Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke last week with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. During a 14-hour session, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grilled lawmakers on a variety of topics, adding the origins of COVID. -19, forced vaccination, mandatory masks and loss of learning of schoolchildren due to school. Closures.
Although the interview was conducted behind closed doors, portions of Fauci’s testimony were reported through the media and lawmakers, providing various revelations, adding to the fact that Fauci said he was “not convinced” that schoolchildren actually suffered learning loss during the pandemic.
A wealth of evidence contradicts Fauci’s belief, adding studies cited in Harvard magazine showing “a decline” over the past three years in reading, math and history, part of what the New York Times editorial board recently described as “the most damaging disruption ever. “in the history of American education.
But let’s put Fauci’s loss and denials aside for now. His confession is quite damning.
Take “social distancing,” the idea that people had to be six feet apart from each other to be in public, a ritual that almost all of us have participated in at some point to grab a bite to eat at home. Place to eat local. Fauci admitted to lawmakers that the policy was essentially a sham, anything that “just showed up” and lacked clinical basis.
Or take the accidental fallout from the coercive vaccine policies championed through Fauci and federal, state, and local initiated governments. Fauci, who privately told officials that “it’s been proven that when you complicate people’s lives, they lose their ideological arguments and get vaccinated,” admitted that the coercive vaccination policies he advocated were likely to increase vaccine hesitancy. (The evidence suggests he’s probably right. )
And then there was the speculation that COVID-19 emerged from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the U. S. government was investing in gain-of-function research. First, Fauci scoffed at the option that COVID-19 could have simply emerged from the lab, calling it “molecularly impossible. “(The U. S. government also worked with social media corporations to censor users who speculated that COVID-19 might have emerged from the institute. )
Fauci now admits that the lab leak speculation is not a conspiracy theory, according to congressional lawmakers.
In summary, Fauci admitted he pushed COVID-19 protocols that lacked scientific rigor, advocated coercive vaccine policies to disrupt people’s lives that likely fueled vaccine hesitancy, and unjustly smeared millions of people as conspiracy theorists for hypothesizing on a COVID-19 origin story that the FBI now admits is likely true.
These confessions are damning and will usher in a much larger mea culpa from Fauci and his longtime superior, Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health.
In an interview that went unnoticed last summer, Collins also laid out his “mistakes,” explaining that when it comes to public health, officials take a very narrow view of trade-offs in health policies.
“You attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life,” Collins said. “You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from.”
Collins is not wrong. This is one of the most basic lessons in economics: There are no solutions to complex problems, just trade-offs. That’s why sensible economists raised objections to the “if it saves just one life” mantra early in the pandemic.
“Other rational people perceive that this is not how the world works. Whether we recognize them or not, there are trade-offs,” political scientist James Harrigan and economist Antony Davies wrote in April 2020. “And recognizing trade-offs is a component of making a sound policy. “
Harrigan and Davies were not alone. Many economists and public health officials identified this fact in 2020. But instead of listening or opening a discussion to find practical solutions, Collins and Fauci planned their “retreat. “That’s not how science works. Nor is it the way public policies should be conducted.
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This brings me back to Fauci’s recent congressional testimony.
The fact that Fauci, despite everything, is beginning to admit the role his policies played in one of the worst mistakes in fashion history is good news. But a two-day closed-door hearing isn’t enough for something of this magnitude or for the allegations Fauci faces, which come with an alleged attempt to influence the CIA’s report on the origins of COVID-19.
Fortunately, a public hearing is expected to take place in the coming weeks or months. Let’s hope lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, are prepared to ask important questions.
Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) is the editor-in-chief of FEE. org, the Foundation for Economic Education’s website. Track your work on Substack.