When COVID-19 first came ashore in America — long before scientists really knew anything about the coronavirus — the top brains said in one breathless voice: Wash your hands!
The big dogs said wash, wash, wash, maybe wear gloves, don’t touch your face, blah blah blah. Yeah, no. Turns out there’s almost no surface transmission of COVID-19. Nearly none.
Now, you would think that the smart people running things (they must be smart ’cause they’re running things, right?) would’ve said, “Hang on, let’s study this thing first, collect some data, and then come up with some conclusions and courses of action.”
But no, instead, everyone was saying everything all at the same time — and the mainstream media was laughing all the way to the bank. “It turns out the pandemic is a pretty big part of the news cycle and that’s not going away anytime soon,” WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said in March 2021. “It turns out it’s really good for ratings.”
If it bleeds it leads, amirite?
Before the fact-checkers get their undies in a wad, let’s be clear: COVID-19 was pretty bad (for old and fat people and those with comorbidities). It did kill 993,996 Americans as of Tuesday (and if you’re keeping score at home, 596,599 came on President Biden’s watch).
For the record, 925,931 of those deaths were people 50 years old and older. And if you go “classic old” (65 and above), it turns out nearly 7 in 10 deaths (74.4) were in that age bracket. So yes, mostly “old” people.
So it’s bad, but eh, not that bad. There are 320 million people in America, so we’re talking less than a third of 1%. For comparison, COVID-19 has killed 6.3 million people worldwide; the 1918 influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million, with some estimates running as high as 100 million.
But let’s get to the real Debbie Downer of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. immunologist.
Back in March 2020, Fauci declared, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
“When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask 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,” the doctor said on CBS News.
Yeah, so, wrong. Turns out it’s mostly airborne.
Then this in January 2021, Fauci said wearing two masks is likely more effective than wearing one. “If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on it, just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective,” he told NBC News.
Duh. Wrong again. In fact, mask-wearing has been proven to be barely effective, especially with the Omicron variant.
Jump to last week. Fauci declared on Tuesday that the “pandemic phase” is over. But that was refuted the next day — by Fauci. Yup, the doc walked it all back — maybe after a miffed Biden got to him — and said, “by no means does that mean the pandemic is over.”
Then this: Fauci announced on Thursday he would not attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which was held Saturday. Fauci was invited by ABC News “and had planned on going,” CNN reported, but he “decided to abandon those plans and inform ABC that he would no longer attend because of an individual assessment of his own personal risk.”
Yup, 2,500 people in a room is too scary for the immunologist — but that didn’t keep him from attending the swanky white-tie Gridiron gala last month.
Forget all that. You’re in the Fauci Vortex, where up is down.
Finally, (hypocrisy alert) a maskless Fauci was photographed attending a packed pre-dinner brunch on Saturday afternoon. And we’ve been to that brunch in years past — it’s packed to the gills. In fact, Fauci was snapped schmoozing it up all over the brunch, all with maskless garden party goers. He do get around, don’t he?
And now, after all that, Fauci is back to his doomsday predictions about another wave of death and destruction from whatever variant is out there now.
Comedian David Spade summed it all up in a show he did Sunday just outside Washington. Speaking as Fauci, he warned, “We have no data now, but it’s gonna be worse! It’s gonna be worse than Rocky 5!”
Now that we all know just what a hypocrite Fauci is, the question must be asked: When will he just go away? He’s 81, the highest-paid employee in the entire federal government (he gets more than the president), and he keeps getting everything wrong — and not practicing what he preaches, just like all Democrats have done from the beginning.
It’s time to go, Dr. Grouchy. We’re finally — finally — onto you.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl covered the White House for a dozen years and ran the Drudge Report for four years. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @JosephCurl. A version of this article ran previously in The Washington Times.