From TPM Reader XX …
A few thoughts on the silencing:
Fauci has a lot of Congressional access and has for decades. He has many ways to get out a message.
Birx did some of her early research under Fauci. She also worked for Robert Redfield, the Director of CDC when she was at the Army and cleaned up after some problems he had there (look up gp160 including Jon Cohen’s reporting). She is also very politically adept and that’s why she continued in her position in this Administration.
I suspect that Redfield has relied a lot on Fauci for the current HIV elimination campaign. He is a weak link here, a lab scientist who hasn’t really worked in public health.
The surgeon general was Pence’s director of health in Indiana. His department’s failures led to the HIV outbreak in Scott County Indiana (basically a failure to notice a lot of new cases over several years in a small place), but that didn’t hurt his elevation in this Administration. I suspect Pence will lean on him to be a face of Coronavirus, but unlike Scott County where he turned neglect into a victory of sorts, the stakes will be higher.
