OPINION:
Enough of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In widely reported remarks, Fauci, from the self-quarantined safety of his own home, said in an email to The New York Times that he was going to tell senators, in his upcoming hearing on the coronavirus that, basically: If America doesn’t listen to me, people will die.
Fauci, the prophet scientist?
Nope. Fauci the error-prone human — who has, in fact, made several erroneous statements about the coronavirus already. Apparently, Americans are supposed to forget that, and cede their lives and livelihoods to a scientist with a history of false predictions?
Get this guy off the national stage.
This is the heads-up of what he planned to tell senators on Tuesday about the COVID-19 dangers of opening America too soon, as written in an email to The Times: “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ’Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
Fear-mongering at its worst.
Fear-mongering at its most devastating worst.
Let’s just put a reality check by Fauci’s emailed remarks and look at the facts: Fact Number One — Fauci has been wrong. And not so long ago, either. Fact Number Two: and on more than one occasion.
In January, he told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly that the coronavirus was “not a major threat to the people of the United States.” A week or so later he said during an interview on “The Cats Roundtable” on 970 AM in New York that the coronavirus “isn’t something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about.”
Then in February, USA Today ran with this headline: “Risk of coronavirus in U.S. is ’miniscule,’ ” NIH’s Fauci told USA Today’s Editorial Board.
The piece went on to say that Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the National Institutes of health, said “skip the masks unless you are contagious, don’t worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don’t avoid Chinese people or restaurants.”
It wasn’t long after that Fauci criticized states for failing to issue widespread stay-at-home orders.
“I don’t understand why that’s not happening,” Fauci said in early April, during an interview on CNN when he was asked his opinion on quarantine. “If you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that. We really should be.”
And now, in May, with the devastations of the U.S. economy bearing down hard on millions of business owners, on millions of American workers, on millions of out-of-work, desperate heads of families with children — now Fauci wants to talk up the death count for the whole nation, nay, the whole world, to hear?
Get this guy off the national stage.
His words of medical wisdom are not what the country needs right now.
They’ve been proven erroneous.
They’re coming at the coronavirus from a straight medical angle, with zero consideration for all the other tragedies that are looming larger than the health risks of COVID-19 — tragedies such as broken economies, broken business dreams, broken school schedules, broken churches, broken hopes.
And they’re coming from the mouth of an unelected, unaccountable-to-the-people, bureaucrat.
Why is Fauci being allowed to practically run America?
Let him issue his medical advisements behind closed doors, as part of a larger panel of COVID-19 voices, as part of a panel that includes economists, business owners, entrepreneurs, mental health experts, farmers, fitness folks — you know, the regular citizens. The regular citizens who are quite able to take advisements from the medical community and put them to practice without burdensome government control. Americans know how to stay home when they’re sick. Americans know how to wash their hands.
And that opens to Fact Number Three: Fauci, on COVID-19, really doesn’t know. He doesn’t know all. No scientist does. He’s just guessing, like all the scientists and medical experts.
We need to stop treating Fauci like he’s omniscient.
For the good of our nation, for the health of our country, for the sake of our poor, suffering American citizens — get Fauci off the national stage. Americans, at this point, only want to hear from the president how the nation is going to be rebuilt, not why the dude from the NIAID thinks we should all still stay home.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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