Dr. Anthony Fauci lied when he downplayed and even discouraged the use of masks in protecting against the coronavirus. Now, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has the gall to complain about the glut of “anti-science” people who “don’t believe authority.”
There are certainly anti-science cliques in the United States. But the distrust of authority, especially in regard to this viral pandemic, is well earned. Fauci has personally done more harm to the cause of combating the coronavirus than he likely will ever understand.
“One of the problems we face in the United States is that, unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable — they just don’t believe science, and they don’t believe authority,” Fauci said this week in an episode of the Department of Health and Human Services’s podcast Learning Curve.
He added, “So, when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who’s talking about science, that there are some people who just don’t believe that — and that’s unfortunate because, you know, science is truth. … If you go by the evidence and by the data, you’re speaking the truth.”
Again, it cannot be stressed enough that Fauci knowingly lied about masks and recently admitted it. And even if he were not speaking specifically of the coronavirus, he is the last healthcare expert who should be complaining about a widespread lack of trust in authority.
“[W]e were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” he told the Wall Street Journal of his supposedly noble lie.
Fauci added, “And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely, the healthcare workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”
We will never know how many extra people died because they could not just tell people to wear bandanas and let the medical personnel have the surgical masks.
“It’s amazing sometimes the denial there is,” Fauci said. “It’s the same thing that gets people who are anti-vaxxers, who don’t want people to get vaccinated, even though the data clearly indicate the safety of vaccines,” he said on the podcast. “That’s really a problem.”
As it turns out, if you lie to people from a position of authority, they will stop trusting people in positions of authority. Crazy how these things work, is it not?
