparse robust studies. The general medical posture is to maintain the status quo until we learn enough to justify a change. Dr. Fauci and others were acting with that perspective: a presumption that the transmition involved a significant fomite (contact) component (it does not), that it is not aerosolized (it is), and that masks play a very minimal role in transmission (because of the presumed fomite/droplet transmission occurs mainly when we touch a contaminated surface and then our eyes, nose, ore moth - and at very close distances).

From my perspective, with - what is obviously a highly contagious disease - the presumption should be that we need to be more cautious, rather than less (assume it transmits both by surface contact and droplets AND is also aerosolized (as evidence available around March 2020 suggested)). As we learn more, we can ease off on precautions which we determine are less effective (i.e. hand to mouth transmission is uncommon, if not rare, so we can stop wearing gloves all the time, we can stop leaving our veggies in the garage for 24 hours, etc.)

[HUAJIAO]

10. Well stated.

Even back in mid and late March 2020 I was doing all the googling I could to find out what infectious disease experts were doing, saying, discovering. I had 3M N95 masks probably before most people-- before there was the run on 3M.

The Japanese, Chinese, South Koreans all knew very well that masks help mitigate the spread of both droplets and aerosols (given the right mask) for both the wearer and others. Yet there were arguments in the West about it.

I live in the Finger Lakes region of Up-State NY which now has the highest infection rates in the country!, Yet, almost nothing is being done about it. Fortunately the hospitalization rates are not that high yet but are growing. Very few people wear masks...

Anyway..

Hope your cancer is in remission..

[BlackSkimmer]

14. I know I'm alone here on this.

But I’m not a fan of his, and I haven’t been since the very early days.

[Ms. Toad]

15. I'm not a fan of him in this role.

I have a lot of respect for his medical expertise, but far too many of his pronouncements as to COVID appear to either been based on the assumption that we each believe the community will choose to take care of those most medically fragile and will do the right thing - or - have been influenced by politics.

[BlackSkimmer]

16. You put that much more diplomatically than I would.

But well said.

[vanlassie]

9. Link?

[HUAJIAO]

11. Just a few days ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/27/pandemic-phase-over-fauci-covid/

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-04-28/fauci-walks-back-coronavirus-comments-says-pandemic-not-over-in-u-s

[vanlassie]

12. Hmmm.......

“We’re really in a transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity,” Fauci told The Washington Post.

I guess this was way too much nuance for some? You, for example seem to see a flip- flop? Here’s a blunt comment: Fauci will always be deliberately misinterpreted by MAGAs.