OPINION:
When it comes to taking advice on coronavirus mitigation, the American people would do far better to listen to comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan than National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Why? Rogan has common sense. Fauci is a power-monger and media whore whose flip-flopping scientific advisements are a) hardly scientific at all and b) oddly targeted toward clamping freedoms on those of conservative persuasion but not liberal. In other words: more non-science.
“If someone has an ideological or physiological reason for not getting vaccinated,” Rogan said, on the heels of refunding ticket costs to fans who didn’t want to obey New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s command to get vaccinated as a condition of entering places of entertainment, “I don’t want to force them to get vaccinated to see a [f—-ing] stupid comedy show. And now they say that everybody has to be vaccinated, and I want everybody to know that you can get your money back.”
Fauci, meanwhile, is out and about insisting on the need — surprise! — for a third shot and oh, yeah, by the way, guess what, little kids going to school should get vaccinated, too. Should? Wait — make that “must.”
His words, on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday: “I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea. We’ve done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis. So this would not be something new requiring vaccinations for children to come to school.”
That’s a different song than Fauci was singing in May when the good doctor’s view was this: “I’m not so sure we should be requiring children at all. We should be encouraging them.” He also at the time assured hesitant parents — don’t worry about it, the vaccine’s been around for almost a year and has presented “no long-term effects that anyone could notice.”
What a hoot.
How could anyone notice long-term effects when the vaccine’s only been around — at the time Fauci made those remarks — for only about a year? Shh.
This is the same Fauci that at one time said not to wear a face mask, only later to advise wearing a face mask, only later to advise wearing two face masks, only later to advise goggles and eye shields, only later to change his tone and verbiage from that of advisory to one of mandatory.
“Theoretically,” Fauci said in July 2020, “you should protect all the mucosal surfaces. So if you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it.”
Theoretically — Fauci’s not an elected official, sworn by office to protect and uphold the limits government provisions of the Constitution, along with the concept of individualism, not collectivism, that marks American politics and culture. But on that, it’s theory, schmeory. Fauci says — so Americans must do. So go the messages in the media and from Big Government mouths.
Rogan, on the other hand, has been pretty consistent with his calls for self-determination.
“I am not an anti-vac person,” he said, earlier this year. “In fact, I said I believe [the vaccines] are safe, and I encourage many people to take them. I just said that if you’re a young, healthy person, you don’t need it.”
Rogan’s also criticized the government-pharmaceutical industrial complex for “moving one step closer to dictatorship” on the whole coronavirus clamp-down, vaccine mandate, vaccine passport, technological contact tracing movement that’s sweeping the nation, nay, the globe.
“You can’t enter New York City unless you have your papers,” Rogan railed earlier this month. “You can’t go here unless you have that. You can’t get on a plane unless you do what I say.”
And in Fauci’s world, the response to that is: So? Which is to say, in Fauci’s world, the underlying but prevailing attitude is: We know best.
These are dangerous times for America because the face-off is coming — individualism versus collectivism. Truly, the face-off is here. In one corner stands Rogan, waving a banner emblazoned with the words “Independent Thinking;” in the other stands Fauci, flapping a flag that blares the single word, “Obey.”
If the vaccines work, if the face masks work, if the science is what the scientists have been saying for the past year-plus, what do the face-mask wearing and vaccinated have to fear? And if they don’t work, meaning, if they don’t put a stop to the spread of the coronavirus and the variants, which truly is what the data show, then the bureaucrats need to stop lying. Americans aren’t lab rats. American children aren’t guinea pigs. American citizens are thinking, rational, independent individuals with the God-given right to guide their own health care choices, as well as those for their own children.
Rogan is right. Following Fauci, especially blindly, is folly. Time for more American citizens to stand up and say enough’s enough. Freedom and individualism are far too precious to let go to life-long bureaucrats and their friends in the global community.
The knockout round for “God-given” cannot come from the likes of a coronavirus.
• 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. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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