Dr. Anthony Fauci has flip-flopped or been proven wrong on a host of different coronavirus measures and recommendations since the virus first hit the United States last winter. Fauci, the leading White House coronavirus task force member, has changed positions or faced scientific data proving his stances are flawed on issues ranging from mask wearing to the severity of the virus and from asymptomatic spread to effective treatments for patients, among other issues.
Keywords: Origin of CoV funding, Mask mandates, Vaccine doses, Lockdown mandate
On March 8 2020, Fauci described lockdown measures in China as “draconian” and stated that such restrictions wouldn’t be “feasible” in the U.S., more than a month after on Jan. 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared a global health emergency. One week later on March 15, he changed positions and said he was open to a national 14-day shutdown to help stop the spread.
In April, when pressed in a CNN interview on why social distancing and lockdowns weren’t implemented sooner, he sparked confusion when he said more lives “obviously” could have been saved if there hadn’t been “pushback” to lockdowns at the start of the pandemic. The very next day, he backtracked, saying that he used “the wrong choice of words.”
Perhaps Fauci’s most notable flip-flop has been on the efficacy of masks, saying in March 2020 that there was “no reason” to wear a mask. By April, he joined the chorus of doctors and health agencies encouraging the use of face masks.
He also downplayed asymptomatic transmission on Jan. 28, 2020 saying what “people need to realize” is that in “all the history” of respiratory-borne viruses, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. By August, Fauci did a complete 180, saying asymptomatic cases were a driving factor in the community spread of COVID-19 despite a WHO advice that more evidence was needed to make this determination.
Fauci’s recommendations for treating COVID-19 have also been challenged by scientific data. Fauci advocated the use of remdesivir in April, citing one trial prior to it being peer-reviewed, lauding it as a breakthrough “in diminishing time to recovery” for patients with COVID-19 and predicting it “will be the standard of care.” In November 2020, however, the WHO warned against using remdesivir, after many setbacks, saying that “there is currently no evidence that remdesivir improves survival and other outcomes in these patients.” The news came after Trump took the medication when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 in October 2020 and after the Food and Drug Administration approved it for the treatment of COVID-19.
Sen. Rand Paul, who went after Fauci in a Senate hearing on March 18 2021, peppering him with questions about masks and why immune people are forced to wear them. “Given that no scientific studies have shown significant numbers of reinfections of patients previously infected, or previously vaccinated, what specific studies do you cite to argue that the public should still be wearing masks well into 2022?” Paul said. It’s simple: Fauci is trying to manipulate you.
In March 2020 when Fauci told CBS News, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask” (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/preventing-coronavirus-facemask-60-minutes-2020-03-08/). He very explicitly characterized mask-wearing as a performative gesture that “might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.”
Months later, fact-doctorer Fauci performed a whiplash-inducing 180-degree turnaround and became the planet’s No. 1 mask cheerleader. He rationalized that he needed to mislead the nation about the efficacy of masks in order “to save the masks for the people……….
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