(Economic Policy Journal) Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Ken Buck (Colo.) criticized Anthony Fauci, Trump’s top COVID-19 adviser, for the impact his recommendations have had on the country, claiming that the stay-at-home policies informed by his recommendations have forced businesses, workers and corporations into economic turmoil.
“For Fauci, is it merely a societal or economic inconvenience that about 17 million workers are unemployed because of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, with many more to come in the weeks and months ahead? The economic calamity lies largely with the origination of policies resulting from Fauci’s recommendations,” the lawmakers wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Examiner published Saturday.
Here are key snippets:
Fauci has admitted that the models he relies on are unreliable. The models, and their panic-inducing projections, have seemingly been revised down every couple of days. Fauci insists this because of his policy prescriptions, but time and data from the United States and other nations will reveal whether that is true.
We have heard Fauci say the economic cost and societal impacts of his policies were not considered when he devised his epidemic response plan. But the question is whether the medicine he prescribed will prove to be more harmful than the disease in the long term.
Many businesses have been shuttered forever. It will be almost impossible for countless other small businesses to reopen once the government gives the all-clear for the economy to restart...
Fauci and his team insisted that the best-case outcome for the virus was between 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities stemming from the coronavirus. But that was before the number was revised down to 75,000. And, that was before it was revised down again to 60,000. Surely, more revisions are to come.
Case fatality rates include all deaths of anyone with COVID-19, or the symptoms of the virus. These are classified as a virus-caused death regardless of other health issues that might have contributed to the death. This method of counting is promulgated by Fauci’s associate Deborah Birx. It almost sounds as if she is trying to boost the fatality rate.
Birx also recently indicated that we should not open up the country yet because there might be a second time around for the virus. Has she considered the economic destruction she is content with wreaking on the nation? One wonders if she has thought about the emotional toll — the suicides, the increase in domestic and child abuse, drug and alcohol dependence, and a host of additional societal pathologies.
