Much of the reaction to the release of Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) filing, has focused on him, and rightly so. Yet to do so truly misses the forest for the trees. Yes, what he did was wrong, immoral, and caused irreparable harm to many suffering from mental health issues, addiction issues, and family crisis, but it was only possible because of a system that enabled him.
Today we're going to look at that system. And lest you think this is a hit piece on one side, It started under Trump, so the blame isn't all one sided, even though by the end the right had caught on.
I remember the hysteria as COVID came to America. I live in San Antonio, Texas, and I clearly remember when they took passengers from an infected ship and brought them to Lackland Air Force Base. The media response was absolute hysteria. The Mayor, County Judge, and Governor all demanded that they be removed (to no effect). Hospitals began to clear wards and get ventilators on stand by for the multitudes that would die.
I remember two US Navy medical ships being sent out and stationed off the coasts of two major cities in the US. One off the coast of New York and the other off the Coast of Los Angeles in order to treat the MULTI-MILLIONS who would undoubtedly die from COVID (Newsflash, neither ship saw many patients and at least one if not both saw none). I remember the President of the United States invoking a defense appropriations wartime power to have manufacturers switch from their regular products to making ventilators. Many of those went unused and eventually were sold off, some to other countries.
This was all just the beginning. States and economies went into lockdowns. Entire companies died, many jobs were lost, families and friendships were stressed and broken by various issues and separation, and many secondary deaths were directly attributable to these measures.
So imagine everyone shock when the numbers were not what they were projected to be.
You see, all of these measures above would have been understandable if the death rates had been anywhere near their projected ranges. Most would have looked at the secondary causes of death as unfortunately necessities to prevent an Ebola type disaster. Except it wasn't, and we were all left to wonder why. Why isn't it as bad as we were told? Why is it that we did all this and we're still seeing negligible effects in comparison to what we were told we would see?
We were told by Dr. Fauci, and many of his defenders, that these low numbers were due to our mask wearing and social distancing, but as it turns out, it was due to the simple fact that asymptomatic transmission of COVID is simply as unlikely as it is with all known strains of Corona Virus. He even states in his e-mails that he knows that masks are ineffective, yet he pushed mercilessly for mandating them across the country and scared people half to death to the point where many won't even remove their masks after full vaccination.
Now, this all could have been understood if the government had reversed course after learning the truth about the virus. When Dr. Fauci discovered the things in his emails, had he recommended that we reverse course, or stopped fighting with President Trump about opening back up, it would have been fully excusable as "precautionary measures." Yet he just couldn't be wrong, or more to the point, he couldn't lose face in public, so he kept it all up, and many more people suffered than should have.
In fact, polling shows that Trump's election results were partly due to his perceived mishandling of the COVID situation, and this was due to his fighting with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Fauci's constant statements about how wrong President Trump was. Yet these e-mails prove that he already knew everything Trump was saying was correct, from Hydroxychloroquine, to capacity limits, to mask mandates, to government services shut downs. Dr. Fauci knew it was all Kabuki theater, and yet he went along with it anyway.
I'm sure he'd tell you that it was all a necessary placebo to ensure public calm and orderly conduct, but what it was is nothing more than bold faced lying to the American people in order to control their conduct.
Wrong, plain and simple.
But yet, this ISN'T about Fauci. Not really anyway. It's about a system that allowed him to do what he did, and which allowed him to, in essence, legislate from a lab instead of from the congress. It was enforced by the media, it was espoused by talking heads, and those Doctors who stood up to him and stated the truth that he well knew? They lost their licenses, practices, livelihoods, and in some cases lives as they couldn't bear the loss.
Even Senator Rand Paul, M.D. faced public criticism and ridicule from the media for his challenging Dr. Fauci on the facts of the disease. You can still see on YouTube the clip of Dr. Fauci telling him that asymptomatic spread is not only possible, but likely. Except when he gave that testimony, his e-mails prove that he already knew that information to be false.
So why was he able to do this? Why was he able to get away with this?
The answer is as simple as it is complex. He was on the side of government control, which is the side of the media, the Democrat party, and the military industrial complex. They all went along with him because what he wanted to have happen is what they want to happen. More... Government... Control...
The fact that no one was able to put him in check, including Senator Paul, is just more proof of how corrupt the system is. We are a country of checks and balances, and his power in this situation was largely unchecked. We were told that it was "for the greater good," but in the end it was every bit as abused as the worst of the "conspiracy theorists" could have guessed.
It's only a conspiracy theory if it's not true.
I don't know what comes next, but I imagine there will be an attempt to spin this like a washing machine on steroids. The "big government" people are going to find every way possible to rally around him, until they can't, and then they'll cut bait and make him the fall guy.
Yep, they'll say something like, "it wasn't the government's fault, we were just relying on the 'expert opinions' and we were duped by him like everyone else." Yes, that's all well and good, but YOU, dear government, are supposed to HAVE those mechanisms in place to ensure that these things don't happen. And you wonder why we don't ever trust you?
I don't know how we'll ever make this right. I don't know how we'll ever correct what we've done. I don't know how the government will look parents who lost children, children who lost parents, and all those who lost someone to a "secondary cause of death" in the eye and say that, "it was worth it for the greater good."
Those who lost their companies, employees who lost jobs, cities, counties, and states that lost untold taxes needed to provide real and basic services not Federal ridiculousness (like lizard running on treadmills), and so many more who suffered. What can ever be done to offer them restitution?
Yes, what Dr. Fauci did was bad, but it was only possible because something far worse enabled him to do it. What's worse? The big government framework that made it possible.
The media, and many people, owe Dr. Paul an unfathomable apology.