A lot of Americans are fed up with Dr. Anthony Fauci's changing tune. He is a fine physician and has done incredible work for Americans during the pandemic, but he's also given us plenty of headaches as he keeps moving the goal posts on what it would take to beat this pandemic.
A recent New York Times piece revealed that the top infectious diseases expert admitted to them in a phone interview that he's changed his mind on herd immunity. Early on, Fauci put it at 60 to 70 percent of the population. He edited that to 70, 75 percent, before landing on 75 to 80-plus percent in an interview with CNBC last week.
In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.
Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak. (New York Times)
"You've admitted to the New York Times that you've moved the goal post on what it would take to reach so-called herd immunity in the United States," CNN's Dana Bash noted over the weekend.
She then asked him a question this weekend on all of our minds: "Why weren’t you straight with the American people about this to begin with?”
.@DanaBashCNN presses Dr. Fauci on his comments about “moving the goal posts” on herd immunity based on polling. "Why weren’t you straight with the American people about this to begin with?” she asks.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) December 27, 2020
He deflects multiple times. She presses and he says it’s just a “guesstimate." pic.twitter.com/kquQvlwZ8j
"You know, actually Dana, I don't think it can be interpreted as being straight or not," he responded. "We have to realize that we have to be humble and realize what we don't know. These are pure estimates and the calculations that I made, 70, 75 percent it's a range. The range is going to be somewhere between 70 and 85 percent."
As for his leap to 85 percent, Dr. Fauci says that was based "on calculations and pure extrapolations from measles." Americans started seeing a breakthrough against measles, the most transmissible disease, at about 90 percent vaccinations, so he's putting the number a bit lower for COVID.
He again said he "doesn't know for sure." It's a "guesstimate."
Dr. Fauci has also been waxing pessimistic lately. We have two FDA approved vaccines that have already been delivered to over 1 million Americans. But instead of reflecting on that achievement, the physician warns us that the worst "is still yet to come."
“We very well might see a post-seasonal - in the sense of Christmas, New Years - surge or as I’ve described it, a surge upon a surge,” he told Bash.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) rejected the doctor's advice and warnings.
Dr. Fauci lied about masks in March
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 27, 2020
Dr. Fauci has been distorting the level of vaccination needed for herd immunity
It isn’t just him
Many in elite bubbles believe the American public doesn’t know “what’s good for them” so they need to be tricked into “doing the right thing”