Dr. Anthony Fauci is everywhere. You can’t turn on a news show without his presence gracing the screen and being asked to predict the future. I would not be surprised to soon see him gliding across the stage during the Merengue competition on “Dancing With the Stars.”
Why is this? Well, of course, the easy answer is that Dr. Fauci is the hero of the Coronavirus Pandemic. The harder answer is: what did he do that was so heroic?
Typically, heroes make things better. To borrow from Joseph Campbell’s classic, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”, the standard hero leaves a troubled community, learns great lessons by overcoming great obstacles and then brings those lessons home to the community and resolves all of their troubles. Moses set out to the desert, spoke to God and took the Israelites “home”. Abraham Lincoln ascended to the Presidency, fought the Civil War and freed the slaves. Dorothy blew away from Kansas, acquired the broom of the wicked witch and got herself “home.” Not to mention the “super-heroes” whose destruction of evil has sold more comic books and movies than the Kardashians have sold worthless crap.
Recently, Dr. Fauci has been given the Public Welfare Medal issued by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; the Dan David Prize, an award of one million dollars given by the nation of Israel; and the Lifetime Learning Award in Philadelphia.
Despite these awards, Dr. Fauci hasn’t prevented anything. COVID-19 is an infectious disease. Dr. Fauci is the head of the country’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Presumably, that’s a job that should keep us as safe as possible from infectious diseases. Yet, during his tenure in this job, more Americans have died of an infectious disease than died in World War Two. What would you think of the General with responsibility for preventing a foreign invasion after we’ve had a foreign invasion that killed off half a million Americans? Heroic?
There are certainly reasons why Dr. Fauci might not have been able to perform his job the way he wanted to. Those reasons can be synthesized into two words – Donald Trump. Of course, that Ogre of the Oval built obstacles for Dr. Fauci to overcome. Those obstacles prevented him from doing things that might have improved the country’s reaction to the virus. And therein lies the rub.
Heroes overcome those kinds of obstacles. That’s precisely what makes them heroic. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela went to jail.
What obstacle did Dr. Fauci overcome? He occasionally disagreed with a President who suggested that the virus could be eliminated by swallowing bleach. Wow, what courage!
Maybe I’ve set too high a standard for Dr. Fauci. Maybe “hero” is too grand a title. Yes, he can be identified as the best of the bunch, but that’s like identifying the best gourmet offering at Arby’s. So, what is the title that warrants the status and the awards that Fauci is receiving? I can’t come up with a good one. How about “Better Than The Liars?” What a low bar.
We live in a society so desperate for heroes that we assign that status much too quickly and much too easily. And then we are disappointed when our assignees turn out not to be qualified for it (Does the name “Andrew Cuomo” ring a bell?”)
Me, I’ll stick to the heroes whose accomplishments are transient enough to require no long-term connection. The next Yankee to hit a game-winning home run is all I need.
We were right 