Fauci Finally Admits Closing Schools Was A Mistake
One of the country's foremost proponents of closing schools in a futile attempt to slow the spread of COVID now admits that he may have taken it too far. Whoops!
Dr. Anthony Fauci is out on his book tour, doing the rounds with friendly media outlets in support of his self-congratulatory, revisionist exploration of the pandemic.
And in an interview with "CBS Mornings," Fauci explained that maybe, just maybe, keeping schools closed for years was actually a bad idea.
Co-host Tony Dokoupil asked Fauci about schools, and initially, Fauci downplayed what a disastrous failure his advocacy caused. "One clear area seems to be the school closures, which did enormous harm to kids on multiple levels," Dokoupil said, "and didn’t seem to save lives. And I wonder, can we say today that that is a mistake?"
Fauci, of course, said "No," because admitting that a policy he demanded was an unmitigated failure would mean accepting his role in creating that failure. Instead, as is his usual procedure, he deflected blame onto others. Just as a good scientist should.
"Keeping it for a year was not a good idea," Fauci said. "So, that was a mistake in retrospect?" Dokoupil asked. "We will not repeat it?"
"Absolutely, yeah," Fauci replied.
Well, look who finally caught up to the damage he caused! And make no mistake, he most certainly caused it.
WASHINGTON, DC - Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing at the White House on November 19, 2020. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Anthony Fauci Once Again Directly Contradicts Anthony Fauci
Fauci now acts as if he had nothing to do with keeping schools closed long after they should have been opened. But of course, that's the opposite of what he did in real time during the height of the pandemic in 2020.
In September 2020, Fauci described reopening efforts as "very concerning." Even earlier, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke about wanting to get schools open as soon as possible, Fauci criticized him and his plan: "If you have a situation where you don’t have real good control over an outbreak and you allow children together, they will likely get infected," he said.
Fauci also criticized Sen. Rand Paul for pushing for schools to open amid the realization that children were not at significant risk of serious side effects from COVID. "I think we better be careful that we’re not cavalier, in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects," he said at the time.
Then in 2022, he told ABC News, "I don't want to use the word ‘mistake,'" when referring to school closures. "If I do, it gets taken out of the context that you're asking me the question on," he continued. "We should realize, and have realized, that there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that."
But that's exactly what DeSantis, and even former President Donald Trump said in 2020. They warned that keeping kids home wasn't going to save lives or even prevent the spread of the virus. And as we saw from Europe's results, they were right. Fauci criticized them regardless, because he supported and even demanded schools close.
Even now, he still speaks derisively about Dr. Scott Atlas, whose top priority on the COVID task force was getting schools open. In another MSNBC interview, he said Atlas told Trump "everything he wanted to hear."
Fauci didn't want schools open, because he mistakenly believed closing them and other public spaces would have an impact on the spread of COVID. It didn't. Just like masks didn't have an impact, or vaccine passports, or getting huge numbers of people vaccinated. Nothing Fauci said would work actually worked. But admitting that is an impossibility for someone whose ego, willingness to hide information and condescending, patronizing attitude don't allow for mistakes.