Dr. Anthony Fauci told Face the Nation on Sunday that Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million people in his first 100 days in office didn’t necessarily mean that 100 million people would actually be vaccinated during that period of time. Yet he called the goal “entirely achievable.”
If you’re confused by that, it’s obvious you haven’t been paying attention. Fauci didn’t really mean it was achievable, either in part or entirely. This is part of Anthony Fauci’s personae. When you quote him on something that isn’t true, he immediately claims you misunderstood him.
“There was a little bit of a misunderstanding,” Fauci told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “What we are talking about is 100 million shots in individuals. So shots, in other words, when you get down to, say, a certain part of 100 days, at the end of that, you will have some people who have gotten both shots, and some will still be on their first shots. The president is saying 100 million shots in the arms of people within 100 days.”
Except for no one ever said anything about “shots in the arm.”
“Reportedly, the transition team projections are that that’s more like 67 million people by April, by the end of 100 days,” CBS’s Margaret Brennan said. “Is that an accurate number?”
“Right. Yeah, that is — well, I haven’t done the math myself, but it sounds like the accurate number,” Fauci said. “You have people who will have gotten two doses, and some who are still on their first dose. You add them all up and look at shots, it is 100 million shots in the arms of people within the first hundred days.”
Isn’t that a little, I don’t know, like, confusing? “Confusing” is Fauci’s middle name.
So far, more than 20.5 million of the 41.4 million distributed vaccines have made it into someone’s arm, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 17.3 million people have received at least one dose, and about 3 million have received both doses.
Statistics of daily COVID-19 cases indicate that the United States is potentially heading out of the holiday surge, with 172,000 cases reported on Saturday compared to 292,000 on Jan. 8. However, hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag behind surges in cases. The U.S. broke 25 million COVID-19 cases on Sunday — more cases than the next three countries combined, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Since early last year, the United States government — especially public health officials — has not served the people well at all. Their confusion, misinformation, and deliberate lies have cost countless lives and shuttered schools and businesses far longer than they needed to be.
Incompetence mixed with arrogance and deceit is not a healthy combination.
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