OPINION:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made headlines once again by claiming no blame at all for the school shutdowns and societal lockdowns that occurred during the COVID-crazy years — even though they largely occurred under his medical bureaucratic watch.
This is delusion and gaslighting at their finest.
Fauci, for all his fancy explanations and even fancier dances of obfuscations, is probably the leading person to blame for lockdowns, clampdowns, seizures of individual liberties and ridiculous forced face masking — if one is good, two are better! — of even the vaccinated, of even the vaccinated who were told that taking the shots meant face masking was unnecessary.
“If you are vaccinated and you are outside, put aside your mask, you don’t have to wear it,” Fauci himself said in May of 2021.
Of course, he said differently in 2022, after a federal judge in Florida blocked President Biden’s medical bureaucratic agencies from ordering those who fly or use public transportation to wear face masks.
“The CDC has the capability, through a large number of trained epidemiologists, scientists, to be able to make projections and make recommendations — far more than a judge with no experience in public health,” Fauci said in April of 2022, adding that the ruling was “disturbing” and could set a “dangerous precedent.”
Yes. The “dangerous precedent” to which he referred back then was the idea of medical bureaucrats, and health bureaucracies, such as he was and such as he led, would have to bow down to the Constitution. In Fauci’s world, Fauci leads. Fauci rules. Fauci is lord of all. In Fauci’s universe, it’s science and only science that dictates to all how all must live. And since Fauci proclaimed himself to be science, well then, any challengers automatically have no standing.
That was then.
But the hubris that drove Fauci then is the hubris that’s driving Fauci now.
Facing questions from The New York Times Magazine about the “heavy-handed” crackdowns he recommended during the COVID years, and amid a backdrop of House Republican pursuit of truths about pandemic policy and its source, Fauci said this: “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did.”
True.
Fauci didn’t explicitly order schools shut.
But he did say things like this, in May of 2020 — that reopening too soon “could turn the clock back” on coronavirus numbers and that could cause “some suffering and death that could be avoided [and] could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery,” as The Associated Press reported. And he did say things like this in September of 2020 — that Florida, under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, could be “asking for trouble” by fully reopening.
There were more, many, many more of Fauci’s famous warnings.
And he knew full well the impact his warnings would have in the media. Too many times during the years of coronavirus coverage, the press would take his suggestions and turn them into dictates; too many times, pundits in the press would take Fauci’s recommendations and spin them into must-dos. He was aware of his influence. He was aware of the adoration of his fans. He was aware of the hero status he was being granted. He was aware, and he basked in the glow.
“I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the CDC’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that,” Fauci said to The New York Times Magazine. “But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other.”
Hmm.
Another lie.
“Fauci: Trump’s Covid-19 Response ‘Very Likely Did’ Cost Lives,” Forbes reported in a headline in January of 2021.
Sounds a lot like criticism.
Apparently, others think so, too.
“Trump blasts Dr. Anthony Fauci after he criticizes the administration’s COVID-19 response,” CBS Morning wrote in a headline in 2021.
The thing about Fauci is he is a pathological liar.
He never ordered shutdowns; he never commanded schools to shut or churches to close or citizens to stay off the beaches and out of the parks and into their homes to await anxiously their next taxpayer-funded stimulus check. But he did — knowingly — pave the way for his partners in politics to do just that.
He teed up the goods and then stepped back to watch as the leftists seized them as cause for crackdowns.
He presented the apple and watched as the naive took the bite.
For him to claim innocence is only further evidence of his arrogance, pride, delusion and talent for gaslighting.
Fauci is a liar. There is nothing else to be said for him. He’s a skilled liar, and that’s all there is to it. At this point, he’s really only fooling himself.
• 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 and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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