Wednesday, November 27, 2024

What did Donald Trump do today?

He found a public health official who will never contradict him.

Today, Trump announced that he would nominate Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the country's biomedical and public health research agency. It plays a major role in setting public health policy, communicating about health issues to the public, and responding to disease outbreaks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump was repeatedly infuriated by his own public health officials' unwillingness to simply agree that the pandemic was no threat, or that it would go away on its own, or—once Americans had already started dying by the tens of thousands—that miracle cures were somehow already available

In particular, Anthony Fauci—at the time, Director of the NIAID and so a key part of any disease outbreak response—seemed to enrage Trump with his unwillingness to let COVID misinformation go unchallenged, even if it had just come directly from Trump himself. As this site noted in May of 2020:
Fauci has been forced to publicly contradict Trump a number of times. In response, Trump has tried to limit Fauci's public appearances outside of the White House briefings. He's also sidelined Fauci from certain briefings where reporters were likely to ask questions where Fauci's answers would embarrass him. For example, Fauci was kept away from most of the briefings in the immediate aftermath of the debacle where Trump wondered aloud if injecting household disinfectants might cure the virus. Trump has even jumped in front of the White House podium to physically prevent Fauci from answering questions that would require him to contradict Trump.

As a result, Trump encouraged his political supporters to attack Fauci and other public health officials even while they were still fighting the outbreak—and, in the case of unpopular but necessary control measures like school closures, while the Trump administration was still following their advice.

Bhattacharya was one of a number of figures who rose to prominence as "COVID skeptics," gaining traction within the Trump political movement through a willingness to attack Fauci and other public health officials. His résumé is scant—he's never practiced as a physician and he has no experience managing even a small organization, much less an agency with a $48 billion budget—but the fact that he was saying along with Trump even in the first stages of the outbreak that no real response was necessary seems to have endeared him.

In particular, Bhattacharya said in March 2020 that he expected COVID would only kill 20,000 Americans—comparable to a flu season—and that the much grimmer forecasts were off by "orders of magnitude." He then embarked on a years-long campaign to discredit Fauci and other federal public health officials. His preferred strategy, which Trump endorsed too, was "herd immunity"—in essence, allowing the disease to run completely unchecked until enough of the survivors had immunity that it could spread no further.

COVID has killed 1.2 million Americans.

Why does this matter?

  • The job of public health officials is to protect the public health, not the president's feelings.
  • Any job where American lives are at stake is too important to give to an unqualified political crony.