Tangle - Dr. Fauci retires.

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Dr. Fauci retires, some changes to Tangle, and a recap of last night's midterm results.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is retiring. Obviously very big news after decades leading many of the important medical public-facing agencies in the United States. We also have some updates from last night's midterm results

and a couple changes coming to Tangle, which we will jump into right now. First, I want to make a note relevant to the podcast. We are officially changing the name of the Story That Matters section to Under the Radar. I've heard from quite a few listeners and readers who have basically just said, you know, calling something a story that matters makes everything else seem less important. I got an email about it this week. It was probably like the 10th email I've gotten about it. And I finally just said, you know what? This is right. I think it is a bad name for a section. So we're changing that one to, if you are someone who reads the newsletter and listens to the podcast, you'll notice in the

newsletter, we're going to start leveraging bold fonts more to kind of highlight the must read sections of the newsletter. So people who are short on time can skim it better. If you're just a podcast listener, that change is kind of irrelevant to you. But I always pledge to incorporate reader and listener feedback to make adjustments to our product. That is something I hope I will always do. And these are just some minor changes thanks to your great feedback. So I appreciate it. Keep it coming. And just wanted to give you a heads up. With that, we'll jump into our quick hits for the day. And just wanted to give you a heads up.

With that, we'll jump into our quick hits for the day. First up, today marks six months since the war in Ukraine began and also 31 years of Ukraine's independence. Number two, President Biden is expected to announce $10,000 of student loan cancellation for borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year. The highly anticipated move comes after months of deliberation by the White House on whether to pursue student loan cancellation. 3. A judge sentenced Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, to five days in jail for a DUI. He will receive two days of credit for time served and two days

for good conduct and will serve his remaining one day through a court work program. Number four, two men were convicted for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Number five, life expectancy in the U.S. fell in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. from 2019 to 2020. And a bonus, we will have a midterm recap in place of our reader question today, so stay tuned for that in a moment. In Fauci, we trust. Dr. Anthony Fauci made it official today. He revealed that after half a century, serving in government, he's going to be stepping down in December.

Unless you do your research on Twitter, you know that the American people have many, many questions about how Dr. Fauci, other public health officials and our government handle the pandemic. It's never really a good time to leave, but you have to leave sometime. I have been wanting to pursue another chapter in my career, as you mentioned a bit ago, because I've been wanting to do things outside of the government, particularly to do things, be they lecture or write or get involved in situations where I can serve as hope and inspiration to encourage young people to go into public service. On Monday, Dr. Fauci announced that he will be stepping down in December.

Fauci's plan to retirement from government was initially reported in July, but the 81-year-old immunologist made it official this week. Fauci is currently serving as Biden's chief medical advisor and the government's top infectious disease official and is best known for navigating America's COVID-19 response under two administrations. He heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is chief of NIAID's Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He will be stepping down from all three positions simultaneously. Fauci's departure comes at a time when COVID-19 cases remain high and the Biden administration attempts to pivot to meet the public's changing sentiments on how to handle the

nation's response. As we covered on Monday, the CDC has relaxed COVID-19 guidelines while its director has called for re-evaluating the organization after its floundering initial response to COVID. Fauci's retirement follows the resignation of Jeffrey Zients, another top White House pandemic official who left earlier this year. As he leaves his position in the U.S. government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr. Fauci's expertise in whatever he does next, President Biden said in a statement. Whether you've met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans' lives with his work. Fauci led the NIAID under seven different presidents over the course of nearly four decades. Before COVID-19, he was a highly regarded figure across the political spectrum and best known for his work on HIV and AIDS. During the pandemic, however, Fauci became a

very divisive figure. Democrats praised him for what they viewed as realistic outlooks on the virus, often undercutting a more rosy picture put out by the Trump White House. Republicans became deeply critical of him, however, saying he overstated the authority government agencies had to enforce mandates and social distancing measures and offered contradictory directions on mask wearing. Over time, he was also criticized for not recognizing, as many other epidemiologists didn't, that asymptomatic people were the primary spreaders of the virus early on. In 2020, Fauci had to begin traveling with an armed security team after a series of death threats. Today, we're going to hear some arguments from the left and the right about Fauci's retirement and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is

saying. The left praises Fauci's career, saying he leaves a strong legacy behind. Some argue that his advice on COVID-19 was mostly on the mark, even if he got a few things wrong. Others say Fauci managed to deftly navigate the politics of Washington, D.C. while trying to keep the focus on public health. In Market Watch, Paul Brandes said Fauci's advice was always on the mark. During the pandemic, which, by the way, is still linked to nearly 500 U.S. deaths a day and shows signs of picking up steam again with the so-called BA.5 sub-variant, Fauci came under fierce criticism from armchair Twitter critics and politicians who considered themselves more knowledgeable and experienced

on matters of infectious diseases than he was, Brandis said. For his efforts to help save lives, this dedicated public servant and his family were harassed and targeted with vile and vicious death threats. What a sad commentary on our increasingly sick society. And I don't mean sick as in the sniffles. That an experienced doctor trying to save lives had to be assigned security guards. All because he gave people the same common sense advice he gave me so many years ago. Practice preventative care. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Social distancing. His critics, often viewing all this through the lens not of medicine but political loyalty, said he was an idiot, Brandis wrote.

I'm sure you can recall reading stories about people who said it was all a hoax right up to the moment they were intubated. He never backed down. You gotta effing suck it up, he told the Washington Post in June. At age 81, he could have retired decades ago. He could have cashed out and made millions in the private sector. But his commitment to keep on trying to make a difference is such that even today, he works 12 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. This energizer bunny of a man simply has never slowed down. And yet there are those among us who have brought into the fake news claptrap that government workers are a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings.

In the New York Times, Dr. Greg Gonsalves said Fauci's legacy is one of progress. COVID-19 caught the attention of politicians, and not in a good way. For decades, Dr. Fauci and other scientists could advise presidents, even sway them on occasion, because so little was at stake politically for these leaders, he wrote. But with Mr. Trump and President Biden, too much was riding on their short-term political fortunes to indulge scientific and public health evidence and advice too much for too long. With the election of Mr. Biden, many in public health had hoped for someone to lead with the science. But soon,

pollsters were urging his administration to take the win over COVID-19, declare the crisis over, stop talking about mitigation efforts, and get people to understand that COVID would simply be with us for a long time. If the age of Dr. Fauci was one in which we looked forward to progress, even if always piecemeal, the current era is one age of we have the tools. It is a distinct new pessimism of spirit, cynicism of the will, born of the hubris of some physicians but mostly of the political calculations of others, that doing more on this pandemic is untenable, he said. The sound you hear is the thud of resignation in the face of the suffering of so many over the past two and a half years, and a summer in which we add hundreds to the dead every day in the United States. In the darkest days of the AIDS

epidemic, Dr. Fauci never gave up. We should all have his resolve and commitment, even if Dr. Fauci lives in a world of dire constraints, of the men and women of politics who dream small and think about the next election always, rather than the nature and qualities of their legacies, of which Dr. Fauci's is assuredly great. In CNN, Ken Sepkowitz wrote about what made Fauci a great leader. After more than 50 years in public service, I imagine Fauci was tired of all the current COVID-19 noise and death threats, as well as the tedious discussions that characterize all bureaucratic jobs, much less the ludicrous accusations that he was cashing in on the pandemic and therefore sought to prolong it, Sepko had said. Though fit as a fiddle, he is probably, as he admitted to the Washington Post recently, starting to feel his age. He'll be 82 in December. But I doubt strongly he gave up

because he was frightened or intimidated. After all, Fauci has spent decades in the public eye and has previously been the recipient of seemingly endless criticism, but nevertheless, he has always persisted. Fauci's crime, according to a critical piece of the public, appeared to be that he tried to guess what was coming next from a never-before-seen pandemic, Sepkowitz wrote. When he was wrong, he was accused of misleading the public. Many, it seems, expected Fauci to be a fortune teller and failed to recognize that all medical experts are tasked with making their best judgment calls when faced with uncertainty. Some of those calls will inevitably turn out to be incorrect.

And now, with the pandemic maybe starting to recede, he has decided to move on. When COVID-19 goes down in the history books, what likely will stick out about Fauci's leadership will not be his intelligence, doggedness, and humbling work ethic, but rather this. He is a true believer in the importance of improving the public's health, even at a personal cost. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is critical of Fauci, saying he misled the public and got a lot of things wrong. Many call for investigations into his time leading the COVID-19 pandemic response. Others hope he simply fades away quietly.

In The Federalist, David Arsani said perhaps no person in American history has done more to harm trust in public health than Anthony Fauci. And it's not merely his aggressive inaccuracy about the COVID pandemic or even his championing of authoritarian policies that created untold damage to American life, Arsani said. All of that is bad enough. But as Fauci transformed into a political operative, he regularly lied to the American people and led the political suppression of debate. In October of 2020, three scientists, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard and J. Bhattacharya of Stanford, released the Great Barrington Declaration, a document that rejected the damaging physical and mental health impacts

of a Fauci in lockdown for a more focused protection of high-risk populations. In December of 2021, the American Institute for Economic Research obtained emails between Fauci and Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institute of Health. In them, we learned that the duo had conspired to smear those dissenting scientists. And this wasn't the first time Fauci had conspired with Collins to shut down debate. Another batch of emails revealed that the duo colluded to quash any talk of COVID being man-made and possibly leaked from a Wuhan lab. Anyone who brought up the notion would soon be discredited as a racist and nut, a spreader of disinformation, he said. In the early days of the pandemic, Fauci kept citing the estimate of 60-70% vaccination level for reaching herd immunity.

60-70% vaccination level for reaching herd immunity. Later, he claimed it would be 70-75%, and finally 75-80-85%. Fauci later admitted lying about that as well because polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine. But don't worry, none of it ever came to fruition. In National Review, the editors said good riddance. No doubt Fauci attracted more than his share of unhinged criticism. But the national media loved to focus on the unhinged conspiracy theorists and the garden variety nutjobs and death threats against Fauci because it helped discredit the much fairer, more legitimate questioning of Fauci's advice and decision making, the editors said. One of Fauci's first pieces of advice during the pandemic was to discourage Americans from wearing masks,

declaring in a March 8th interview with 60 Minutes, there's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little better, and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often there are unintended consequences. People keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face. The problem isn't that Fauci changed his mind as masks became more widely available. It's that he never really addressed his previous declarations that they were ineffective,

declarations that apparently he didn't believe, they said. Fauci didn't create the anti-masking sentiment in American life, but his quick reversal fed the suspicion that wearing masks was more about public perceptions than empirical evidence. Those who were paying close attention noticed that Fauci kept shifting his assessment of the percentage needed to reach herd immunity from the virus. Fauci's emails suggested that he had a symbiotic relationship with adoring reporters. He offered evasive answers about the U.S. taxpayer money financing gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and he offered a full-thro taxpayer money financing gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute

of Virology, and he offered a full-throated defense of gain-of-function research, which looks a little different in the aftermath of a global pandemic that killed millions. In the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney said he hopes Fauci will just fade away. I'm probably less anti-Fauci than the average conservative. In fact, early on, I publicly defended the guy. I believe celebrity damaged him. I also believe that his constant public proclamations, tainted by politics and calibrated for an infectious disease specialist rather than for a policymaker or spokesman, harm the credibility of and respect for the public health establishment, Carney wrote. Fauci, if he wants the people's trust in public health to

rebound, should gracefully disappear from the public spotlight. The first thing he should not do is to cash out to industry. I'm sure Pfizer or 3M or GE Healthcare would love to hire Fauci or add him to the board. I'm sure some consulting firm could rake in lucrative clientele if it hired him. But going to work for profit-seeking health interests will have three harmful effects, Carney said. Fauci will cast increased suspicion on his past actions if he takes a high-paying gig from any medical company that profited from his past actions and recommendations.

The vaccine or mass manufacturers are the obvious examples here. Fauci will send a message to his successors that there are industry jobs waiting on the other side, which would, at least subconsciously, influence the actions of his successors. Fauci will cast massive suspicion on the actions of his successors for the two reasons stated above. It's a free country, and Fauci is free to take whatever job he likes. There's nothing wrong in itself with getting rich. But, in this case, pursuing his maximum profit is harming the cause with which he has dedicated his career. Alright, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. So, a reminder, my take is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion,

and it is meant to be one perspective amid many others. If you have feedback, criticism, or compliments, you can always reply to our newsletter and write in, or if you're a paying subscriber, you can comment on our articles. So, in the interest of fairness, let me start with the positive. Fauci's career is storied. By any objective measure, working until you're 81 years old and ending your career at the top is something to be admired. In the interest of clear headed thinking, if you remove COVID from the picture, Fauci has undoubtedly had a gargantuan and positive impact on the U.S. and the planet. He was on the front lines of the public health responses to AIDS, anthrax, Zika, and Ebola, and the research and treatments he's led have benefited millions not just in the

U.S., but abroad too. He managed this under seven different administrations, with a huge variety of political views, pressures, and environments. I also don't envy his position. Being the public-facing medical advisor to America is clearly not an easy job. We are, my friends, bless our hearts, a rowdy, independent-minded, disobedient bunch. It's in our spirit. Americans don't like being told what to do and never have, doubly so when the instructions create minor or major inconveniences in our lives. Fauci had the unenviable task of delivering those instructions regularly to hundreds of millions of people who all had the internet at their hands to inquire about his evidence and motives. I would have no interest in a job like that. And unfortunately for Fauci, great figures are always measured by what they do in their biggest moments,

and removing COVID from his legacy is not an option. His failures during the pandemic, along with the relationship between his career and the potential origins of the virus, will rightly be a lasting part of his legacy. The obvious mistakes are highlighted above. Fauci misled the public early on about masks because he was concerned that public hoarding of masks would hurt healthcare workers. Like other experts in his field, he was also slow to realize that the virus was spreading among asymptomatic people, a fact that helped unleash the worst of the pandemic early on. He was wrong

about remdesivir, which he hoped and predicted would be the standard of care but is now being recommended against by the World Health Organization. He was wrong about it being a pandemic of the unvaccinated. He was wrong that people who are vaccinated can feel safe they're not going to get infected. Yes, the scientific consensus has changed, but as Fauci himself somewhat arrogantly noted, Fauci represents the science. He is the one we rely on to get this stuff right. Fauci represents the science. He is the one we rely on to get this stuff right. And in reflecting on the things he got wrong, his view is that we should have had much, much more stringent lockdowns. Given the incredible toll lockdowns and vaccine mandates had on children's health, mental health, addicts, and the economy, and all for uncertain gains in

containing the virus, that kind of self-reflection is a hard pill to swallow. With hindsight, a much more compelling argument could be made that what we should have done was focus almost entirely on isolating and protecting the elderly and immunocompromised, who were, and still are, exponentially more at risk from COVID than any other group of Americans. His reputation as a straight shooter has also been undermined by his own public comments. He conceded himself that he intentionally misled Americans about the levels of herd immunity America would need to reach in order to drop the pandemic restrictions. His numbers change repeatedly. As the Times put it, quote, he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goalposts. He is doing so, he said,

partly based on new science and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks. This would have been a bigger deal had Fauci not had such a chummy relationship with reporters in the mainstream press who openly traded kid-glove reporting for access. In front of Congress, he was evasive and misleading about gain-of-function research in Wuhan, which he has supported and driven funding to. Fauci has repeatedly denied that this research, which makes viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in order to study them, was happening at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While there is still no link between that research and the COVID-19 outbreak,

he either doesn't know what is happening at the organization he leads or was lying under oath about the research. There is really no other option. The Intercept, who produced documents proving this research took place, had to sue to get them. Of course, it's not just what Fauci did, but also what he didn't do. He didn't spend nearly enough time reassuring parents that their kids were very unlikely to get seriously ill. He didn't push for schools to open sooner when the science was clear that it would be safe and manageable for kids. He didn't combat absurd restrictions on outdoor life, even though outdoor transmission almost never happens. A year into the pandemic, I got a ticket for walking by myself down a beach in Los Angeles without a mask. He didn't treat people who had the

virus similarly to those who had been vaccinated, despite us long having the evidence that their immunity levels were similar. I'm no epidemiologist, but the sum total of the pandemic, the response to which Fauci led, seems like we basically got the worst of both worlds. Economic collapse and a deadly pandemic. Widespread restrictions, massive death tolls, severe economic damage, a far more divided country, and untold collateral damage from those restrictions. It's impossible to say how much of this was truly unavoidable or even what a best-case scenario could have been, but I think it's fair to say that Fauci's failings were numerous and his public-facing comments were not always forthcoming and the outcomes were abysmal. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to the midterm recap. So midterm elections took place in Florida, New York, and Oklahoma yesterday.

As Axios put it, the story of the night appears to be the success of mainstream candidates on both sides. Both progressives and Trump-esque candidates running in House races failed in near-total fashion. In New York, Republican Representative Alex Garbarino, who voted with Democrats on infrastructure, gay marriage, and the January Garbarino, who voted with Democrats on infrastructure, gay marriage, and the January 6th committee, held off a challenge from the right. Nick Langworthy, the state GOP chair, defeated Carl Palladino. In Florida, Republican Representative Daniel Webster beat Laura Loomer, while Corey Mills defeated Representative Anthony Sabatini, who had called for arresting FBI agents. None of the four victors had endorsements from Trump.

On the Democratic side, DCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney easily beat his progressive challenger, Alessandro Biagi. Dan Goldman, who became well-known for his role in Trump's impeachment, prevailed over a field of progressive challengers, including Representative Mondaire Jones. Representative Max Rose beat progressive activist Brittany DeBoros. And finally, Representative Jerry Nadler defeated longtime friend and colleague Representative Carolyn Maloney after the two were drawn into the same district. Maloney had been in Congress for 29 years. The one exception to all this is Maxwell Frost, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed 25-year-old who won the primary in Florida's 10th district and looks primed to become the first member of Congress from Gen Z. Some other notes, in a highly watched Hudson

Valley swing district special election, Democrat Pat Ryan upset his Republican opponent, Mark Molinaro, sparking more commentary about Democrats' midterm momentum. Representative Val Demings, the Democrat from Florida, a former police chief, won her Democratic nomination and will face Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida, for his Senate seat. Former Republican Governor, now Democrat, Charlie Criss won his primary to challenge Governor Ron DeSantis. In Oklahoma, Representative Mark Wayne Mullen won Tuesday's GOP primary runoff, making him the likely replacement of Senator Jim Inhofe, the Republican who is retiring after 30 years in office. Mullen, who was endorsed by Trump, will serve the remaining four years of Inhofe's term if he defeats former Democratic Congresswoman Kendra Horn. Madison Horn, who is not related to Kendra, won the Democratic primary for Oklahoma's other Senate

seat and will now face sitting Senator James Lankford, the Republican, in November. Republican Josh Breachan defeated state Representative Avery Fricks to win the Republican nomination for Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district. That is it for our midterm wrap-up. You can find all those results in today's newsletter. All right, next up is our under the radar story. Laid off workers in today's job market are running into a unique dynamic, the ease with which many are finding new jobs. Companies across major sectors have been announcing mass layoffs due to inflation, cooling demand, and rising interest rates, but the employees they are firing appear to be getting rehired pretty quickly, keeping jobless numbers low. Labor demand is historically high, with two job openings for

every one unemployed person seeking work. The data reflects this trend. While jobless claims are ticking up, continuing claims, which measures people claiming ongoing job benefits, are rising at a much slower rate. The Wall Street Journal has this story and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. Next up is our numbers section. The margin of victory for Democrat Pat Ryan in the special election in New York's 19th district was 3.8%. President Biden's margin of victory in New York's 19th district in 2020 was 1.5%. The percentage by which women have outpaced men in new voting registration in Pennsylvania is 12% since Roe v. Wade fell. The percentage of voters who strongly or somewhat support extending student payment suspensions is 46%. The percentage of voters who strongly or somewhat oppose extending student payment suspensions is 41%. The percentage of voters

who don't know or have no opinion is 13%. The percentage of voters who don't know or have no opinion is 13%. The percentage of Americans who are worried that canceling student loan debt will make inflation worse is 59%. All right, that is it for our numbers section, which brings us to our have a nice day section. Pennsylvania woman Peggy Kohler is 99 years old. That may sound like a lot, but her number of years on this planet is actually one fewer than the number of great grandchildren she now has. Kohler, an only child, recently made headlines for meeting her 100th great grandchild. Kohler got married and had 11 children. Then came 56 grandchildren. And now, the 99-year-old has 100 great-grandkids. She said being an only child was so lonely she always wanted a big family,

and it's tough to argue she didn't accomplish that. Lucky number 100's name? Kohler William Balster, after her now-legendary great-grandmother. ABC7 has the story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for the podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to the episode description and click around. There are links there to do that. You can become a Tangle subscriber or a podcast supporter or donate or just simply tell your friends about Tangle. We need you to spread the word to keep this thing growing.

We'll be right back here same time tomorrow peace our newsletter is written by isaac saul edited by bailey saul sean brady ari weitzman and produced in conjunction with tangle's social media manager magdalena bakova who also helped create our logo the podcast is edited by trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. Bye.