Dr. Fauci needs to be held responsible for mistakes: Devine
By: Miranda Devine (New York Post)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In his inauguration speech, President Biden pledged to "defend the truth and to defeat the lies."
So let's start by being brutally honest about Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been the source of some of the most damaging misinformation about COVID-19.
At the very least, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert and chief medical adviser to Biden is loose with the facts and is prone to changing his mind.
This is the man who dictated coronavirus policy in the Trump administration. If mistakes were made, as the Biden administration claims, they are Fauci's.
Yet, astonishingly, Fauci told CNN Friday that a "lack of candor" from the Trump administration had cost American lives.
But if people's lives really were at stake last year, why did he wait until now to tell us?
Chalk it up to another convenient fib from a habitual fibber, who has deceived us on everything from masks to herd immunity.
Even if you decide these are not lies but lapses of judgment by Fauci, they had potentially lethal consequences.
Take, for instance, Fauci's serenity back on Jan. 21 last year, when he assured us that the virus convulsing China at the time "is not something the citizens of the United States should be worried about."
To be fair, the pandemic caught a lot of people unaware, but the thing about Fauci is that he always is so sure of himself.
Dr. Anthony Fauci at a White House press briefing on January 24, 2021.REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The following week, he was at it again, vehemently opposing Donald Trump's proposed flight ban from China, which Biden at the time decried as "xenophobia."
It was Jan. 28, and Trump had asked his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, into the Situation Room to convince Fauci and other officials that the China travel ban would save lives.
"The guy I fought the most that day was Fauci," Navarro told me Sunday. "He was adamantly opposed to the travel ban. All he kept saying was travel restrictions don't work."
Navarro pushed back, " 'If you stop 20,000 Chinese nationals coming in every day and some are infected, you're telling me that's not going to spread the virus?' It was like talking to a brick wall."
The next day, Navarro wrote a memo outlining three options: If you do nothing and there's no danger, that's OK; if you do the travel ban and there's no danger, you lose a few million dollars; but if you do nothing and there is danger, the risk is a million American lives and more than $2 trillion in damages.
"I papered everybody in the task force with the memo and . . . it flipped everyone to supporting the president," Navarro said.
Former White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro claims Dr. Fauci originally was against the China travel ban.Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Trump imposed the travel ban on Jan. 31 and Fauci later credited the action with saving lives.
But, says Navarro, "If Biden had been president and Fauci had been the top adviser, we would probably have a million more Americans dead."
Then there was Fauci's advice on masks.
Back in March, when the coronavirus was decimating New York, he told us masks were useless.
"Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks," he told "60 Minutes."
Three months later, he did a backflip: "Masks work . . . to prevent you from infecting someone else . . . but also, it can protect you to a certain degree."
Posing by his pool in sunglasses and novelty socks last June, Fauci told InStyle magazine he had no regrets about lying:
"We were told . . . we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for health providers [and decided] we really need to save the masks for the people who need them most."
It was a noble lie, so he didn't feel the need to apologize or even be slightly ashamed.
But nothing was more corrosive of public trust in medical experts at the height of the pandemic.
If Fauci lied about masks, what else would he lie about?
Turns out he lied about herd immunity, too.
In December, Fauci admitted to The New York Times that he had "slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts" on the percentage of the population that needed to be vaccinated before "herd immunity" against COVID-19 was reached.
"When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85," he said.
Fauci is not precise with numbers, which is odd for a scientist who professes to care about facts.
For instance, on Biden's first day last week, Fauci said we would have "100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days" and specified he meant both "primary and boost" shots, a total of 200 million shots in arms.
On Sunday, he was forced to "clarify that, because there was a little bit of a misunderstanding. What we're talking about is 100 million shots in individuals."
The 100 million goal is fake anyway, since we're already there. In the week before the inauguration, 912,000 shots were administered per day, according to Bloomberg News' tracker. On Inauguration Day, it was 1.6 million shots.
Fauci last week gushed about how "liberating" it was to work for Biden now. "One of the new things in this administration is: If you don't know the answer, don't guess. Just say you don't know the answer."
That would suit Fauci because, for an expert, he never seems to know the answer to anything.
Tags
Who is online
88 visitors
The "expert" who never seemed to know much, yet became a star for the left.
He’s a star to the left because he sabotaged the response to the virus while in the Trump administration from the very beginning.
Fauci's even more involved than that. I checked the suitability of the source at MBFC, but it's not listed.
Fauci also seems to be the highest paid federal employee. Nice gig!
Vic... for real?
He seems a lot more knowledgeable than you do, Vic, but that never stopped you from publishing propagandist bullshit.
From Forbes:
Much more nuanced coverage. He states that the mask is used primarily to keep the wearer of the mask from infecting others. Remember also that there a shortage of masks and that people were told to stay home and keep physically distant from each other, and that the virus was concentrated primarily on the east coast because while Trump wanted to blame it all on the Chinese, he forgot that there was a whole big world out there who also, by this time, had and were spreading the virus.
Later in the same article:
How about that, someone who pays attention to what is happening and actively responds and changes his views based upon the information available. What a concept.
From the article:
And here just a little while ago you were kvetching about how they weren't getting them into arms quickly enough. And, point of fact, we are not there yet. We are on track to be beyond that point by the end of the first 100 days. During the initial phases of the vaccine rollout it went more slowly, but the people are figuring out the logistics and we should be well beyond that number of vaccinations. So, again, propaganda from the right.
You just don't seem to like Dr. Fauci and it would also seem that you want to besmirch his reputation at every chance. I think that you would want to post something that is less provably false in it's assertions.
It's just more propaganda spinning to attempt to make Trump look less bad and Biden to look less good. It's not really going to work outside their bubbles.
Then prove it false!
there's a mad scramble on the right to find substitutes for the actual person responsible, and that person deserves to spend the rest of his entitled life in solitary, behind the bars of a federal institution.
Read the seed.
How do you propose to extract chairman Zi from China to serve his time?
How about it? He lied about masks then admitted it:
And here just a little while ago you were kvetching about how they weren't getting them into arms quickly enough.
Clearly the states (except for West Virginia) have been pathetically flawed in getting out the vaccine. BTW, the US vaccinates 3 million a day during a normal flu season.
So, again, propaganda from the right.
So, again Fauci sucks
I think that you would want to post something that is less provably false in it's assertions.
Two things: 1) Ms Devine has yet to be proven false. 2) you really need to stop making it personal.
Her overall assertion was that Dr. Fauci lies and therefore cannot be trusted in anything that he says. That is what Ms Devine's article is trying to make its readers believe. This assertion, that he knowingly lied and cannot be trusted, is false. The theme underlying this assertion is that it is Dr. Fauci's fault that the Trump administrations response to the pandemic was so poor. These are clearly the main points the opinion piece would like to promulgate and why it is clearly a work of propaganda.
Here is the video clip of the March 8th interview with "60 Minutes"
As everyone can see from this clip, Dr. Fauci says, right off the bat, "The masks are important for someone who is infected to prevent them from infecting someone else." It is important to note that at this time in the pandemic the transmission from asymptomatic spreaders was not really understood to be as bad as it is. That is why he goes on to state, "Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks." He was not lying, he was telling the truth as he understood it to be at the time due to the evidence on hand.
By March 31st he had updated his thoughts on masks ( From Forbes ):
He did not change his mind, he made a decision based upon new data. That is how science works. Not, as Ms. Devine states:
That is not what he said. Period. Strike one for the Propagandists.
And In his "InStyle" interview:
So, again Ms. Devine is guilty of misrepresenting what he said to build a false argument against him. Strike Two for the Propagandists.
Here is another one from Ms. Devine's piece:
I have already, in another article, dealt with this particular bending of the truth. Link
Here is the interview with the NYT . Here is the interview referenced within the NYT articl e.
There you go. She has been proven not only to be wrong, but to lie. Strike 3. She's out. She is a propagandist. By extension, Since you note agreement with her, you are either mislead or a propagandist also.
1) Now she has. 2) No I don't. As long as people are posting things to News Talkers and certain individuals continue to maintain that those posts are an accurate reflection of reality, I will keep letting the other users of this site know that the people who keep posting this type of trash are personally responsible for its continuing existence on this site, because they are. Consider it a public service. If you would like to post a position paper that we can discuss and debate, go ahead. It would be a refreshing change to actually debate rather than just continually shoot down the crap that is posted here.
Fauci even admitted it!
That is why he goes on to state, "Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks." He was not lying, he was telling the truth as he understood it to be at the time due to the evidence on hand.
Again:
Read my lips: Dr Fauci admitted that he told the lie about masks because he worried there wouldn't be enough for hospitals!
After telling us in the beginning that this "is not something the citizens of the United States should be worried about.", he should have been fired as soon as Americans started dying.
He fought against the idea of stopping flights from China and again after people started dying he should have been fired!
I will keep letting the other users of this site know that the people who keep posting this type of trash are personally responsible for its continuing existence on this site, because they are.
Your attempts at denying the truth have failed and as with the New York Times have been totally discredited.
Sorry. Wrong.
As long as you keep listing the Washington Examiner as a reference, I think I know the source of your misinformation. They lie, repeatedly and provably. Now, I am going to carefully and completely go over your sentence above and show you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Washington Examiner, and you, are wrong.
Reading through several of the links that they provided in the opinion article that you referenced leads us to more opinion articles and some actual articles. Tracking back, I clicked on this:
Which took me to The Street and an actual interview with Dr. Fauci. There is a short video on the page, but that doesn't really tell us much about what we are looking for. Interesting and factual, but beside the point. Reading the rest of the article (because the Washington Examiner told us that this was the place to go) and there was this:
Where do you see in the above quoted text anywhere that says "I lied about wearing masks"???? Remember, it is your contention that he " admitted that he told the lie about masks", so it should be obvious where he states this. This is where the Washington Examiner said it would be. But, of course you can't because he does not. He gives the reason why he said what he said. Back up the page aways, he told Sixty Minutes the same thing. Once again, no lie, no admission of lying, nothing even close to it. Just a person explaining why at one time they said one thing that may not jibe with what they are saying now.
Go to the original source material and read it for yourself. That is what I did. That is where I got my material from. Not someone else's slant on what he said, the actual articles and interviews where he says it. Those are what I posted in response to your claims that he said whatever. The very articles that Ms. Devine referenced. The articles the Washington Examiner referenced. Do your homework. Admit when you are wrong. In this case, you are wrong. There is no way to sugar coat that. You are only doing yourself and the readers of this site a disservice by clinging to non-facts.
I don't know what bent your dick about Fauci, and quite frankly, I don't care.
Grow up.
No. You have.
This is not even news, it is easy to find. Here is a third source:
Or you can simply get it from the horses mouth:
You have wasted all out time trying to turn black into white.
Miranda Devine has simply stated the obvious truth. The left hates that.
I take it you're done.
There is no place in any of the articles or whatever that you posted throughout this entire thread where Fauci admits that he lied. He gives reasons and fully explains why he is saying that which he is saying. When something changes, he explains why it changes. That is known as being truthful. Only someone who has been perverted by trying to justify years of lies could not see that.
Fauci and others moved dangerous research about the spread of corona virus from animal to human to China after the Obama Administration insisted on ending such research due to the tremendous potential for disaster if anything went wrong to China. The finding that was supposed to have been stopped was diverted to the Wuhan virology lab from which it escaped causing our present mess.
[Deleted]
Steve Hilton on Fox News “The Next Revolution” has been on this issue two weeks ago, last week, and tonight.
During the pandemic, Dr. Fauci's popularity among the American people far exceeded Trump who constantly complained that Fauci was more popular than the Liar in Chief.
Not all Americans are blind to the disaster that Trump was, especially his response, or lack thereof during the pandemic.
420,000 COVID19 deaths too date. That is Trump's legacy.
Read the seed.
You still haven't made a credible case that all those deaths are Trump's fault.
Facts are your friends
Yes, they are you should try using them sometime.
If Fauci had run for president against Trump, Trump would have lost worse than he did against Biden. The seeded article is nothing more than flaccid antagonism toward Fauci.
It's amazing the way some "conservatives" can look in every direction except the correct one to find out what went wrong.
So, you are incapable of talking about anything other than Donald Trump?
The article, John!
The only reason you seeded this article is because you believe Fauci has received public praise at Trump's expense.
The reason I seeded it was because everything Miranda Devine says is absolutely true plus the fact that the "doctor" has been so damn political.
Wrong.
Undue praise...his advice has been a mass of contradictions.
Trump got two vaccines into the healthcare system in less than a year.
Why does no one question Fauci's involvement with the Wuhan lab
Not good enough
Like telling everyone that he feels liberated now that Joe Biden is president.
I brought it up. Fox News is covering Fauci and his connections to Wuhan.
Trump lied way more and made huge mistakes, but that was okay to some here.