More than four months after abruptly saying goodbye to the daily life we once knew, Americans still live in a surreal and virus-induced dystopia.
Summer, essentially, has been canceled: no big family weddings, no trips abroad, no open public beaches and pools, no baseball. Tens of millions remain out of work while small businesses close up shop, permanently altering the landscape of big cities and small towns across the country. Mini Gestapo populated by once-friendly neighbors police face coverings and six feet of separation.
Power-grabbing, attention-addicted governors hog local news cameras each day under the guise of “Coronavirus Update!” to riff about their keen abilities to fight a virus or spew invective at Donald Trump or issue another decree to inflict further misery upon their willing subjects.
As school children and their parents anxiously check email boxes for any update about the fall semester and working parents with small children are scrambling to develop backup plans for online learning, Democrats are pushing hard to keep kids and teachers at home—at least until Election Day.
One person, however, seems to be basking in the chaos and confusion: Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. After toiling in relative obscurity at that position for more than 35 years, Fauci is earning the sort of rock star treatment that legitimate rock stars dream about—or at least pay big bucks to an A-list publicist to produce.
But Fauci, thanks to U.S. taxpayers, is getting a free ride on the media’s nonstop publicity train. This week, Fauci graces the cover of InStyle, a fashion magazine that has yet to feature one of the most stylish First Ladies of all time, Melania Trump.
Seated poolside at his D.C.-area home, Fauci, 79, dons a pair of dark shades—needed, presumably, to shield him from the glare of the spotlight he craves. The good doctor, as the headline for the puff piece describes him, and his wife were interviewed by their friend, NBC News anchor Norah O’Donnell. It’s standard Beltway fare—a mix of mutual admiration, deep reflections about their power over the little people, and cheeky personal anecdotes about how many languages they speak and how many books they read while the world burns.
Despite a number of serious missteps, Fauci remains unrepentant. In fact, Fauci claims the catastrophic lockdown he advised the president to support in late March didn’t go far enough.
“If you look at the European countries, they shut down about 90 to 95 percent of the country,” Fauci explains. “Whereas when we shut down, the calculation is that we shut down about 50 percent.” Where he gets that figure, no one knows, but shooting from the hip is a Fauci specialty. And he argues again for a “pause” in states moving forward with reopening.
Asked about his changing advice on face masks, Fauci deftly spins his pivot to make himself look courageous, not clueless. He told O’Donnell that he doesn’t “regret anything I said then because, in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct.” Fauci insists that he warned people back in March not to use masks in order to preserve a sparse supply for health care workers.
But that simply is not true. During a March 8 interview on “60 Minutes,” Fauci’s main argument against masks wasn’t based on PPE shortages but because face coverings offer a false sense of security without doing anything to stop the virus’ spread.
Julie Kelly – American Greatness – July 17, 2020.
