Dr. Fauci, at least resign from the task force

Dr. Fauci, I’ve been saying since April 2 that you should resign. This isn’t because you haven’t done a lot of good work, but because Trump is clearly not listening to what you’re saying. It seemed then (and still does seem) pretty simple to me: If the guy at the top doesn’t listen to the advice of you and other experts and persists in following his own ignorant instincts when dealing with a deadly and rapidly-spreading virus, no good will come of it.

On April 2 alone, total novel coronavirus cases grew by about 30,000, which was near the daily new cases peak of 34,000 reached the following week. Many states had gone into some form of lockdown by then and more would follow, and the White House had at least recommended that all states lock down. But public health professionals were almost unanimous in saying there needed to be a nationwide lockdown for a month – that’s what would be required to actually bring the virus under control, given the complete inadequacy of testing capability.

As we all know, we never had a nationwide lockdown, and within a few weeks Trump was already working to undermine the lockdowns we had. So, while daily new infections did get down to a low of around 17,000 a day in May, they’ve been gradually rising since then, and since late June they’ve been growing rapidly, culminating (one would hope!) in Friday’s increase of 71,698, which was more than 10,000 above Thursday’s increase. The virus is literally exploding, not just rising.

Yet we learned yesterday that you haven’t met with Trump since June 2, and of course he’s criticizing you more heavily than ever now. What will it take to convince you that you can’t do any more good where you are? If you resign, that might finally create the movement to force Mitch McConnell to tell Trump quite emphatically that he needs to turn the whole coronavirus response effort over to somebody else.

To be honest, I don’t think that should be you, or certainly not you alone since you have a recent history of just not stepping up and speaking forcefully when it’s most needed. But at this point, almost anybody who wouldn’t work actively (and successfully so far) to achieve an absolute capitulation to the coronavirus would be preferable to having Trump in charge of the response. That’s a very low bar of course, but we’re in a desperate position now. Almost every statement of Trump’s nowadays either denies that we have a big problem or encourages people to ignore the experts and pretend that everything’s fine (and his push to fully reopen schools in spite of CDC guidance is the most awful example of that so far).

But as you know, you have two jobs now: being part of the coronavirus task force (although Trump has stopped letting you attend their meetings in person) and leading the effort at the National Institutes of Health to develop a vaccine; I would hate to see you leave that work. But there is an alternative to totally quitting government: You can resign from the task force with a forceful letter that points out that ignoring scientists is leading the US on a terrible downward course - while most of Europe and Asia (with the exception of India) is at least making good progress, both against the virus and in reopening.

Please do at least that, Dr. Fauci. And if Trump then forces NIH to fire you (which he probably doesn’t have the power to do, of course), it would only be temporary, since it would be close to certain that McConnell would finally step up to do what he should have done in March at the latest. You probably wouldn’t even have to clean out your desk before you’d be reinstated!

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 3%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	4,582	655
July 18	4,741	677
July 25	4,905	701
Month of July	21,257	686	89%
Total March – July	151,379

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 136,682

Increase in deaths since previous day: 854

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 3% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 3% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 3,292,257

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 71,698 (vs. 61,045 yesterday)

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 14%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,460,644

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 136,682

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 9%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com