Now “The Wall Street Journal” Criticises Fauci By Brian Simpson
Things are definitely moving along on the wild west Covid trail, and we are catching up to where we should have been 12 months ago, but had to take a politically correct pause because the establishment would not want Trump to be right about anything, even the truths of arithmetic! Now that he is gone forever, mainstream papers like The Wall Street Journal are having a crack at Dr Fauci and his role in the whole nasty Covid viral business.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dr-fauci-and-the-mask-disaster-11624398991
“Nobody needs to be shocked that political messaging was going on during the Covid crisis, as seen in the Anthony Fauci emails from early in the pandemic recently released under the Freedom of Information Act. Politicians and officials wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t measure the effect of their words, beyond merely their accuracy or consistency. And Dr. Fauci, director of U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the past 36 years, has at least been more wink-wink in this regard than many officials.
But the latest furor does underline one thing: what a colossal disaster for public understanding masks have been.
Until November, the official advice was the same that Dr. Fauci gave in a now infamous early email to a colleague—a store-bought mask may somewhat reduce your chance of spreading the disease if you happen to be infected. It will do little to prevent you from catching it if you’re breathing around someone who is exhaling the Covid virus.
Only in the fall did the U.S. government start claiming masks might protect the uninfected too. This appears to have been largely disinformation designed to get more unwitting carriers to wear masks. Even today, the CDC on its website stresses only one claim: “Masks are a simple barrier to help prevent your respiratory droplets from reaching others.”
We should expect government advice to be manipulative. That’s its job. We should also try to be time-consistent in our reasoning.”
That is all we get from that mob for free, but there is more at Beckernews.com, who can presumably afford subscriptions, unlike most of us bloggers:
“The Wall Street Journal has now published an editorial that takes Fauci to task over his disastrous mask messaging. It underscores what many have been clamoring all along and may be a harbinger that public understanding is eventually catching up to the actual “science.”
“[W]hat a colossal disaster for public understanding masks have been,” the Journal article remarked about Fauci’s botched messaging.
“Until November, the official advice was the same that Dr. Fauci gave in a now infamous early email to a colleague—a store-bought mask may somewhat reduce your chance of spreading the disease if you happen to be infected,” the author Holman Jenkins wrote. “It will do little to prevent you from catching it if you’re breathing around someone who is exhaling the Covid virus.”
“Only in the fall did the U.S. government start claiming masks might protect the uninfected too,” he continued. “This appears to have been largely disinformation designed to get more unwitting carriers to wear masks. Even today, the CDC on its website stresses only one claim: ‘Masks are a simple barrier to help prevent your respiratory droplets from reaching others’.”
The research cited by Jenkins also raises a point that many might find counter-intuitive: Masks and face coverings may have been a net negative for public health.
“Under rigorous study, it may even be that masks were a net minus if they gave a larger-than-expected fillip to personal risk-taking,” Jenkins writes. “When all the memos and emails finally surface, we may find local officials pushed masks mainly as a way to restart the economic engine at the risk of somewhat greater spread. The CDC’s most emphatic advice remains: ‘A mask is NOT a substitute for social distancing’.”
The masks were thus symbolic of a true scourge in America: The public’s craving for symbolic virtue-signaling in the absence of a strong assessment of the actual risks. This was a failure of the medical establishment, which overhyped the COVID-19 risks to imply that young healthy people stood a roughly equal risk from the virus as the sickly and the elderly. This was never the case and the CDC’s data can be extrapolated to show that relatively young, healthy Americans have a 99.9985% survival rate.
A recent study in pre-publication phase provides further documentation of what astute observers of the COVID-19 pandemic already know: Mask mandates did not slow the spread of the coronavirus in the United States.
“Contrary to our hypothesis, early mandates were not associated with lower minimum case growth,” the authors found. “Maximum case growth was the same among states with early, late, and no mandates. This indicates that mask mandates were not predictive of slower COVID-19 spread when community transmission rates were low or high.”
The bottom-line conclusion for the authors: “Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID-19 growth surges.”
As reported earlier: “Mask mandates do not appear have any statistically significant effect on COVID-related case rates or death rates. Whether or not masks themselves have any marginal effect is a separate matter. A recent CDC study showed they have 0.9%-1.9% effect on case rates if used for 100 days.”
Mask mandates were the reason restaurants were shuttered. ports venues limited or closed to the public. Children made to endure long hours with no smiling faces or ability to breathe freely. Millions forced into unemployment. The American Dream put on “pause.” Life put on hold.”
What will happen? It is a given that the West is too cowardly and corrupted by Leftism to deal with China, so perhaps some Western fall guy will be chosen. Or, the whole thing will just be buried by the media, as quickly as they dug it up. We will see.
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