In the News

LUDLOW — In March, when everyone was still learning about the coronavirus and before it had killed 136,00 Americans, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal was telling people to pay attention to everything Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

Today, with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under attack from the Trump administration and seemingly sidelined from making public statements, Neal defended Fauci and his work.

“The idea that you have people in the administration that are now mocking him, putting out videos about him, undercutting him,” Neal, D-Springfield, said Wednesday. “He is the gold standard.”

Neal spoke following a visit to the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department’s York Street Industries vocational training programs, where inmates are making personal protective equipment.

On Tuesday, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro sharply criticized Fauci in a no-holds-barred USA Today op-ed.

"Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on," Navarro wrote.

Navarro wrote about the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, Fauci’s changing recommendations concerning masks and other topics.

According to FactCheck.org, the Michigan study Navarro cites supporting hydroxychloroquine is limited, and multiple randomized controlled trials have found the drug is not beneficial to hospitalized coronavirus patients.

“I mean the chaos that has come from the White House now since late February has I think been discouraging,” Neal said.

According to Fauci’s official biography, he ranked as the 41st most highly cited researcher of all time in a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar citations. According to the Web of Science, he ranked eighth out of more than 2.2 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and January 2019.

“I think for all of us who support science, Tony Fauci is a person we are supposed to follow,” Neal said.

The congressman said it is clear there has been a premature reopening of the country from coronavirus shutdowns. Witness, he said, the rising infection rates and death tolls in places like Florida and Texas.

“This is a time for scientists and experts to step forward,” Neal said. “Our job in these difficult moments is not to entertain the American people. It is to provide them with fact-based information.”

Neal said he’s headed back next week to where Senate Republicans and the Trump administration are, in his words, inching closer to agreement on another round of coronavirus aid. It likely will include another stimulus check to individuals, extension of the $600 a week payment to those receiving unemployment benefits, and money for hospitals and state and local governments. Money for states and localities hard hit by the virus is the carrot bringing Republicans around, Neal said.