Dr. Anthony Fauci might have been an important figure in the early days of the pandemic, but he is now hurting our response to the coronavirus by pushing unreasonable restrictions that defy both science and common sense.
Fauci’s latest warning is to parents who allow their young children to play with others without masks.
“When the children go out into the community, you want them to continue to wear masks when they’re interacting with groups or multiple households,” he said on Sunday. “The children can clearly wind up getting infected.”
This is nonsense. Multiple studies, including one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirm that children rarely transmit the coronavirus. When they contract it, they are also far less likely to fall seriously ill from it. Less than 10% of all coronavirus cases have been among children and adolescents ages 5-17. If anyone is safe from the coronavirus, it would be this age group.
Surely Fauci, who now serves as the White House’s chief medical adviser, knows this. So why is he pushing over-the-top guidelines on an age group that does not need them? Because Fauci, similar to so many other public health experts, is not willing to say that the crisis has passed. He’s not willing to admit that children can go about their normal activities safely or that vaccinated people can stop following restrictions once they develop immunity or that herd immunity is much closer than he’s led us to believe because Fauci has always wanted us to believe the worst.
This might at one point have been necessary, but not anymore. Infection rates are dropping dramatically, and millions of vaccine doses are being distributed every day. All of the available data suggests that states should be easing up on restrictions, yet Fauci seems bent on forcing us to live in a constant state of coronavirus anxiety.
It’s time to stop listening. By May, everyone who wants the vaccine should be able to get one. And at that point, the virus will no longer be the threat that it was last year. Fauci would have you believe otherwise, even if he has to ignore the scientific data to do so. He is deliberately withholding important context in an effort to keep moving the lockdown goal posts, and he doesn’t seem to care about the other crises the lockdowns create.
Anxiety and depression are running rampant among children. Adolescent suicides are alarmingly high. The achievement gap between rich and poor students has widened, and the learning lost over the past year could set children back years. But Fauci is worried about keeping masks on children who don’t need them.
