One of the worst aspects of the ongoing Covid hysteria, among many, is that the mask requirement has made airline travel even more uncomfortable and annoying than it already was. But at the beginning of December, the mask mandate for air travel was extended through March, and it is certain to be extended beyond that as well, as the political and media elites show no sign of giving up their hysterical fearmongering anytime soon. Dr. Peter Hotez, director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, who can always be counted on to stoke Covid fears among the lumpenproletariat, appeared on CNN Thursday to disparage mask skeptics as the foes of science and levelheadedness that everyone knows they are.
“We have data from the National Academy of Sciences published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a systematic review,” Hotez insisted. “And we also have randomized clinical trial designs out of — that were done in Bangladesh by Stanford and Yale. So the data supports use of the masks, use of masks.”
Yet despite all this sweet reason, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly and American Airlines CEO Doug Parker have dared to question the need for masks on planes, and Hotez was fuming. “But, also,” he continued, “why say this now, when we have the most transmissible variant of all accelerating? I don’t know. Some of these CEOs, they have the emotional intelligence of a doorknob. I don’t know why they would say that kind of thing.” Hotez did not mention, of course, that the omicron variant, while highly contagious, is extremely mild, a fact that the purveyors of the current hysteria are trying desperately to conceal.
Meanwhile, Hotez’s choice of words was extraordinarily revealing. “Emotional intelligence,” he said. The CNN sycophant who was interviewing them didn’t ask Hotez about this, and that is a shame. What does “emotional intelligence” have to do with the supposedly irrefutable results of scientific studies demonstrating the efficacy of masks? Hotez’s words were telling: he betrayed the fact that the mask mandates are not actually based on solid scientific fact, but on emotions. The masks are really just symbols, signals to others that one is taking the Covid threat seriously, and behaving as a responsible citizen. But they are more safety theater than they are safety measure.
Don’t believe it? Remember that none other than the guardian of the health and safety of all of us, Dr. Anthony Fauci, wrote in an infamous February 2020 email: “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”
Related: If Criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci Is a Hate Crime, I Plead Guilty–And I’ll Do It Again
Fauci defenders, among whom Hotez is foremost, insist that Fauci revised his view since then in light of new information, but this is farfetched: Did Fauci discover after he wrote that email that the virus was not actually small enough to pass through mask material? Or did he simply bow to the rapidly spreading hysteria and give his imprimatur to what is in effect a placebo?
As far as Hotez is concerned, such questions should not even be asked. How dare the unwashed question the great men of science? As PJ’s own Stacey Lennox has noted, Hotez considers such questions to be signs that the questioner has rejected that most sacred of things, science itself. “There is a troubling new expansion of antiscience aggression in the United States,” Hotez claimed last August. “It’s arising from far-right extremism, including some elected members of the US Congress and conservative news outlets that target prominent biological scientists fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In the intervening months, the peasants have gotten even more defiant, demonstrating their abject lack of “emotional intelligence.” No one will be gladder than Hotez when they’re definitively put in their place; as Stacey memorably put it, “If arrogance and obsequiousness came in a bottle, Peter J. Hotez, MD, Ph.D., would be chugging it by the gallon.”
Indeed. In the meantime, he is deriding those who have had their fill of the Covid hysteria for their lack of “emotional intelligence.” Dr. Hotez, it’s time for you to stop being ruled by your emotions, and to listen to the voice of reason that you claim to represent but resolutely ignore.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member