Reputation is sometimes like a snowball it grows as you roll down the hill.
There is no way that Fauci has done a good job when you consider the differences in his recommendations on previous pandemics with new viral organisms and compare them with COVID-19. Add to that the state of public health efforts on influenza and the failure to pursue common sense strategies in yearly flu season. Leave it that I’m glad he is near retirement age.
Haven’t you ever noticed that the “great” experts aren’t. People in that circle, publishing in government health have a mutual admiration society. All the folks that signed on to climate change are great experts too. Our Nation wasn’t ready to deal with the threat of an aggressive viral epidemic because when the President turned to the people who were supposed to have supplies, a game plan and logistics he found the storehouse empty, the experts hid behind models that could mean something or they could be invalid and the organizational structure the country was supposed to depend on was antiquated, hidebound and completely inadequate.
POTUS reinvented it from the ground up, personally bearing down on the CDC, FDA, manufacturers and calling in FEMA who he knew he could depend on. IMO now is not the time to lower the boom on the clown show but I’m not giving them bouquets either. If we had a functioning CDC we could have started testing at airports in January since we knew it was a primary threat from outside the Country. If hydroxychloroquine had been followed up in 2009 when its effect was documented in vitro we could have been ready with prophylaxis recommendations for the “at risk” population and treated the symptomatic in the normal risk population. That is where I hope we will be next time now that POTUS is aware of the need to revamp Public Health.
I more or less agree with your post (full disclosure: I knew Tony Fauci in one of my previous lives).
The problem any executive has in dealing with public health (and TF is not a public health guy, he's an immunologist) is that 99% of the time you need people who look forward to going around to schools showing kids how to put on Band-Aids (Mr. Rogers types) and 1% of the time you need Patton.
It is very difficult to combine these personalities into a single person.
Big f'n mistake...adding another bureaucratic layer, like that.