Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, is calling for two top members of the “White House Coronavirus Task Force” to step down.
In a TownHall.com op-ed, Biggs rips into Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx for their poor public health performance and asserts that they have outlasted their usefulness while continuing to linger and bask in the media spotlight.
Biggs expressed particular contempt for Fauci, whom he called a media “showman” and “healthcare bureaucrat.”
Fauci, 79, has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. His tenure is marked with notable scandals, including endangering foster children in AIDS drug trials and retaliating against a whistleblower when the program went horribly wrong.
White House economic advisor Peter Navarro recently lambasted Fauci in an unauthorized op-ed that claimed the longtime government health care director has been “wrong about everything.”
“When I was working feverishly on behalf of the president in February to help engineer the fastest industrial mobilization of the health care sector in our history, Fauci was still telling the public the China virus was low risk,” Navarro wrote.
Biggs hammered Fauci for his celebrity-seeking interviews and non-healthcare related public appearances.
“We have now reached the stage where the most dangerous place in Washington, D.C. is between Anthony Fauci and a camera,” Biggs wrote.
Fauci made headlines throwing a ceremonial first-pitch at a Washington Nationals baseball game last month. He was also photographed breaking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines regarding masks and social distancing.
Biggs referenced a glowing Vanity Fair article about Fauci — in which he appears in rockstar sunglasses next to his pool — while recounting his “inconsistent, unpredictable and destructive” coronavirus advice to President Donald Trump.
“His policies have resulted in an economic disaster, a public mental health crisis, and a secondary public health crisis that will become more visible in the coming months,” Biggs said.
“State and local officials have been hanging on his words as if they were the tablets from the Mount…his public comments, that so many revere, have been casual, philosophical observations that are not necessarily based on science,” he continued.
The Arizona congressman also laid into Dr. Birx, who he referred to as Fauci’s “sidekick.”
Once bashed by the media for appearing to agree with President Donald Trump, Birx now says that children should not return to school until the virus “spread rate” is under 5 percent.
How did Birx arrive at the 5 percent determination? According to Biggs, she made it up.
Birx’s expert medical analysis is “without scientific support and appears to have been pulled like a rabbit from the hat in an arbitrary fashion,” Biggs concluded.
