Dr. Fauci, I want a second opinion. Or, I should say, I will get one unless you come up with better answers for us for when this shutdown should come to an end.
Your professional opinion is causing me concern not only for you but our well being and peace of mind.
You have said that the guidelines (which are now really executive orders in most states) are an "inconvenience". I beg to differ. Losing your job or business for no economic reason, losing your schooling, losing your church or losing your ability to live a normal life are not inconveniences, they are disasters and tragedies. They are, in fact, to use a phrase from your own Hippocratic Oath, harm. People are entitled to know when that harm will end and how, now.
You have said that the Shut Down, yes, the Shut Down, with all of the impossible, China-like oppression involved in it (despite all of our oaths to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) could last EIGHTEEN MONTHS or until a vaccine is developed. Dr. Fauci, I do not think that is a realistic plan or projection and one which has never been applied before. No previous virus of this type saw an end to any stringencies (which were nothing like the ones in place for this one) only when a vaccine was developed. So why are you recommending it here? One hopes that it is not so that we are forced to listen to you and follow your advice as long as you deem it necessary.
You have said that the Virus would determine when and if the Nation would open up again. Again, I respectfully demur. We did not elect a doctor, a statistical model or a virus President. The time honoured tradition in your country is for the direction and management of American affairs to be handled by the People and those it delegates by election. One hopes that that tradition will continue even well before the last person is diagnosed with COVID-19. For, if it does not, much more will be endangered and for much longer than was menaced by Novel Coronavirus.
We have faced countless hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, and cyclones, city wide fires, crime waves, panics, crashes, recessions and a Great Depression, terrorism, the British Empire, the Kaiser, fascism, Nazi Germany, communism, the Soviet Union, the constant spectre of nuclear war, two World Wars, wars of every description, and contagion of every type and somehow have emerged triumphant without the need of a blue ribbon panel to tell us how to do it.
All we want is some reasonable metrics about how and when we can go back to work. And that does not mean doubling down on the Hospitalization, Death and Infection models that have been so wrong so far and telling us we need to wait until April...2021 to get back to work and even then (and this is a direct quote from you) we won't be able to shake hands. No. If there is more doom and gloom without reasonable explanations, no reasonable metrics or plans for at least partially opening up (for instance, keeping only the sick, exposed or elderly under lockdown) and above all a target date for doing so (as Austria, Denmark, Czechia and Norway, all possessing doctors at least as smart as you and numbers as bad as the US, have done), then the Nation needs to consult someone else as soon as possible.
If you cannot do that, offer reasonable plans to return to normalcy and rely on the good sense of the People who have followed your draconian orders so far and apparently with good effect, then, we will have to simply shake hands, ah, er, I mean bow, and ask you to bow out.
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