"Masks Do Not Work with Viruses," and Other "Facts" from Upside-Down World

July 21, 2020

"Masks do not work with viruses," declared Dan Forest, the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, earlier this year.

Forest had a top-notch source -- a paper from the New England Journal of Medicine. A single line of that paper backed up Forest's claim. But the point of the paper was the opposite. The authors had to write a letter to the journal to clarify.

That's what happens when cognitive dissonance spreads across the country, like a pandemic that afflicts only Republicans. The short-term cure appears to be seeking out false facts. 

That short-term cure is all the rage in upside-down world. Don't like the news? Demonize and ignore the mainstream media. Don't like what an expert says? Find another.

Better yet, find an expert who'll generate the information that you want to hear. An expert like, say, Dr. Deborah Birx.

Deborah Birx, M.D.

Birx, chair of the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, has sterling credentials. To quote the State Department, "Ambassador-at-Large, Deborah L. Birx, M.D., is the Coordinator of the United States Government Activities to Combat HIV/AIDS and U.S. Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy." She's spent her career as a researcher on HIV/AIDS -- granted, not a COVID-19 sort of disease, but her public-health competence is proven.

When she got to the White House, however, she produced analyses of COVID-19 data filtered through a University of Washington program that proved to be ... not quite accurate. Until then, for weeks and months, she assured the Trump administration that the virus had peaked, that the trajectory was identical to Italy's, and that their major task was to "extinguish the embers" of the pandemic.

The CDC lost its role last week as the first recipient of pandemic data from U.S. hospitals because Birx needed quicker analytical results than the CDC could provide. She chose another analytical program that she had used before and announced that data would go to the White House first.

In short, Birx will be the scapegoat for every goof, stumble, and shortfall of the White House's failed COVID-19 response from now till the end of time. Never mind that she was probably chosen for her biases as well as her expertise. Never mind that the White House listened to her above (or instead of) all other experts.

We hear that Birx doesn't deserve sympathy. By all reports, she has used a keen political sense throughout her career. Anthony Fauci describes her as a "different animal" from himself.

Deservedly or not, it's likely that Birx will hang by her silk scarf from the White House portico as if she was the one who wielded the power on the inside.

Maybe she deserves blame. But when Dan Forest, or Donald Trump, cites Birx for his next boneheaded claim, don't be surprised.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-failure-leadership.html

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/us/article/Fact-Check-Republican-lawmaker-says-masks-do-15416648.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HC_DailyHeadlines&utm_term=news&utm_content=headlines
https://www.state.gov/biographies/deborah-l-birx-md/