Five Years Ago, Fauci And The CDC Ended Science, And It's Never Recovered
It's now been five years since the great COVID panic of 2020. Lockdowns and school closures started in March, thanks to the nonsensical "15 Days to Slow the Spread" mandate. But masks started later, in the first week of April 2020. All thanks to the CDC.
With that in mind, it's worth revisiting what the CDC said in late February 2020, followed by what changed by the time they recommended universal masking just a few weeks later.
The CDC hosted a telebriefing update on February 26, 2020, where they explained how they'd run pandemic planning exercises based on the best available evidence from over 200 journal articles over 20 years of research. They specifically mentioned personal non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI); measures individuals could take to protect themselves.
"Personal NPIs which include personal protective measures you can take every day and personal protective measures reserved for pandemics.
Personal protective measures reserved for pandemics include voluntary home quarantine of household members who have been exposed to someone they live with who is sick.
CDC and other federal agencies have been practicing for this since the 2019 influenza pandemic. In the last two years, CDC has engaged in two pandemic influenza exercises that have required us to prepare for a severe pandemic and just this past year we had a whole of government exercise practicing similarly around a pandemic of influenza."
Notice something? They never mentioned masks. And when Anthony Fauci mentioned masks in February 2020, it was on 60 Minutes, where he recommended against using them, saying they didn't provide the protection most people assumed. The nation's leading public health experts either never mentioned masking, or purposefully downplayed it.
So what happened?
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 11: Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, removes his mask to give an opening statement at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)
Fauci, CDC, Flip Flopped And Permanently Changed The World
For years, no one knew what caused the CDC to go back on 20 years of research and scientific evidence to recommend universal masking. Until a little-noticed article revealed that there was no new evidence or scientific study that supported universal masking: just the inaccurate assumptions of a sociologist and New York Times columnist.
As the Times explained how their unqualified columnist changed the course of history: "Dr. Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science with no obvious qualifications in epidemiology, came out against the C.D.C. recommendation in a March 1 tweetstorm before expanding on her criticism in a March 17 Op-Ed article for The New York Times.
"The C.D.C. changed its tune in April, advising all Americans above the age of 2 to wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Michael Basso, a senior health scientist at the agency who had been pushing internally to recommend masks, told me Dr. Tufekci’s public criticism of the agency was the 'tipping point.'"
Fauci clearly never examined any new evidence either, because there was none. It was just the delusional ramblings of a columnist with no relevant training or expertise other than sharing a political ideology with CDC and NIH bureaucrats.
By now, we know that every single country and jurisdiction that tried masks to control the spread of the virus failed. South Korea, long held up as the gold standard of masking and mask mandates, now has the highest confirmed case rate of any large country on earth. Japan saw an explosion in case rates throughout 2021 and 2022, despite their much-lauded "masking culture" that persists even today. Los Angeles, run by another unqualified public health officer, Barbara Ferrer, said in a press release in December 2021 that their mask requirements and observed compliance were keeping case rates low. This is what happened afterward.
You could not find a more thorough repudiation of masking if you tried. And I've tried.
The CDC was then warned in 2021 by epidemiologist Michael Osterholm that they'd oversold the efficacy of masking to stop COVID. And that the research they relied on was inaccurate.
"We also recommend that IDSA reconsider its statements about the efficacy of masks and face coverings for preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2," the letter sent to the CDC says. "We do not agree that the evidence for their efficacy has strengthened throughout the pandemic, as the website suggests."
"The second of these pieces describes the important elements of a rigorous mask study and critiques several studies as examples of the shortcomings of most such studies to date. One of the critiqued studies is the randomized clinical trial of masks conducted in Bangladesh and released as a preprint by Jason Abaluck; this study is cited by IDSA in support of mask efficacy. This study has many significant shortcomings not described or recognized by the IDSA summary, which were highlighted in the CID RAP commentary. Most importantly, this study did not consider or measure baseline seropositivity in the study population, but instead concluded that anyone seropositive at the end of the study must have been infected during the study period."
They never changed their recommendation, and have continued pumping out inaccurate studies to justify masking policies. Even today, their website still recommends masks to stop COVID transmission.
What did that do? Well, as a recent profile in The Atlantic covered, it created a world of permanent maskers. People whose perceptions of COVID risk, mask efficacy and normal life are so completely warped that they've never been able to return to reality.
Here's how these "COVID conscious," "evermaskers" get through their day-to-day routine:
"They share tips online for how to fit their N95 masks, or for taping filters to the spouts of snorkels so they can safely visit indoor pools. They talk about the challenges of COVID-conscious parenting, and meet up for COVID-conscious church events on Sunday Zooms. They share lists of COVID-conscious therapists who would never try to tell you that you’re too afraid of getting sick, or that your risk perception is distorted, or that the problem here is not the world’s but your own."
"Twenty-one percent of Americans still think of the disease as ‘a major threat’ to public health," the article says. Remarkably, one-in-five people are unaware that the pandemic ended years ago, that masks don't protect them, and that endemic respiratory viruses are unavoidable. That's the legacy of Fauci and the CDC.
These individuals have shut down their social lives, avoided concerts and events, cut off friends who refuse to participate in their delusion. "Yes, the evermaskers have assessed the costs and benefits of keeping up precautions," it reads. "And yes, they say they’re happy with the trade-off…"
This is the real world damage caused by Tufecki, Fauci, and the CDC's incompetence. 21% of America is 71.4 million people. That's how many believe COVID is still a major public health threat. Per a new Pew Research poll, 4% of the country is still masking. That means nearly 1.4 million people in the US are still frequently wearing masks in public. That's a tremendous amount of harm, especially considering those evermaskers likely force their children to follow suit.
What does Anthony Fauci now have to say about how he handled the early part of the pandemic? Well, he did a wonderful job, of course!
He says this now, even though, just a year ago, he admitted that the six-feet "social distancing" rule was essentially made up. In fact, he told members of Congress that "there was no science behind it."
When asked where it came from, he admitted in testimony that it "sort of just appeared."
"You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever," he said.
And asked to defend masking children, Fauci once again admitted it all just kinda happened, with no scientific basis. "You know, I might have," he answered when asked if he'd seen studies on masking kids, "but I don’t recall specifically that I did. I might have."
This is the legacy of Fauci and the CDC: that they made up their rules out of thin air, acted as if they were grounded in high-quality evidence, demeaned anyone who criticized them or pointed out their mistakes, and never apologized or admitted wrongdoing. Permanently disrupting the lives of millions of people now, and likely millions more down the road. It's been five years since they ended science by making it up as they went. Based on how they're handling the aftermath, it's almost certainly never coming back.