I remember when Dr. Deborah Birx was called out after hosting a holiday gathering of her family. It was the kind of gathering that she had urged her fellow Americans not to have.

What I didn’t know was the excuse she gave. Here’s an excerpt from the BBC report at the time:

Explaining her decision to gather with her husband, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren, she told Newsy: “My daughter hasn’t left that house in 10 months, my parents have been isolated for 10 months.

“They’ve become deeply depressed as I’m sure many elderly have as they’ve not been able to see their sons, their granddaughters.

“My parents have not been able to see their surviving son for over a year. These are all very difficult things.”

Those are all good reasons for getting together and ignoring the advice of people like Deborah Birx. What’s really striking, though, is that Birx seemed to see those reasons as being good enough reasons for her but was unable to see similar reasons as being good enough for the tens of millions of strangers whom she urged not to do what she did.

So I think there are two main possibilities about what makes Dr. Birx tick.

The first is that she can’t think about anyone’s family but her own.

The second is that she can think about the situations of other families but doesn’t care about them.

The middle paragraph of the quote above does suggest that she can put herself in other people’s shoes. So my guess is that it’s the second reason that applies. Either way, it doesn’t speak well of her.

The title of this post is from a scene in one of my favorite movies, Harold and Maude. Maude tells the cop who pulled her over:

Don’t get officious. You’re not yourself when you’re officious. That’s the curse of a government job.

HT2 Jeffrey Tucker.