Pretend you are a huge nerd.
I’m not talking about a "watches 'Jeopardy!' every now and again nerd," I’m talking “goes off on tangents about the effect traveling at the speed of light has on the aging process” at dinner parties, nerd.
Imagine going through life totally interested in whatever nerd activity you truly love, and imagine the “I have to get out of here” stares you receive from people when you start to get all nerdy because the thing that interests you most is some crazy specific science jargon that most people couldn’t care less about.
That image in your head? Okay, good.
First and foremost, let me say that there’s nothing wrong with being a nerd. I am a nerd about a variety of topics. You want to talk about advanced baseball statistics, Lord of the Rings, or how to stripe your lawn the proper way, I’ll nerd it up with you all day and night.
Typically when these conversations come up, I totally forget that other people aren’t huge nerds and talk their ears off until they find some way to gracefully dismiss themselves from the conversation and breathe a sigh of relief as they speedily walk away from me.
That’s how it is with us nerds. We love our content material to death even if others don’t care about it at all. We learn this depressing fact over the course of our lives and over time we get better at containing our nerd excitement so as to not scare off non-nerds with our nerdiness.
That’s the way it’s always been, and it’s fine.
But what if all of a sudden, out of nowhere, your topic of nerdiness wasn’t so nerdy? In fact, what if people started to care about it…a lot. More than that, what if people started to seek you out and thrust you into the spotlight because they desperately wanted to know about your area of "nerdpertise." What if you were instantly declared king of the nerds and were given a platform so large that you literally became the most famous person in America?
You’d love it wouldn’t you? You’d never want it to end, right? I’d go as far as to say it could very well influence the way you feel about your value as a person.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about Dr. Anthony Fauci.
You might think that setup is rude or disrespectful, but I promise you, it isn’t meant to be. I’ve already stated that I am a nerd when it comes to many topics, and quite honestly, I love people who nerd out about things. I think nerds are far more entertaining to talk to because they have a passion for something that goes beyond the scope of normalcy. It’s way more fun to talk to someone about something they love than to discuss the weather or some other menial, boring platitude.
So I’m not dissing on Anthony Fauci when I call him a certifiable Covid-19 nerd. But I do want to bring up something I think is incredibly important about how Dr. Fauci’s "nerdery" has potentially influenced the past year and a half in America.
You see, Anthony Fauci, for his entire life, has been enamored with the science of diseases. That’s what he does for a living. It’s what he cares about most and is intrigued by most.
He studies contraction of disease, spread of disease, symptoms of disease, prevention of disease, disease particles, ears, noses, throats, germs, soaps, immunities, anything related to disease, he loves it.
And his entire life, I’m guessing hardly anyone cared. He was just a guy with a unique expertise that few people understood. But then, Covid-19 hits, and out of nowhere, Anthony Fauci is a media rock star.
Now I know where you think I may be going with this, and I’m not. At least not purposely.
I am not suggesting Covid-19 isn’t real or that Anthony Fauci is perpetuating something false in order to maintain rock star status.
What I am suggesting, is that if you ask a nerd about how important their favorite nerd topic is, you’re going to get a nerd’s perspective for an answer. And a nerd’s perspective, while rooted in love of the content and generally incredibly thorough, isn’t necessarily the best perspective for determining how significant something truly is to the masses, or how society as a whole should handle it.
Anthony Fauci believes Covid-19 should be classified as a disastrous pandemic. Based on his personal definition of what a pandemic is, that could be true. Based on the amount of people who are SERIOUSLY affected by Covid-19 compared to the MAJORITY who are not, however, many people, including other health experts, would disagree with Anthony Fauci on this classification. Dr. Fauci will be given extra credibility because of his position, of course, but to me, how AN ENTIRE COUNTRY should handle Covid-19 isn’t necessarily best defined by somebody who has been enamored with the subject matter for life.
This seems strange because it sounds like I’m saying, “ignore the expert opinion”, which I’m not. I am, however, saying that it is possible to give ONE expert’s opinion too much credibility, especially if that expert’s view has possibly been tainted by other factors.
Think about this. Suppose we asked world renowned Shakespeare experts/lovers how significant Shakespeare should be ON THE WHOLE in our educational systems. Suppose we asked world renowned trigonometry experts/lovers how significant trigonometry should be ON THE WHOLE to the daily lives of people. Suppose we asked Carpentry experts/lovers how much significance carpentry should be given ON THE WHOLE in our lives.
All of those people would likely state we should go to all sorts of lengths to encourage the thing they’ve spent their entire lives studying/loving. That doesn’t mean they are wrong by itself, but I do think it means they are biased towards any feeling which solidifies their field of study as super important and, according to them, potentially makes it something that should impact everyone else in the same way.
So when it comes to Anthony Fauci, I believe he believes everything he says about Covid-19. But I can’t help feeling that in some way, simply due to human nature, this whole ordeal is kind of like a dream come true for him. And I’m not saying that in terms of Covid-19 itself or the negative things that have happened because of it. I have no doubt he considers Covid-19 to be a horrible disaster. In fact, part of my point is that I think he considers Covid-19 to be far more disastrous than it truly is.
No, when I say a dream come true, I’m saying it in terms of the amount of people who immediately started valuing, celebrating, and desiring information about his life’s work. He must have LOVED that. The one thing that has constantly influenced his life, the one thing he has always cared about, the one thing he gave hours, and days, and months to studying was now, for the first time ever, influencing and cared about by everyone.
I’ll reiterate again, I am not trying to suggest that Dr. Fauci is happy that Covid-19 exists or that he hopes for its continuance. I am, however, suggesting that having one’s entire life’s work thrust into the brightest spotlight of all time had to be exhilarating for him in some way, and that feeling absolutely had to play a conscious or subconscious role in how he views the United States’ response to the situation. It feels good to anyone to constantly have people yearning to hear your thoughts about a topic you cherish so fully, and Anthony Fauci is no different.
In the end, I don’t know what exactly I’m suggesting, but the whole thing has never sat well with me. I’m just not convinced that someone who became a media sensation overnight due to one specific event he has a massive say in should be the one telling everyone in America when that event is over.
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