Anthony Fauci Imitates Emily Litella on Capitol Hill
A day after parting ways with editor Sally Buzbee, The Washington Post published the newspaper equivalent of an Emily Litella “never mind.”
“In the pandemic, we were told to keep six feet apart,” the headline reads. “There’s no science to support that.”
Who told us the science supported that? The Emily Litella of the medical profession, Anthony Fauci, deserves blame. So, too, to great degree, does The Washington Post. (READ MORE from Daniel Flynn: 10 Reasons Liberals Haven’t Closed the Happiness Gap)
For years, he pushed masks, social distancing, and the notion that Covid-19 started naturally.
In both the news and opinion sections, The Washington Post acted as a booster sheet for NIAID and the CDC during the pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci became a sort of canonized figure for whom criticism became blasphemy and whatever unelected government employees wearing lab coats in front of cameras said amounted to science. And only rubes — the type of Washingtonians who read the Times and not the Post — questioned that.
A sampling of the era’s Post headlines tells a story: “To save lives, social distancing must continue longer than we expect,” “Social distancing could buy U.S. valuable time against coronavirus,” “Six feet may not be enough to protect against coronavirus,” and “Why easing off social distancing soon would be a huge mistake.”
Never mind.
By June 3, 2024, the newspaper reversed course.
“It’s still not clear who at the CDC settled on the six-foot distance; the agency has repeatedly declined to specify the authors of the guidance, which resembled its recommendations on how to avoid contracting the flu,” health reporter Dan Diamond wrote Monday.
A CDC spokesperson credited a team of experts, who drew from research such as a 1955 study on respiratory droplets. In his book, [former Food and Drug Administration head Scott] Gottlieb wrote that the Trump White House pushed back on the CDC’s initial recommendation of 10 feet of social distance, saying it would be too difficult to implement.
The Post’s words easily seduce into thinking one reads a refreshing change of heart from the tax write-off disguised as a newspaper. Alas, the timing, coming hours before Dr. Anthony Fauci testified on Capitol Hill, looks like an effort to reveal to conceal and remove the oomph from hearings that aimed to disclose Fauci’s admission in earlier, executive session that no science buttressed the mantra and mandate of six feet for social distancing.
“I think it would fall under the category of empiric,” Fauci said of the CDC staff arrived-at rule establishing six feet as the appropriate distance between humans. “Just an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data or even data that could be accomplished…. it sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance.”
Never mind.
Why did not Fauci tell us then what he admits now?
Rep. John Joyce, a medical doctor representing Pennsylvania, asked him this and other important questions on Monday. Fauci dodged and passed the buck. “It was a CDC decision,” he explained about social distancing, later saying he did not speak out because “it is not appropriate to be publicly challenging a sister organization.”
Fauci sounded like a man who loathes responsibility even as he loves power. Uncredentialed scientists coined a name for such creatures: bureaucrats. And when Fauci behaves as a slippery creature of the bureaucracy and not a trusted man of the medical profession, he gets in trouble — and worse still, gets others in trouble.
Also on Monday, an even-keeled Rep. Nicole Malliotakis highlighted government scientists boasting of communicating through personal emails to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, earning over $700 million for royalties on medical products developed on the government dime, and dismissing the idea that Covid-19 started in a laboratory. She compelled Fauci to admit, “I don’t think the concept of a lab-leak theory is a conspiracy theory.”
Never mind.
As Fauci reverted to talking points accusing his detractors of relying on misinformation and disinformation, one could not help but sense the man does not grasp his own irony. For years, he pushed masks, social distancing, and the notion that Covid-19 started naturally (away from the Wuhan Virology Institute to which he oversaw grants for gain-of-function research). On Monday, he struggled to explain his own role in not just misinformation — but as his private emails on masks and other matters contradicting his public positions show — disinformation. (READ MORE: This Is Not America. It’s Manhattan.)
On all that a nation shuttered schools, held professional sporting events in empty stadiums, and bankrupted so many bars and restaurants.
Never mind.
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