Fourteen very long months ago, Americans were told we needed “two weeks to flatten the curve” to beat the coronavirus that originated from Wuhan, China.
Since that time the curve has been flattened and broken back on itself. Hospitalizations and deaths are way down from their peak. Common sense 14 months ago was right, and locking the country down wasn’t a good idea.
We have vaccines and they’re widely available to anyone who wants them. Arizona, Florida, Texas, and several other states are more or less fully open and even Pennsylvania is opening in mid-May. California’s Disneyland has been reopened long enough to face a woke controversy over Sleeping Beauty.
Why, then, are we not farther along in the fight, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci?
Dr. Fauci tells Wolf Blitzer that we are at the "bottom of the 6th inning" in the fight against coronavirus pic.twitter.com/rWkyHZZqkH
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 4, 2021
As one tweeter quipped, if we’re only in the sixth inning after all this time, it’s time for a relief pitcher. Has the virus batted around the order in every inning up to now?
This all feels less like a baseball game than a rendition of the Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day.
Fauci has been everywhere on the public communications, which has served to undermine it from the start. Inconsistency will do that. As someone who has handled public communications in science, you have to be clear and you have to be consistent. When data changes the facts, you have to clearly communicate that repeatedly. I’d grade Fauci an F. He was against masks, for masks, admitted he lied about masks, and then said we should wear multiple masks. He should be telling Biden to knock it off with the masks since he’s vaccinated, and he should try to offer Americans some hope. He seems to want the notoriety that goes with the attention the virus has brought him to go on for as long as possible. And he has never truly acknowledged that lockdowns were highly destructive, piling on economic misery and mental health consequences we could have avoided. It’s likely the lockdowns played a role in fomenting the riots as well.
The Centers for Disease Control is also all over the place on messaging. We know children aren’t very susceptible to COVID at all, they’re very unlikely to get it or spread it.
But the CDC has published new guidelines for summer camps that require kids to wear masks outdoors at camp unless they’re eating or swimming. What? The guidelines also stick with the 6-foot rule even though that’s likely to be excessive; a study suggests 3 feet is fine.
The same kids who will be at summer camp have probably been at school for months now, and there have been zero outbreaks traced to schools. But the CDC advises summer camps to be handled in ways that will make them terrible and may make kids decide not to bother.
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