If you watch the news, you’d think Anthony Fauci was not only president of the United States, but also part God. Some version of “Listen to Dr. Fauci,” or “According to Dr. Fauci” is uttered every hour on cable news. When Fauci is unavailable, they simply replace his name with “experts.” One thing missing from all of this “news” and “analysis” is just how wrong these “experts” have been.
Dr. Fauci came to national prominence in the 80s for his work on an AIDS vaccine. Somehow that work has imbued him with authority second only to God on everything COVID-19 related. I don’t know the the last time he actually practiced clinical medicine, but I suspect it’s been a while. Why are his statements on the efficacy of things like Hydroxychloroquine treated as if they were carved into stone tables by a burning bush?
No offense to Dr. Fauci - he knows more about medicine than I do - but he doesn’t know everything. He also doesn’t know the first-hand experience of practicing doctors who say they’ve seen for themselves that it can work. Does it? I don’t have any idea, I’m not a doctor. But I doubt highly that the medical profession, notorious for their desire to engage in lawsuit avoidance, would be heavily peppered with people willing to throw caution to the wind and prescribe a drug that does nothing or real damage to their patients.
Anecdotes are one thing, and they shouldn’t be dismissed, but the studies on the drug’s effectiveness are all over the place too. I will point out, however, that of the two studies that got the most attention, the one saying Hydroxychloroquine was dangerous was retracted because it couldn’t stand up to basic scrutiny, while the one saying it cut death rates in half still stands, unchallenged. It’s also the one that received the least media attention of the two, weirdly.
It’s not just advice on drug treatments that have been all over the map. Wearing masks has been discouraged and pushed by the same people, including Saint Fauci himself.
I don’t begrudge anyone getting something wrong, especially when that something is new. What I do hold against people is when they refuse to acknowledge that they’re saying the exact opposite of what they said in the past.
“Don’t wear a mask, it won’t do anything” changing into “Your very life depends on you wearing a mask, even at home” is quite a switch. That’s like a vegetarian suddenly ordering a huge porterhouse. More than that, it’s like that vegetarian refusing to admit they’d ever even eaten a vegetable in their whole lives.
If you want credibility, the American public is perfectly willing to give it to you, but there are some caveats. Owning your mistakes is chief among them. Some of the early anti-maskers have admitted their position has changed, but they did so in the most damaging way possible. “We didn’t want a rush on masks to prevent a shortage for medical professionals” isn’t admitting a mistake, it’s admitting they were deliberately lying. Why should anyone trust you when you admit you lied?
It’s not the being wrong; it’s the pretending they weren’t. There’s nothing wrong with saying you don’t know the answer to something, yet these experts speak with absolute authority every time they speak when they are simply making guesses, if not making it up.
We are being told to take all sorts of precautions on the off chance that they’ll work. Wear a mask, wear gloves, now wear goggles. How long till they’re telling us to laminate ourselves or wear scuba gear?
How about you guys study some of the basics? I know COVID-19 is new, but it’s been around long enough to find out whether or not it’s airborne. How do we not know that? There’s no shortage of infected people – put a group of them in a room, seal it, and test the air at different distances. Let them out of the room, then test the air again a few more times and see if it’s floating around in there. I’m not a scientist , but I’m pretty sure I could pull this off. Why can’t people do it with more funding than they’ve ever had?
As far as surfaces go, how do we not know how long the virus lives outside the body? We’ve gotten mixed messages on this, too. Everything from “You don’t have to worry, it can’t live long on surfaces” to “Boil every package you even look at” has been decreed by “experts.”
These people have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re the “experts”? What are the standards? On CNN and MSNBC, it seems like one criteria to qualify is to be named Gupta. And that’s one of the higher standards.
I get that there are 24 hours of programming to fill on cable news, but there are other things to talk about. If you don’t have anything new to report that is verified, having someone on to expound on their best guesses, which just happens to coincide with your political agenda, is not helpful. It’s the opposite.
There’s a place for expertise in society, but that place is being squeezed out of existence by agenda-pushers and pundit-prostitutes desperate to be famous and willing to do anything to achieve it. So next time some cable news personality lectures the public for not doing this or not wearing that and say, “They need to listen to the experts,” maybe they have. Just because these teleprompter-readers don’t seem to watch their own networks or follow the news doesn’t mean no one else does.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter and on Parler at @DerekHunter.