We'll get to Fauci below, but first, a word on the return of various restrictions. Cases of the latest COVID variant are surging because COVID is a seasonal virus. As the trend accelerated, NPR asked whether the return of mask mandates would soon follow, noting that the increased case could had already "prompt[ed] some schools, hospitals and businesses to encourage — or even require — people to start masking up again." Hospitalizations have ticked up as well, though the story notes that current levels represent "far fewer than the 40,000 such hospitalizations a week the U.S. had at its highest point last August." Some are discussing the return of mask requirements as if it hasn't been well established that such mandates do not work, which seems like a fairly important detail. It's not just right-wing sources who have made this point. As the New York Times' David Leonhardt wrote last spring, "the evidence suggests that broad mask mandates have not done much to reduce Covid caseloads over the past two years." He went on:
Masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect. Given this, you would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case. In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks...when you look at the data on mask-wearing — both before vaccines were available and after, as well as both in the U.S. and abroad — you struggle to see any patterns.
It's almost hard to believe that we need to go through all of this again, but here's another New York Times-published summary of perhaps the most thorough and wide-ranging study of mask mandates ever done:
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous. “There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.” But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson...What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration? “There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.” These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
Forcing people to wear masks doesn't help contain or slow the spread of COVID. Worse, in schools, the practice can actively harm some students. That's the actual science. And yet, here we go again, in some of the most left-wing, "pro-Science" jurisdictions in America:
Ignorant and sadistic -- and there is no end in sight where Democrats have unchecked power. https://t.co/r8QyNvk8NI
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) September 5, 2023
This is in addition to some of the damaging, superstitious nonsense we are seeing re-emerging -- from unscientific vaccine requirements for young, healthy college students, to quarantine lunacy, to even some school closures. It's clear that some people are simply incapable of learning lessons, evaluating data, or assessing risk (or they're unwilling to do so). For example, it is mind-blowing that this CNN op/ed was published on September 5 of 2023, as opposed to having been dug up in a 2020 time capsule:
This American infectious disease expert got sick and tested negative for the coronavirus on a rapid test.
— Anthony LaMesa (@ajlamesa) September 5, 2023
Instead of just staying home until well, he visited two pharmacies to look for more rapid tests.
Rather than reflect on the wisdom of visiting multiple pharmacies while… pic.twitter.com/FHbhDhROfC
The author is described as a "physician and infectious disease expert" in New York City. He evidently still believes that COVID is spread through "contaminated" or "even lethal" cash, or something. Mary Katharine Ham responds: "The vicious cycle of COVID coverage is the *most* neurotic experts or laypeople with the *most* pitched responses to Covid get Op-Eds placed, no problem...The incentives, they are bad." Meanwhile, though I understand that his (quadruple-vaxxed) wife recently tested positive for COVID, and that he is very old and vulnerable, I wonder how the White House is thinking about the optics of the president re-masking up:
Recommended
Karine Jean-Pierre says Biden will be wearing a mask indoors again pic.twitter.com/3NZqnP36N2
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 5, 2023
The CDC guidance is unserious, politicized garbage, but the president is free to adopt whatever masking practices he chooses. It's difficult not to wonder, however, if the sight of the president back in a mask might embolden the mask mandate brigade to again impose its will elsewhere. Which brings us to Fauci. Here he is clinging to masking talking points, even when challenged with great specificity:
This is amazing. According to Fauci, masks work at the individual level but not on the pandemic level. Makes sense. pic.twitter.com/YPPGgjfHwh
— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) September 3, 2023
More significantly, read this:
"Fauci had been informed by January 2020 that his institute had funded..discovery..dozens of novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including the closest..virus to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, new records show."https://t.co/VGSm7IDTMo
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) September 5, 2023
Anthony Fauci, a leader of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic and one of the most influential scientists in infectious diseases research for decades, knew in extraordinary detail the breadth of novel coronavirus research underway in Wuhan, China, within a month of the globe learning of the Wuhan novel coronavirus. Fauci had been informed by January 2020 that his institute had funded the discovery and study of dozens of novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including the closest cousin virus to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, new records show. A new email obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit confirms that privately Fauci knew the magnitude of the coronavirus research going on at the coronavirus pandemic’s epicenter, even while publicly shrugging off suggestions the pandemic began with a research accident as conspiratorial. This apparent deception has held back the public’s understanding of the matter and hindered independent investigations into the source of the worst pandemic in a century.
National Review has more:
Despite his claims to the contrary, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, knew by January 2020 that his agency was funding gain-of-function research of novel coronaviruses in Wuhan, China. A newly released email obtained by the investigative public-health non-profit U.S. Right to Know revealed that Fauci knew the extent of the Chinese coronavirus research before the pandemic broke out in the U.S. In a January 27, 2020, email, Fauci received talking points from an aide regarding Wuhan Institute of Virology research that was being funded by the disease division of the National Institutes of Health. The NIAID funded the gain-of-function research through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which contracted the Wuhan lab “for the past 5 years,” according to the email. “EcoHealth group (Peter Daszak et al), has for years been among the biggest players in coronavirus work, also in collaboration with Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin and others,” Fauci’s chief of staff Greg Folkers wrote to his boss and other public health officials.
Folkers then went into detail, specifically regarding the research’s findings. Folkers did not explicitly mention gain-of-function research, but he did note the novel coronaviruses did “cause SARS-like disease in humanized mouse models.” Gain-of-function research refers to making viruses more infectious or deadly for study in a laboratory. In May 2021, [Sen. Rand] Paul pressed the leading U.S. public health advisor on gain-of-function research. “Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci replied. Months later, a top NIH official admitted in an October 2021 letter that the NIH did fund gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, despite Fauci’s argument to the contrary. In November 2021, Paul accused Fauci of changing the definition of gain-of-function research on the NIH’s website. He denied the charge, calling gain-of-function research a “nebulous term,” while also refuting the claim that Covid-19 emerged from a lab leak.
He was almost certainly wrong about the lab leak, at least in his public statements, which may have been colored or motivated by concealment over truth. As we've written before, Fauci (who fancies himself the very human embodiment of Science itself) has very serious questions to answer, given the slippery evasions, allegedly unethical subterfuge, and arguable outright lies that have come to light. This is another big one.
