Thread by @JewhadiTM

The Danger of Anthony Fauci, Even Without Panicky Politicians realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/…

The problem with government service is that being wrong rarely has consequences. Fauci, Robert Redfield and other medical experts didn’t just mis-analzyze AIDS in the 1980s, they did so in stupendous fashion.

Had they been in the private sector, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that their analysis would have been more careful. That is so because you only get so many chances to be incorrect in the real world before you find yourself unemployed.

Imagine then if Fauci had worked for McDonald’s, or AMC Entertainment, or amusement park company Six Flags as in-house virus expert focused on how viruses spread in crowds. If so, his room for error would have been substantially shrunken.

There’s no way he could have uttered something so irresponsible as “I think we should be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting.” That’s what Fauci said on March 15, 2020.

Since he was panic-stricken, Fauci thought it was essential for his political-class counterparts to force an economic contraction. Businesses, jobs and freedom be damned.

Crucial about Fauci’s hysteria is that he couldn’t have been so cavalier about overreacting if his pay came from a for-profit business.

Think about how the share prices of any public company are calculated by market analysts. They're valued based on expectations about all the dollars a company will earn in the future.

It’s a reminder that stock markets never price the present; they’re always a best-estimate look at what’s ahead.

Which is why for-private businesses have zero incentive to lie to their customers, and zero incentive to not overreact.

Imagine again if Fauci worked for one of the companies mentioned, only to purposely downplay the virus to avoid scaring customers in March of 2020.

After which, imagine if the virus had turned out to be intensely lethal, or the cause of violent illness, and easily spreadable in crowded locales.

It’s not unreasonable to speculate that under such a scenario, all three private companies would have suffered a difficult-to-recover-from black eye.

As a consequence, their share prices would have plummeted to reflect market pessimism about their ability to win back the trust of customers. Under the scenario described, Fauci would have been out of a job. With good reason.