Many Americans don’t know what to believe about COVID-19 because public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci have flip-flopped so many times on so many issues it’s hard to keep track. Turning on the news isn’t helpful either, as viewers will likely be met with doom and gloom stories about the pandemic, including death tracker chyrons (thanks, CNN) that seemed to stay on screen no matter what topic is being discussed (at least under Trump). Finally, when vaccines got the green light many breathed a sigh of relief, hoping it meant that soon this pandemic would be over. No more social distancing, no more isolation, no more lockdowns, no more Zoom school, no more masks…or double masks. But then the “experts” said not so fast—you still have to do all those things even if you get inoculated. After all, the pandemic response is about control, and as Matt wrote Tuesday, that’s not something the COVID Nazis and Democrats want to give up.
Eventually, however, when the pandemic is over, and things do go back to normal, public health officials have done so much harm to the American psyche that many people will have a difficult time moving forward, said Dr. Scott Atlas, former White House COVID adviser and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“If you look at the data from the National Bureau of Economic Research, over 90 percent of American stories [about COVID-19] were negative and therefore fear invoking whereas in Europe it’s just over 50 percent,” he told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
“That has an impact, and at this point when you have people that keep repeating that kind of stuff, misinformation, totally ignoring the science on the masks, actually, completely ignoring and therefore pushing false information—they’re instilling fear and that’s what’s worrisome here, because when you look at the data on the surveys, over 70 percent of Americans say they will wear a mask after the pandemic is over. That’s very frightening,” he continued. “We have a damaged American psyche, and it's due to these public health officials that are just really not saying the real data, probably because they don't want to admit they were so wrong."
Dr. Scott Atlas: "Over 70% ... say they will wear a mask after the pandemic is over ... We have a damaged American psyche, and it's due to these public health officials that are just really not saying the real data, probably because they don't want to admit they were so wrong." pic.twitter.com/vUzXMZbFvy
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) February 23, 2021
Other voices challenging public health orthodoxy on COVID-19, like Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, are bringing more optimistic outlooks on the pandemic to the American people. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he predicted COVID-19 will be "mostly gone" by April thanks in large part to herd immunity.
