Sunday, January 24, 2021
#Fauci on What Working for Trump Was Really Like
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
From denialism to death threats, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci describes a fraught year as an adviser to President Donald J. Trump on the Covid-19 pandemic.
For almost 40 years, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has held two jobs. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he has run one of the country’s premier research institutions. But he has also been an adviser to seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to, now, Joseph R. Biden Jr., called upon whenever a health crisis looms to brief the administration, address the World Health Organization, testify before Congress or meet with the news media. For Dr. Fauci, 80, the past year has stood out like no other. As the coronavirus ravaged the country, Dr. Fauci’s calm counsel and commitment to hard facts endeared him to millions of Americans. But he also became a villain to millions of others. Trump supporters chanted “Fire Fauci,” and the president mused openly about doing so. He was accused of inventing the virus and of being part of a secret cabal with Bill Gates and George Soros to profit from vaccines. His family received death threats. On Jan. 21, appearing in his first press briefing under the Biden administration, Dr. Fauci described the “liberating feeling” of once again being able to “get up here and talk about what you know — what the evidence, what the science is — and know that’s it, let the science speak.” In an hourlong conversation with The New York Times over the weekend, Dr. Fauci described some of the difficulties, and the toll, of working with President Donald J. Trump. (This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.) When did you first realize things were going wrong between you and President Trump? It coincided very much with the rapid escalation of cases in the northeastern part of the country, particularly the New York metropolitan area. I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was always leaning toward, “Well, it’s not that bad, right?” And I would say, “Yes, it is that bad.” It was almost a reflex response, trying to coax you to minimize it. Not saying, “I want you to minimize it,” but, “Oh, really, was it that bad?” And the other thing that made me really concerned was, it was clear that he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who, people he knew from business, saying, “Hey, I heard about this drug, isn’t it great?” or, “Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal.” And I would try to, you know, calmly explain that you find out if something works by doing an appropriate clinical trial; you get the information, you give it a peer review. And he’d say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this stuff really works.” He would take just as seriously their opinion — based on no data, just anecdote — that something might really be important. It wasn’t just hydroxychloroquine, it was a variety of alternative-medicine-type approaches. It was always, “A guy called me up, a friend of mine from blah, blah, blah.” That’s when my anxiety started to escalate. Did you have any problems with him in the first three years of his presidency? No, he barely knew who I was. The first time I met him was in September 2019, when they asked me to come down to the White House, bring my white coat and stand there as he signed an executive order regarding something about influenza. Then, starting in January, February of 2020, it was an intense involvement going down to the White House very, very frequently.There was a point last February when things changed. Alex Azar was running the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and then suddenly Mike Pence was, and President Trump was at the podium taking the questions and arguing with reporters. What happened? To be totally honest with you, I don’t know. We were having, you know, the standard kind of scientifically based, public-health-based meetings. Then I started getting anxious that this was not going in the right direction — the anecdotally driven situations, the minimization, the president surrounding himself with people saying things that didn’t make any scientific sense. We would say things like: “This is an outbreak. Infectious diseases run their own course unless one does something to intervene.” And then he would get up and start talking about, “It’s going to go away, it’s magical, it’s going to disappear.” That’s when it became clear to me: I’m not going to proactively go out and volunteer my contradiction of what the president said. But he would say something that clearly was not correct, and then a reporter would say, “Well, let’s hear from Dr. Fauci.” I would have to get up and say, “No, I’m sorry, I do not think that is the case.” It isn’t like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK. That’s when I started to get into some trouble. The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I would dare publicly contradict the president. That’s when we started getting into things I felt were unfortunate and somewhat nefarious — namely, allowing Peter Navarro to write an editorial in USA Today saying I’m wrong on most of the things I say. Or to have the White House press office send out a detailed list of things I said that turned out to be not true — all of which were nonsense because they were all true. The very press office that was making decisions as to whether I can go on a TV show or talk to you. Were you ever taken to the woodshed? Did anyone say, “Stop disagreeing with the president”? It wasn’t that. After a TV interview or a story in a major newspaper, someone senior, like Mark Meadows, would call me up expressing concern that I was going out of my way to contradict the president. Did Peter Navarro or Dr. Scott Atlas, another adviser to the president, or anybody else confront you directly? Oh, no. Peter Navarro, for some strange reason, had a thing about me. He came in one day, and he had a whole list of reprints that were completely nonsense. And he says, “How dare you say that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work? I have 25 papers here that says it works!” That’s when we had a little bit of sharp words in the Situation Room. After that, I said I didn’t want to be bothered with him. I don’t like to be confronting people. After he wrote that editorial, the papers wanted me to lash back at him. I didn’t want to do that. Did Mr. Trump himself ever yell at you or say, “What are you doing contradicting me?” There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going, and the president would call me up and say, “Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive.” Did he say why? People were dying. Someone he knew died early on. No. I didn’t get into the whys or anything. He would get on the phone and express disappointment in me that I was not being more positive. He didn’t say, “This is killing the stock market” or “This is killing my chances for re-election”? No, he didn’t do that kind of specificity. He just expressed disappointment. When did the death threats start? Wow. Many, many months ago. In the spring. Hold on — just bear with me. [He consults someone who answers “March 28.”] So there — you got it from the head of my Secret Service detail. That’s when I got protection, so maybe two weeks prior to that. It was the harassment of my wife, and particularly my children, that upset me more than anything else. They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes. How the hell did whoever these assholes were get that information? And there was chatter on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, “Hey, we got to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do about him? He’s hurting the president’s chances.” You know, that kind of right-wing craziness. Were you ever shot at or confronted? No, but one day I got a letter in the mail, I opened it up and a puff of powder came all over my face and my chest. That was very, very disturbing to me and my wife because it was in my office. So I just looked at it all over me and said, “What do I do?” The security detail was there, and they’re very experienced in that. They said, “Don’t move, stay in the room.” And they got the hazmat people. So they came, they sprayed me down and all that. Yeah. It was a benign nothing. But it was frightening. My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was. I looked at it somewhat fatalistically. It had to be one of three things: A hoax. Or anthrax, which meant I’d have to go on Cipro for a month. Or if it was ricin, I was dead, so bye-bye. Was Mr. Trump told? I have no idea. Did you alert anyone around him? As in, “Hey, you’re going to get me killed?” No, no. I didn’t. Who was I going to tell? What good would it be to tell anyone? Also, it was under F.B.I. investigation, and they don’t like you to talk about it. Did anyone close to Mr. Trump ever say, “We were wrong, you were right”? No. No. Even after he got so sick that he had to be flown to Walter Reed hospital? No. Did the president ever ask you for medical advice? No. When he was in Walter Reed and he was getting monoclonal antibodies, he said, “Tony, this really just made a big difference. I feel much, much better. This is really good stuff.” I didn’t want to burst his bubble, but I said, “Well, no, this is an N equals 1. You may have been starting to feel better anyway.” [In scientific literature, an experiment with just one subject is described as “n = 1.”] And he said, “Oh, no, no no, absolutely not. This stuff is really good. It just completely turned me around.” So I figured the better part of valor would be not to argue with him. Was nobody else advising him: “Hey, maybe we ought to pay attention to the science?” Jared Kushner? Mike Pence? There could have been, behind closed doors, but to my knowledge there was not. There was one time — we were in the Oval Office sitting in the chairs around the Resolute Desk. We had this interesting relationship, kind of a New York City camaraderie thing where we kind of liked each other in the sense of “Hey, two guys from New York.” And he was holding forth on some particular intervention, and saying something that clearly was not based on any data or evidence. There were a bunch of people there, and he turned to me and said, “Well, Tony, what do you think?” And I said, you know, I think that’s not true at all because I don’t see any evidence to make you think that that’s the case. And he said, “Oh, well,” and then went on to something else. Then I heard through the grapevine that there were people in the White House who got really surprised, if not offended, that I would dare contradict what the president said in front of everybody. And I was, “Well, he asked me my opinion. What do you want me to say?” But no confrontation? No, he was fine. To his credit, he didn’t get upset at all. Later he joked with crowds about firing you. How did that make you feel? I thought he wasn’t going to do it. I think that’s the way he is. People said, “Oh, weren’t you horrified that the next day you were going to get a call?” I didn’t think at all that he was going to fire me. It was just, you know, Donald Trump being Donald Trump. But then he brought in Scott Atlas and in effect made him your replacement. Well, Scott Atlas was less a replacement for me than a pushing out of Debbie Birx. My day job is that I’m the director of N.I.A.I.D. I would go to the White House, sometimes every day during the intense period, but I was considered an outside person. This is a subtlety that people need to understand. I tried to approach him and say, “Let’s sit down and talk because we obviously have some differences.” His attitude was that he intensively reviews the literature, we may have differences, but he thinks he’s correct. I thought, “OK, fine, I’m not going to invest a lot of time trying to convert this person,” and I just went my own way. But Debbie Birx had to live with this person in the White House every day, so it was much more of a painful situation for her. Did you ever think about quitting? Never. Never. Nope. Weren’t you concerned that you would be blamed for the failures if you didn’t resign? When people just see you standing up there, they sometimes think you’re being complicit in the distortions emanating from the stage. But I felt that if I stepped down, that would leave a void. Someone’s got to not be afraid to speak out the truth. They would try to play down real problems and have a little happy talk about how things are OK. And I would always say, “Wait a minute, hold it folks, this is serious business.” So there was a joke — a friendly joke, you know — that I was the skunk at the picnic. Did your wife ever suggest that you quit?
She brought up that I might want to consider it. She’s an incredibly wise person, knows me better than anybody else in the world, obviously. She said, “Do you want to have a conversation to balance the pros and the cons of what it would accomplish?” And after a conversation, she ultimately agreed with me. I always felt that if I did walk away, the skunk at the picnic would no longer be at the picnic. Even if I wasn’t very effective in changing everybody’s minds, the idea that they knew that nonsense could not be spouted without my pushing back on it, I felt was important. I think in the big picture, I felt it would be better for the country and better for the cause for me to stay, as opposed to walk away. What are you going to do now? Four more years with President Biden? I don’t know. Right now I’m not thinking about how many more years. You know, my whole life professionally has been fighting pandemics, from the very early years of H.I.V., influenza, Ebola, Zika or what have you. This is what I do. We are living through a historic pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t seen in 102 years. I think what I bring to the table is something that’s very much value-added. I want to keep doing it until I see us crushing this outbreak, so that people can get back to normality. And even after then, I’ve left some unfinished business. There’s still H.I.V., to which I’ve devoted the overwhelming proportion of my professional life. I want to continue the work that we’re doing on influenza, on H.I.V., on malaria and tuberculosis. As I said, this is what I do. Let me ask: Do you think Donald Trump cost the country tens or hundreds of thousands of lives? I can’t comment on that. People always ask that and … making the direct connection that way, it becomes very damning. I just want to stay away from that. Sorry. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/health/fauci-trump-covid.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Karima Baloch death: Scholars urge Canada to reconsider diplomatic relations
Waghmar said that there has been a systematic campaign by the Pakistani state elements to "liquidate any and every Baloch voice."
After the mysterious death of Baloch activist Karima Baloch, Tarek Fatah, an author on Pakistani affairs and scholar Burzine Waghmar slammed the crackdown on dissent in Balochistan and urged the Canadian Government to reconsider diplomatic relations with Pakistan. Speaking to a Canadian News outlet recently, Waghmar said that there has been a systematic campaign by the Pakistani state elements to "liquidate any and every Baloch voice." "We have seen nothing official come out of Ottawa on this count. Not even the Pakistani High Commissioner in Ottawa has been called into the foreign ministry for an explication on this. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," he said, while speaking on reactions of Karima's death. He added, "Pakistani intelligence has taken a leaf from Iranian intelligence in targetting their own dissidents abroad... Silence on Ottawa's part is simply not an option. Why has he not been prepared to speak on Pakistan? What is happening in Pakistan's Balochistan is atrocious." Fatah, who is also leading the Friends For Karima Baloch committee, called for Karima's death to not be considered a suicide stating that "there is no reason to" do so. "There was no reason for her to commit suicide. She had her whole life ahead of her," he said. Karima, a prominent Baloch voice, went missing last Sunday and her body was found a day later in Toronto. The Baloch activists' death has also sparked protests across Europe and North America as the Baloch diaspora took to the streets in Toronto, Berlin and Netherlands calling on the Canadian government to investigate.Baloch had campaigned vigorously against the disappearances and human rights violations in the troubled Balochistan province of Pakistan.Requesting the United Nations to intervene, Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) in a letter has said Pakistan has "responded violently to the genuine demands of the Baloch people". In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Naseer Dashti, BHRC executive president, wrote, "Her family and political friends believe that Pakistani secret agencies are involved in the death of Karima Mehrab and have rejected the initial report of the Toronto police." https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/karima-baloch-death-scholars-urge-canada-to-reconsider-diplomatic-relations-101611275538351.html#KarimaBaloch #Pakistani authorities close entryways to Karima Baloch’s hometown
Pakistani authorities have shut down all communication systems in Balochistan’s Kech area and closed all entry points to Tump, the hometown of slain human rights activist Karima Baloch.
“Pakistani authorities shutdown all communication systems in Kech, Balochistan. All entryways to Tump, Karima Baloch’s hometown, are closed. We don’t know what Pakistan’s security forces are doing to Karima’s body and her family who went to receive the body,” said Lateef Johar Baloch, an activist, in a tweet.
Karima, a prominent Baloch activist who died in Canada in December last year, was slated to get buried on January 25, Balochwarna reported. However, before the corpse could be transported from Karachi to Balochistan, Pakistani authorities took Karima’s body along with her family from the airport, to an “unknown location.”
Sameer Mehrab, brother of slain human rights activist Karima Baloch, lashed out at Pakistani authorities on Sunday after the body of his sister was forcefully taken away while it was being escorted to her hometown in Tump, Balochistan.
“Previously we thought only living Baloch are prone to abductions. Here, this is a new law. Even a Baloch dead woman is not spared from abduction by Pakistan,” Sameer tweeted.
In December 2020, Karima was found dead a day she went missing in Toronto. The activist’s death sparked protests across Europe and North America as the Baloch diaspora took to the streets in Toronto, Berlin and Netherlands calling on the Canadian government to investigate.
Karima had campaigned vigorously against the disappearances and human rights violations in the troubled Balochistan province of Pakistan. Requesting the United Nations to intervene, Baloch Human Rights Council in a letter had said Pakistan has “responded violently to the genuine demands of the Baloch people”.
Recently Pakistan affairs expert Tarek Fatah, and scholar Burzine Waghmar had slammed the crackdown on dissent in Balochistan and urged the Canadian Government to reconsider diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
Speaking to a Canadian News outlet recently, Waghmar said that there has been a systematic campaign by the Pakistani state elements to “liquidate any and every Baloch voice.”
“We have seen nothing official come out of Ottawa on this count. Not even the Pakistani High Commissioner in Ottawa has been called into the foreign ministry for an explication on this. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” he had said.
Fatah, who is also leading the Friends For Karima Baloch committee, called for Karima’s death to not be considered a suicide stating that “there is no reason to” do so. “There was no reason for her to commit suicide. She had her whole life ahead of her,” he had said.
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/world/pakistani-authorities-close-entryways-to-karima-balochs-hometown
#Pakistan #PDM set to evaluate Bilawal’s ‘in-house’ change formula
By Mian Abrar
Zardari rules out differences between the opposition alliance.
The opposition alliance of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is all set to discuss the proposal of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to bring in an in-house change in the National Assembly (NA) and remove Prime Minister Imran Khan and Speaker Asad Qaisar through a no-confidence motion.
Earlier in Larkana, Bilawal had announced on behalf of the opposition that the PDM would bring a no-confidence motion against PM Imran and the NA speaker, as well as Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar.
However, Ahsan Iqbal had rejected the proposal, asking Bilawal to discuss the matter with the opposition parties. He had also said that the PDM would rather work on planning the long march next month to help topple the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government.
Reliable sources in the PDM have informed Pakistan Today that in wake of the proposal floated by Bilawal, the opposition parties have joined hands and would be discussing the proposal to table a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran.
In this regard, sources said, an important meeting of the parliamentary leaders of the opposition has been convened on Monday, in which consultations will be held on the no-confidence motion against the premier and the other leaders.
While there had been rumours of dissent amid the ranks after Iqbal’s comments, PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has insisted that there is no division within the ranks of the 11-party anti-government coalition.Speaking to the secretary-general of the PPP’s Punjab chapter, Chaudhry Manzoor, during a phone call, Zardari said that the opposition parties’ coalition under the PDM banner “is united and will strike the government from all directions”.
“The PDM will use all options, in turn, to get rid of the PTI government,” he said.
“The country is in grave danger and the [incumbent] rulers are likely to make a huge blunder,” the former president said, adding that it is “crucial to send the government packing”.“The incompetence of these inept rulers may lead to a major accident in the country [and therefore] the next few months are crucial for the future of national politics.”Speaking of the ongoing pandemic, the PPP leader — whose son and party chairman Bilawal contracted Covid-19 in November 2020 and recovered a month later — stressed that the Imran administration would “no longer be allowed to hide behind coronavirus”.
“They [government] could neither purchase the coronavirus vaccine nor could they help people during the coronavirus pandemic,” he stated.
Comparing the PTI regime to his own government, Zardari cited the Great Recession and said: “We increased exports from $19 billion to $26 billion despite the 2008 global financial crisis.”
“We doubled the country’s revenue, increased the salaries of employees by 125 per cent. We bumped up government employees’ pensions by 100 per cent,” he added.
Slamming the “incompetent” PTI government, he said that the rulers had “turned all indicators negative”.
“I said in the past that these elected rulers will fall under their own weight. Now that they have crashed, only one last shove is needed.
“Together with the PDM, the PPP will send this failed and incompetent lot home,” he vowed.
Moreover, the opposition leadership has purportedly devised a strategy to deal with the no-confidence motion and the same would be discussed in the meeting.
Sources said that the federal government has also contacted the PDM leadership at the parliamentary level to hold the ongoing NA session in a truly democratic manner.In this regard, Defence Minister Pervez Khattak has contacted the opposition leaders, however, differences remain between the government and the opposition over the proceedings of both the houses of the parliament.The sources said that the opposition would also meet Khattak and seek ‘written guarantees’ for smooth parliamentary proceedings.
These written guarantees would relate on their demands, such as equal time in the National Assembly.
Sources said that the opposition parties are no longer seeking fulfilment of their previous demand of releasing production orders for its imprisoned top leaders, including the opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, Khursheed Shah and Khawaja Asif.
They said that the opposition has taken a stand that if the written guarantees are not implemented, they will boycott the next NA session and would also raise lack of quorum.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/01/24/pdm-set-to-evaluate-bilawals-in-house-change-formula/
United Nations Officials Warn Staff Against Flying Pakistani Airlines
By Pranjal Pande
The United Nations, and subsidiary agencies, has cautioned its staff against flying with any Pakistani airlines. The UN warning comes after the ongoing pilot license scandal, wherein pilots were flying with fake licenses. The statement names 14 Pakistani carriers, including flag carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).UN says no According to an advisory from the United Nations Security Message System, seen in the Times of India, employees have been told not to fly any Pakistan registered carrier. The warning means that UN staff in Pakistan will be unable to fly internationally or domestically with the listed airlines, setting up transport issues in the future.Explaining the reason for the ban, the advisory states, “Due to an ongoing investigation of the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) Pakistan…due to dubious licenses caution is advised on the use of Pakistan-registered air operators.” The list of airlines banned includes every single Pakistan-registered carrier, numbering 14 in total. This means PIA, Serene Air, Air Blue, and others will likely no longer carry UN officials. The blow will be particularly impactful for PIA, which previously may have carrier dozens of staff on its international flights. Arising from the scandal The UN’s advisory is only the latest in a string of responses to Pakistan’s pilot license scandal. In June, Pakistan’s Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said at the time that possibly 30% of the country’s pilots had fake licenses and weren’t qualified to fly. The news came as a shock to aviation regulators globally and raised critical safety issues. Flag carrier PIA moved quickly to suspend 150 pilots, out of 434 in total, over possibly dubious licenses. This meant nearly 35% of the airline’s pilots were not qualified to fly. Since then, the airline has sacked dozens of pilots and restored some too. However, international regulators have moved quickly to address the situation. The European Union Air Safety Agency (EASA) banned Pakistan International from flying in EU airspace for at least six months and even recommended suspending the licenses of all Pakistan-qualified pilots. The FAA also banned and downgraded PIA’s rating to Category 2, preventing new routes to the country in the future. No appeal In September, PIA opted not to appeal its six-month EU ban and instead focus on continuing to resolve the pilot scandal. Since then, the airline remains banned from the EU for a few more months, which can be extended again. Until Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority and PIA both pass stringent safety checks, they are unlikely to return to the EU. While Pakistani airlines, and domestic flights, might be banned for UN employees, international flying remain intact. Virgin Atlantic began flying to Pakistan in December, while British Airways extended its services. This means international connectivity remains to the country, but carriers like PIA will continue to struggle until issues are resolved.
https://simpleflying.com/un-pakistani-airlines-warn-against/