Media Asked Fauci for Help Informing Americans About COVID-19, But Here's What He Told Them to Do Instead
People who compare COVID-19 to the flu are dangerous virus-deniers, right? That’s what the establishment media told us for months on end during the pandemic.
Apparently, that rule did not apply to one Dr. Anthony Fauci, at least not early last year.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Jon LaPook, the chief medical correspondent for CBS News, asked the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in a Feb. 25, 2020, email how the network should cover the coronavirus.
He responded by downplaying the severity of the virus.
“Fauci told the network to emphasize the ‘real and present danger’ of the seasonal flu even as the Centers for Disease Control prepared to classify COVID-19’s spread as a pandemic that very day,” the report said.
He also advised people not to “yield to unreasonable fear” or to allow the “fear of the unknown” to overtake them.
This would have been good advice for Fauci to remember when he decided that it was necessary to shut down the country for weeks on end without enough evidence to justify such actions.
After the vaccines became widely available, the “unknown” started becoming known. Even as it was clear that vaccinated people were safe from COVID-19, Fauci continued to push unnecessary mitigation measures.
Curiously, other emails from the same time period suggest a different stance entirely. The Free Beacon reported that on the same day Fauci sent that email to CBS News, he sent another email to a medical professional saying that COVID-19 “could be worse than you think.”
Fauci almost certainly knew of the dangers COVID-19 presented before February 2020. On Jan. 23, 2020, The Western Journal covered the virus’ rapid and destructive spread in China.
“The virus has already claimed multiple lives and grabbed footholds on multiple continents and is now behind what is likely the largest quarantine in human history,” Jared Harris wrote.
“While the Chinese government has admitted to only hundreds of cases, some professional models and estimates put that number in the thousands.”
So why would Fauci seemingly contradict himself? One possibility is that he did not want to cause mass panic among Americans by spreading fear to the likes of CBS News.
As you may remember, then-President Donald Trump employed a similar strategy. In September 2020, journalist Bob Woodward released interviews in which Trump discussed his desire not to stoke fear into the country, Bloomberg reported.
“I wanted to always play it down, I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic,” the president said.
As it turns out, this was a rather reasonable thing to say. There was no reason to instill panic into the country at large, especially when so many details were unclear at the time.
Yet in Trump’s case, this was covered as an intentional coverup of the virus. Establishment media outlets suggested he intentionally lied about the virus threat in order to save his own image.
It remains to be seen whether similar accusations will be levied against the left’s favorite celebrity doctor. Judging by the lovefest he has enjoyed from the establishment media for over a year, it seems unlikely.
The email to CBS News is far from the worst communication that Fauci sent. From lab leak theories to mask effectiveness, Fauci’s emails — accessed through Freedom of Information Act requests — have revealed inconsistency after inconsistency.
Some have gone as far as to suggest that Fauci should be criminally investigated. On Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” last week, host Carlson said that the emails show Fauci had knowledge of the gain-of-function research being performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and tried to hide it.
“Collectively, they show that from the beginning, Tony Fauci was worried the public might conclude COVID originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said.
“Now why would Tony Fauci be concerned that Americans would conclude that? Possibly because Tony Fauci knew perfectly well that he had funded gain-of-function experiments at that very same laboratory. The emails prove that Fauci lied about this under oath.”
At the very best, Fauci misled the public about the origins and dangers of COVID-19. At worst, he is a criminal who intentionally hid his involvement in gain-of-function research.
In either case, Fauci’s response to the virus was no better than Trump’s, and it was probably worse considering that he is supposed to be an expert on the subject.
The establishment media still can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that Fauci is a fraud.
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