Dr. Fauci may be a fine immunologist, but his crystal ball has failed him on many occasions.
Dr. Fauci may be a fine immunologist, but his crystal ball has failed him on many occasions.
J anuary 21, 2020 [asked about the coronavirus by Greg Kelly on Newsmax TV]: “This is not a major threat to the people of the United States and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.”
January 26, 2020 [interviewed by John Catsimatidis, a radio host in New York, who asked whether “the American people . . . should be scared”]: “I don’t think so. The American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It’s a very, very low risk to the United States, but it’s something we, as public-health officials, need to take very seriously.”
February 17, 2020 [to USA Today]: “If you look at the masks that you buy in a drug store, the leakage around that doesn’t really do much to protect you. People start saying, ‘Should I start wearing a mask?’ Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask.” [The danger of COVID is] “just minuscule” [but consider instead the] “influenza outbreak, which is having its second wave. We have more kids dying of flu this year at this time than in the last decade or more. At the same time people are worrying about going to a Chinese restaurant. The threat is a pretty bad influenza season, particularly dangerous for our children.” (Influenza levels hit a record low around the world; the number of pediatric flu deaths in the U.S. fell from 195 in the 2019–2020 season to one in the 2020–2021 season.)
February 29, 2020 (asked on NBC whether Americans should go to “malls, and movies, maybe the gym”): “At this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. Right now the risk is still low, but this could change. I’ve said that many times, even on this program . . . although the risk is low now, you don’t need to change anything you’re doing. When you start to see community spread, this could change.”
March 9, 2020 [at a White House briefing]: “If you are a healthy young person, there is no reason if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise ship. But the fact is that if you have . . . an individual who has an underlying condition, particularly an elderly person who has an underlying condition, I would recommend strongly that they do not go on a cruise ship.” (The U.S. State Department advisory issued the previous day reads: “U.S. citizens, particularly travelers with underlying health conditions, should not travel by cruise ship.”)
August 13, 2020 [on PBS, asked whether schools should remain online instead of in-person for “many months”]: “In some places, Judy, that may be the case.”
November 28, 2020 [on ABC]: “Close the bars, keep the schools open.” (Politico, November 18, reported that: “Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus infection, UNICEF reported.”)
March 3, 2020 [to a Senate committee]: “It will take at least a year to a year in a half to have a vaccine we can use.”
October 6, 2020 [at American University]: “I’d like to say spring, but . . . I think it’s much more likely in the late summer early fall.” (The Pfizer vaccine was approved on December 11, 2020.)
March 29, 2020 [on CNN]: Predicts death toll of “100,000 to 200,000.”
April 9, 2020 [on NBC]: “looks more like 60,000.”
July 17, 2020 [on PBS]: “We’ve got to do the things that are very clear that we need to do to turn this around. Remember, we can do it. We know that when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We’ve done it. We’ve done it in New York. New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly by doing the things that you’re talking about.” (The death toll in New York State on July 17, 2020 was under 28,000. The death toll in New York State on April 19, 2021: 51,122. A new study points out that New York had the “worst overall outcome” of any state in the pandemic.)
February 22, 2021 [at a press briefing]: “There are things, even if you’re vaccinated, that you’re not going to be able to do in society. For example, indoor dining, theaters, places where people congregate. . . . That’s because of the safety of society.”
(The Atlantic: “Advising people that they must do nothing differently after vaccination — not even in the privacy of their homes — creates the misimpression that vaccines offer little benefit at all,” writes epidemiologist and Harvard Medical School professor Julia Marcus. “Vaccines provide a true reduction of risk, not a false sense of security. And trying to eliminate even the lowest-risk changes in behavior both underestimates people’s need to be close to one another and discourages the very thing that will get everyone out of this mess: vaccine uptake.”)
March 14, 2021, Yahoo headline notes: “Fauci just warned of a fourth wave.”
April 2, 2021, NPR headline notes: “Fauci Expects Surge In Vaccinations To Keep A 4th Coronavirus Wave At Bay.”
April 7, 2021, CNN headline notes: “Fauci says new Covid-19 cases are at a disturbing level as the US is primed for a surge.” (The April 19 New York Times reads: “Case numbers nationwide have been largely stagnant for the last month.”)
March 2, 2021 [on CNN after Mississippi and Texas lift mask mandates and some other restrictions]: “From a public-health standpoint it’s certainly ill-advised. Just pulling back on all of the public-health guidelines that we know work — and if you take a look at the curve, we know it works — it’s just inexplicable why you would want to pull back now. . . . What we don’t need right now is another surge. . . . I understand the need to want to get back to normality, but you’re only going to set yourself back if you just push aside the public-health guidelines.”
(Mississippi on March 2 had a seven-day average of 582 new cases, per the New York Times tracker. On April 19, their seven-day average was 243. In Texas on March 2, the seven-day average of new cases was 7,259. On April 19, it was 3,237.)
April 6: [on MSNBC, asked why Texas cases continued to decline]: “I’m not really quite sure.”