As Dr. Anthony Fauci has become “uninvited” to President Donald Trump solo-act White House coronavirus task force daily briefings, thousands of public health experts have written a letter to express their support for the longtime infectious disease leader.
“This week and last, the White House mounted a campaign to discredit one of our nation’s leading scientific experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has advised six Presidents on epidemics from HIV to SARS, from Ebola to H1N1 influenza,” a letter from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, signed by almost 3,500 experts, read.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, he has remained one of the world’s most trusted scientists on COVID-19, daily explaining in lay terms the complexity of an illness we still don’t fully understand. And he has done so by placing science front and center in the public discourse.
“Attempting to marginalize highly respected researchers such as Dr. Fauci is a dangerous distraction at a time when we most need voices like his.”
Trump has called Dr. Fauci “an alarmist” and White House trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro wrote an independent rebuke of Fauci for being “wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”
The letter sent to Trump was drafted by former FDA Associate Commissioner Dr. Peter Lurie, now President of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and epidemiologist and longtime AIDS activist Gregg Gonsalves of the Yale School of Public Health.
The letter was circulated Friday night before Trump made public remarks about Fauci and went ahead with resuming the coronavirus task force daily briefings this week, without health experts and administration officials on the task force, including the designed head, Vice President Mike Pence.Related Stories:
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