April 25, 2023

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Anthony Fauci Says Don’t Blame Him for COVID Lockdowns and School Closures.

The interview is framed by the Times as an inside look at Fauci as he “wrestles with the hard lessons of the pandemic—and the decisions that will define his legacy.” But when it comes time to answer the tough questions about who was at fault for America’s botched response to COVID-19, the good doctor is happy to pass the buck. The blame is spread around, not only to the CDC and the other public health apparatuses for which Fauci became a convenient (and willing) personification but also to the politicians who followed public health recommendations without any consideration of the costs involved.

Here’s the most interesting and illuminating part of the exchange:

“I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that,” says Fauci. “I’m not an economist. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not an economic organization. The surgeon general is not an economist. So we looked at it from a purely public-health standpoint. It was for other people to make broader assessments—people whose positions include but aren’t exclusively about public health. Those people have to make the decisions about the balance between the potential negative consequences of something versus the benefits of something.”

In a certain way, Fauci is correct about all this. He never called for the closure of specific schools, nor did he stand at the podium in the White House briefing room and announce which businesses could stay open and which must close. Those acute decisions were made by other people—by governors, mostly, but also by local elected officials and school boards. And they were made, in the case of schools specifically, with teachers unions weighing heavily on the scales.

But in October of 2020, Fauci told an interviewer, “I recommended to the President [Trump] that we shut the country down.” Shameless Anthony Fauci tries to completely rewrite history on his starring role in COVID shutdowns.

Why, it’s as if: Fauci Has No Idea Why People Are Mad At Him.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll