‘Fidelity to the truth’

Fauci and Acosta discuss misinformation and the COVID-19 pandemic

from TOWN HALL, page 1

The infectious disease expert, recently retired from his role as the U.S.’s chief medical adviser under President Joe Biden, served seven different presidents and managed multiple public health crises, including the HIV/AIDS epidemic and ebola, before COVID-19.

Entering the pandemic with over 50 years of experience, Fauci said he watched as the virus spread quickly throughout the world, asking: “Are we able to continue without doing something draconian?”The answer was no — Fauci recalled one New York City hospital that had to turn patients down and get freezer trucks to hold bodies because the morgue was full. That’s when Fauci said the U.S. took “the only choice” — imposing the first 15-day shutdown in March 2020.

He also talked about the events following the shutdowns, when former President Donald Trump, who Fauci said was initially on board, began to change his tune, calling for the shutdowns to end and spreading misinformation — like saying hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, would treat COVID-19.

Fauci said he felt a responsibility to maintain his integrity and that of the scientific community, so he stuck to his guns, even when that meant publicly disagreeing with the president.

Acosta said these disagreements with Trump “injected” Fauci into the political culture surrounding the pandemic. This political divisiveness still exists today, Fauci said, even in Congress — some members accused him of creating the virus and other “crazy things.”

“The political considerations get into what should be an unadulterated public health dialogue, discussion, narrative, then you get major distortions,” Fauci said. “We should all be focusing on the common enemy, which is the virus, not each other.”

After an hour, Fauci and Acosta took questions from JMU students, who raised their hands. The first speaker asked about potential changes to political culture that could help the country move forward.

“We have to have some fidelity to the truth in this country, and that’s something that we’ve been up against in the press, and the facts are the facts: two plus two equals four,” Acosta said. “As long as there is some fidelity to the truth, I think eventually we’re gonna get there.”

Fauci said it’s difficult to have a discussion when there’s no common understanding of what’s true based on facts and evidence.

“There’s facts, there’s how you interpret it and there’s more facts.

There’s not your own set of facts,” Fauci said.

Another student said a large part of the population “believe, Dr. Fauci, that you lied to the American people.” She asked how Fauci would respond to eroded trust in the healthcare industry and organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Health (NIH).

“I would ask the person, tell me specifically about what you think I lied about. And then we’ll go one on one to each of the things they think I lied about,” Fauci said.

Earlier in the discussion, Fauci said that when people don’t know everything — which was the case at the beginning of the pandemic, he said — it’s “absolutely essential to keep an open mind” to all possibilities but that we shouldn’t close our minds to new evidence.

He said he’ll continue to believe data and evidence, specifically about the effectiveness — or lack thereof, he said — of Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug, to treat COVID-19.

“If you disagree with me, I will respect that — if you show me the data that says it works,” Fauci said.

Before the event ended, JMU President Jonathan Alger presented Fauci with JMU’s 2023 Madison Award for the Public Good. The award recognizes a commitment to what Alger called “Madisonian ideals,” as well as engaged citizenship, service to the public and other contributions. McFarlane, who moderated the town hall alongside Acosta, told The Breeze after the event his main takeaway is that medicine and public health have a ways to go in addressing disparity.

Much of McFarlane’s own research centers on diversity, equity and inclusion, which he said motivated him to include that perspective in the conversation as he drafted his questions for Fauci.

He cited low percentages of doctors who are people of color — 6% identify as Black, 6% as Hispanic and 18% Asian, while about 56% are white, he said — and asked Fauci whether minorities have adequate representation in the field, as well as some strategies to improve representation.

Fauci’s answer was simple: No, there’s not adequate representation. He didn’t give specific strategies but said it’s important to get more people of color in training because it’s much easier for patients to relate to a healthcare provider they’re comfortable with. He said he’s tried for decades at the NIH to increase diversity, and while it’s better than it was, it still isn’t as successful as he’d like.

McFarlane told The Breeze he also believes there’s room for improvement in addressing healthcare disparities.

“I think our healthcare system has a ways to go in terms of adequate treatment for all, as well as trust with people of color that don’t necessarily trust providers to make correct treatment decisions for them,” McFarlane said. “As we continue to lose representation of underserved communities within this field, that’s super important, and hopefully, in the coming years, we’ll be able to figure out a way to kind of help solve the mistrust within the healthcare system.”

Despite the large crowd — 1,300, McFarlane said he was told — JMU’s town hall announcement was met with over 400 comments on Facebook and Twitter as of Monday night, many of them criticizing the university for its speaker selection.

One Facebook commenter wrote: “WOW, you really don’t want any Alumni contributions, do you? Ubsurd that anyone would go across the street to see either of these lying fools…..”

Others commented in support of the speakers: “Coming from a current student, I am so excited!!! Thank you JMU for bringing this inspiring topic onto our campus!!” one commenter wrote.

Junior Parker Boggs, a JMU Student Government Association (SGA) senator and chairman of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a conservative student organization on campus, told The Breeze it was “definitely a choice” for JMU to invite Fauci and Acosta to speak. Even so, he emphasized the importance of free speech on campus.

Boggs said he and other YAF members, as well as some from JMU College Republicans, attended the lecture and tabled outside Wilson Hall beforehand to make sure conservatives were represented at the event. They wanted to “show that conservatives were there in the room,” Boggs said, and they wanted to do so peacefully and not in protest.

“It was free speech, and I’m glad it wasn’t shut down. I’m glad it wasn’t disturbed,” Boggs said. “I’m glad we didn’t make a disruption because at the end of the day, corely, we’re about free speech, and that’s what we were going to be there for, was to promote free speech.”

Boggs said he wanted to “make sure Dr. Fauci knew that I was going to hold him accountable.” During the event, Boggs spoke to the audience and said school closures and online learning during the pandemic resulted in “detrimental harm” to many students’ mental health. He then asked Fauci: “Do you and your team regret the mistakes that were made in regard to the education system in America?” Fauci responded by referring back to the freezer trucks that held bodies that couldn’t fit in the morgue, saying that’s why the U.S. needed to shut down schools temporarily. Fauci said the prolonged closure was never his intention and that he advocated publicly for schools to reopen safely as soon as possible.

Many commenters on social media expressed displeasure and discontent with the selection of Fauci and Acosta. Boggs also said Fauci has become “polarizing” in the public eye. McFarlane said while the pandemic itself has become politicized, he doesn’t believe Fauci is really a political figure.

“I think he was a scientist that was giving recommendations based on scientific fact and research and statistics,” McFarlane said, adding that general mistrust in the healthcare system has also come into play. “[It] caused individuals to believe that Fauci was turning more into a political figure than a scientific figure while I don’t necessarily think that that is the case.”

Echoing what Fauci said during the event, McFarlane said to The Breeze that people don’t learn by hearing one perspective.

“We learn by seeing different viewpoints, right? So if we want to go the political route, we don’t learn by seeing … just left-sided things or just right-sided things, right? Every once in a while, we have to look in the other point of view,” McFarlane said, “and then, only then, will we move forward in what we gain and what we know.”

CONTACT Charlotte Matherly at mathercg@dukes.jmu.edu. For more JMU and Harrisonburg news, follow the news desk on Twitter @BreezeNewsJMU.