"Fauci made out like a bandit devoting his life to serving the public. Not exactly Mother Theresa."
No. Not Mother Theresa. A pretty typical mission-driven professional.
Anthony Fauci is a doctor. He worked full time until age 82. Of course he accumulated some money.Anthony Fauci has critics. Elon Musk tweeted, "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci." Senator Rand Paul spars with him in senate hearings. A GOP House Committee has announced its plan to investigate him. Marjorie Taylor Green introduced H.R. 2316, titled the "Fire Fauci Act." You can buy tee shirts showing Fauci with devil horns.
Anthony Fauci draws criticism for being the highest paid U.S. government employee, $480,000 a year. Fauci's income does not surprise me. He is a physician in America. Governments retain physician employees by paying them what they might make working elsewhere, including in private practice. 
When I was a Jackson County Commissioner the Health Officer for the county was a physician. He was the highest paid county employee. We had to pay a competitive income. Fauci is a physician who supervises physicians, and he held the job for 38 years, which put him at the top of seniority step increases. Fauci's income would be a commonplace income for a physician in private practice in Medford, Oregon. Physicians with specialties that involve procedures make substantially more than this.
The comment quoted at the top of this page used the word "bandit." A Trump/MAGA/conservative meme is that Fauci's income was not just excessive. It was illegitimate and exploitive. The "bandit" accusation is odd and misplaced because Fauci was perfectly placed to cash in on his expertise, connections, credibility by quitting his job. He would be paid enormous sums to sit on the boards of drug companies, insurance companies, hedge funds, or virtually any board that wanted instant credibility heft. Fauci remained in his government job as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the most obvious of reasons. It wasn't money. He is a mission-driven professional doing work he considered important. We see this frequently among people who could retire, but choose to keep working, as lawyers, judges, professors, financial advisors. Their work is important to them. They are good at it and get satisfaction from it.
The Fauci-as-bandit commenter linked to an article from the conservative magazine National Review that headlined that Fauci's net worth doubled during the pandemic, growing from $6 million to $12 million. The implication is that Fauci used the pandemic to get rich. There is another simpler explanation: A bull market for both stocks and Washington, D.C. homes. It does not surprise me that Fauci and his wife of 37 years accumulated $6 million dollars by Anthony Fauci's 80th birthday. His wife has a Ph.D. and is a department head at the National Institutes of Health. They fit a pattern of a two-income professional family, one of whom is a physician who kept right on working. He was earning a physician-level income for 50 years. Anyone in those circumstance would have accumulated money. Rising stock prices in 2020 and 2021, plus D.C. housing prices, would explain the expansion of their net worths since then. I have no reason to think Fauci reads this blog--I am sure he does not--but a year ago I said that technology stocks were overbought, that speculation was rampant, and a person should reduce risk and buy depressed oil stocks if one had not already done so. If Fauci had followed my suggestions his net worth would have more than doubled over the past three years.
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Anthony Fauci represents exactly what one would expect from a public health official. His job was to protect public health. The job of people in political roles is to balance public health interest against other interests. Trump and Biden each did such. People have every right to disagree with Fauci's recommendations. Maybe he was too earnest. Maybe he erred by caring more about the health of the vulnerable elderly than does the average American. Maybe, in hindsight, he was wrong on some things. It is easy to Monday-morning quarterback him.
But bandit? I think not.
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5 comments:
Thank you, Peter.
The people condemning Fauci for a successful career are the first to support a con man for elected office.
Our country needs more science l-minded people like Fauci.
To attack Fauci is beyond ridiculous in my mind. I view him as a hero who stood up to intimidation to not tell the truth. He was the sane one who was doing his best to let science guide decision making. Was it perfect? No science is not perfect, but it strives for the truth and doing so leads to success for mankind. Galileo was house bound because he told the truth and was also vilified by those with an agenda. There would be something wrong if Fauci was not financially secure.
The good doctor must also be a politician to serve in the public arena. We don't choose who seeks those positions, they self select. Anyone who thinks he chose his career for the money...hmmm.
My main complaint with Dr. Fauci is that I believe he should have resigned. I'm sure it occurred to him, but like so many in that utterly corrupt administration he came to the decision that his replacement would likely worsen the situation. I'd guess he didn't realize how much heat he'd have to take and by then it also became a matter of not being driven out. What a tightrope! Even so, by staying he lent his considerable credibility to an undeserving enterprise, and we are left with the aftermath.
Looking back there weren't very many who left to become critics, were there?
The Oregon Health Authority is paying two physician specialists over $413,000 per year. For purposes of comparison, the U of O football coach is making nearly $30 million for a six-year contract.
COVID-19 was called a novel coronavirus because it was a new coronavirus that had not been previously identified. Dr. Fauci was providing the public the best information they had at the time but as they learned more, it could change. Trying to keep a lid on the pandemic was well-described as trying to fly the plane while building it. Meanwhile, he was also having to clarify the misinformation briefings being provided by our ignoranus-in-chief: Sorry, folks, but neither hydroxychloroquine nor ingesting antiseptics are effective treatments for COVID-19.
All the acrimony over Dr. Fauci has nothing to do with his many years of dedicated public service, but everything to do with his well-documented conflicts with Trump and the proliferation of right-wing conspiracy theories. It’s more evidence, as if we needed it, that what passes for “conservatism” today is more of a mental illness than a political persuasion. Those who spread this nonsense may think they’re Insulting our intelligence, but it’s more of a reflection on their own.
“Made out like a bandit” is slang for “did very well for himself”. It is not a literal accusation that someone was an actual bandit.
My point in saying that yesterday was that Fauci has not lived a life of selfless personal sacrifice. He is not
Mother Theresa, despite his canonization by the left.
Reading what your political opponents have written in the worst possible light is a well-known tactic of online debate. It is the opposite of honest discussion.
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