A voice of reason in a time of chaos
We are in search of heroes. One of those mythical, largerthan-life figures who dominates the room when he - or she - arrives.
How ironic that we would find one in a petite, 79-year-old man.
He does not carry a sword or a shield. He is not exactly swashbuckling. He has no superpowers.
Other than a calm, reassuring manner meant to soothe a nation’s battered psyche.
From the beginning of this coronavirus pandemic, which has now infected more than 188,000 Americans and snuffed out 4,000 lives, Dr. Anthony Fauci has not pulled any punches, offering a consistent warning of what was coming.
At first his warnings seemed at odds with the message emanating from the White House, which for weeks seemed to downplay the COVID-19 threat.
That division evaporated yesterday, as President Trump delivered a brutal prognosis to an already shell-shocked nation largely relegated to staying inside their home.
A grim commander-in-chief stared into cameras and delivered the stark news: We’re in for a “hell of a bad two weeks.” And that was the best-case scenario, even if the nation continues to stay at home and practice social distancing when they do venture out.
The White House offered new statistics projecting anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 Americans could die in what is shaping up as the worst U.S. health emergency since World War II. Consider that we lost 53,000 American lives during World War I. In World War II, 291,000 Americans fell on the battlefield. The high end of the numbers projected by the White House Tuesday could approach that level.
The president referred to the crisis as a “matter of life and death.”
This time there was no sugarcoating the message from the White House, no effort to downplay the seriousness of what we face, nor the importance of maintaining the strict practices that have confined much of the nation to our homes for weeks.
“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” Trump said. “This is going to be one of the roughest two or three weeks we’ve ever had in our country. We’re going to lose thousands of people.”
The message stood in stark contrast to the words that emanated from Trump’s White House just last week, in which he hinted that he wanted to see the country return to some form of normal and “pack the pews” for Easter Sunday. The president later adjusted that message, saying it was merely aspirational.
There were no such niceties Tuesday.
“This could be hell of a bad two weeks,’” Trump said. He added: “You know 100,000 is, according to modeling, a very low number. In fact, when I first saw the number ... they said it was unlikely you’ll be able to attain that. We have to see but I think we’re doing better than that.”
So where do we go from here? Nowhere.
We continue to stay home. We continue to practice social distancing.
And again it was Fauci, the government’s minute top infectious disease expert, whose stoic voice carried the loudest message.
“Now is the time to put your foot on the accelerator,” Fauci urged as a way of reminding the nation now is not the time to ease up on our precautions during the jaw-dropping two-hour White House press briefing.
Fauci, calling the numbers “sobering,” stressed that the measures put in place are working, even as we see the numbers of infections and deaths rising, but we must not ease up if we are to have any chance of mitigating the coronavirus
“We are continuing to see things go up,” Fauci said. “We cannot be discouraged by that because the mitigation is actually working and will work.”
His words were echoed by his cohort, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force.
Both gave evidence of the starkly different tone coming out of the White House, making note of just how bad things could be, while also offering hope that consistent mitigation efforts could less the horrific loss.
“We really believe we can do a lot better than that,” Birx said. Fauci concurred.
“This is a number that we need to anticipate, but we don’t necessarily have to accept it as being inevitable,” he said.
The novel coronavirus, which originated in the city of Wuhan, China, in December, has sickened hundreds of thousands as it spread across the globe. COVID-19, the illness resulting from the virus, was first diagnosed in the United States on Jan. 21.
It probably took longer than it should have, but it became clear yesterday that the stoic warnings being offered by Fauci were finally being embraced by the White House.
We thank Fauci for his noholds-barred demeanor, for his calm, reassuring tenor that even in our darkest moments, even that there is hope of alleviating the toll.
He said it more than a month ago, and it rings more true today than ever.
We’re in for the fight of our lives.