House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) said in an op-ed on Saturday that Dr. Tony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx should no longer be the “primary voices at the table” advising the president on the coronavirus response.
They cited both Fauci and Birx’s alarming models that later proved not to be accurate, as well as statements that seemed insensitive to Americans who are suffering from the shutdown of the nation’s economy.
Fauci’s comment that the shutdown is “inconvenient from a societal standpoint, from an economic standpoint,” revealed a “special degree of tone deafness,” they wrote in the Washington Examiner.
Biggs and Buck wrote:
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.
Biggs and Buck noted how the models Fauci has relied on are “panic-inducing” and wrong.
“The question is whether the medicine he prescribed will prove to be more harmful than the disease in the long term,” they wrote, echoing President Trump.
“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,” they wrote.
They called coronavirus-related deaths “tragic,” but said the nation must also remember that millions of people have had their lives and livelihoods permanently altered because of the government response.
They also noted that Birx admitted that they are counting all deaths as related to coronavirus deaths, regardless of whether there were other health issues that contributed to the death.
“It almost sounds as if she is trying to boost the fatality rate,” they wrote.
They noted that Birx did not want to open up the country in the case of a “second time around” for the virus. They wrote:
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. Has she considered the loss of life-savings, businesses, and capital?
They said Fauci and his team of experts deserve some credit for mitigating the spread of this virus, but “they should no longer be the primary voices at the table.”
“Fauci and Birx have indicated pretty strongly that they do not consider the greater needs of the country,” they wrote. “It is time to open the country and protect the most vulnerable in a targeted way.”
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