I've got to say, Dr. Fauci is a man of many faces, by which I mean a man of contradictions. A man who says one thing at one time and then another thing soon after, the opposite thing. And this has happened now, not once, not twice, but at least three times. And I think this is the root of why people distrust and even detest the man I've sometimes called the little ogre.
Now, it started with the issue of the masks. Fauci was, at first, saying you don't need a mask. Oh, no, masks aren't really necessary! Masks don't do a whole lot of good! And then shortly thereafter, you must wear a mask. A mask is a way to protect you from COVID. Now, let's remember that the research on the efficacy of masks hasn't changed. You can take the view that masks do no good. They're kind of a towel over your face. Viruses can easily kind of penetrate the mask. And there's a body of literature about that. Or you can take the view that hey, masks do some good. They do provide an obstruction. They do provide some blockage, but my point is Dr. Fauci, which is it? You've taken both positions in the face of the same evidence.
Then, if you fast forward a little bit to later last year, Fauci takes the view that public rallies are very dangerous. He singles out kind of the Trump rally, "very irresponsible of Trump to have these rallies because you know, people are kind of like close quarters. This is a virus that can be transmitted through the air. This is the kind of behavior for which there's no excuse." And then shortly thereafter, when there were the big Black Lives Matter rallies the big George Floyd protests, suddenly, Fauci goes silent. What? Wait a minute, does the virus discriminate based on the ideological proclivity of the type of rally it is? In both cases, you have large groups. In both cases, you have people pressed up against each other. So presumably, from a medical point of view, these are identical events, but not for Fauci. He was vocal against the one, and then he kind of went into a dead silence over the second.
Now the latest round, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) brings up Dr. Fauci at one of the hearings, and he basically says, "Hey, listen, why are you wearing two masks? You're indoors, but you've been vaccinated. If you've been vaccinated, you're not going to get the virus. What's the point of the two masks? Isn't it just for theater?" And Fauci gets kind of huffy and essentially says, "What do you mean? It's not just for theater; there's a medical purpose." So Fauci pushes back at Rand Paul, except that a little after that, he appears with George Stephanopoulos, and he says, "But being a fully vaccinated person, the chances of my getting infected in an indoor setting is extremely low."
There you go.
Now, Fauci says that there's no problem with not wearing a mask, not just outdoors, but even indoors. Why? Because he really can't get it that way. This is a man who doesn't seem to know quite where he's coming from. Now, is he doing this because he's aligned with the Democrats? Democratic rallies "ok," Republican rallies "not okay?" Is he doing it because he's a little, power-hungry, Napoleonic type of guy where he really likes this idea of government control? Does he like the idea that he, Dr. Fauci, is the voice of what people can do?
I don't know if it's psychological or if it's political. But I will say that the net effect of it is to tell reasonable people watching just Fauci are going to say, what's up with Fauci? How come he says different things about the same thing at different times? Even though Fauci puts on the medical lab coat, he gives the sort of doctor's orders type of instruction; you get the feeling that at the end of the day, his advice, his recommendations, his orders, are not only contradictory, they may even be incoherent.