Brit Hume Puts Fauci in His Place with a Message Everyone Should See
Brit Hume has had it with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The Fox News senior political analyst surely earns a pretty good living making his opinions known about major politicians, fellow media figures and personalities in the public eye, and on Tuesday he turned that fire on Fauci in a social media post drawing major attention in the Twitter world.
For much of the mainstream media, Fauci has achieved a kind of iconic status since the coronavirus and COVID-19 became a despised part of American life. But in a tweet on Tuesday, Hume issued a reminder of the limits of Fauci’s responsibility — and his expertise.
“Remember: his job is to fight the Covid outbreak,” Hume wrote. “He has no responsibility for children’s mental health or education. The economy is someone else’s problem. So are missed cancer screenings; suicides and other collateral damage from lockdowns etc.”
Remember: his job is to fight the Covid outbreak. He has no responsibility for children’s mental health or education. The economy is someone else’s problem. So are missed cancer screenings, suicides and other collateral damage from lockdowns etc. https://t.co/dbSmCZpXkO
— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 23, 2021
The link with the tweet was to a Fox News report of a Business Insider account of a news conference Fauci gave at the White House on Monday.
Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, seemed to say the existence and spreading use of the coronavirus vaccines would not mean a break from COVID-19 restrictions for the general population any time soon.
“There are things, even if you’re vaccinated, that you’re not going to be able to do in society,” Fauci said, according to Business Insider. “For example, indoor dining, theaters, places where people congregate. That’s because of the safety of society.”
For millions of parents who watched their kids miss almost a year of school, for millions of workers who lost their jobs thanks to pandemic-driven lockdowns, for just about anyone who thought a vaccine would bring some semblance of a return to normal life, it was disheartening,
And it was enraging, too.
Now, it’s “because of the safety of society”?
That’s the latest, nebulous line from Fauci, who might well be respected in his field for a good reason, but has squandered his credibility over his year in the public eye.
Was it “because of the safety of society” that Fauci told an interviewer on Jan. 21, 2020, when he said the coronavirus is “not a major threat to the people of the United States and not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.”
Or was it “the safety of society” that Fauci was thinking of when he said Americans shouldn’t worry about wearing masks early in the epidemic, only to later admit that that was to preserve mask availability for health care workers?
Maybe it was because of the “safety of society” that Fauci told another interviewer that sex with a stranger was maybe OK as long as the individuals involved accepted the “choice regarding risk.”
A month later, the same Fauci told the Jesuit magazine America that the Catholic Church should “forestall” distributing the Eucharist because of the potential for spreading the coronavirus. Clearly, a “choice regarding risk” is a relative affair to Fauci. (Or maybe just he doesn’t mind sounding like a prude to the kind of crowd that cares about the Eucharist.)
That’s far from an exhaustive list of Fauci’s occasionally contradicting, sometimes baffling pronouncements about the coronavirus, but it’s enough context for why his statements about the vaccine received the reception they did in many quarters.
Judging by the responses to Hume’s post, Hume is not the only one suffering from Fauci fatigue. (It would probably be harder to find a sane person who hasn’t had it with the doctor by now.)
Remember: his job is to fight the Covid outbreak. He has no responsibility for children’s mental health or education. The economy is someone else’s problem. So are missed cancer screenings, suicides and other collateral damage from lockdowns etc. https://t.co/dbSmCZpXkO
— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 23, 2021
His role as a public spokesman for CDC should be focused on articulating risks of various activities, what we know about virus, etc. His role is not to decide how people should balance various risks outside of his expertise.
— Chris Oldman (@ChrisOldman4) February 23, 2021
he is failing at this fight as he contradicts himself daily. he moves his goalposts daily. dont underestimate the anger the people have towards government right now. No way people up north gonna listen once the snow melts
— Vince Aut Morire (@BedFlag15) February 23, 2021
He told me not to wear a mask and that masks don’t work when I was 3 months pregnant in the middle of Manhattan.
He then later admitted it was an intentional lie so we would donate masks to essential workers.
Now I’m being told to wear 2 masks.
But yes I’m “misguided”. ? https://t.co/HEGCPmMKsB
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) February 23, 2021
Is it because of the “safety of society” that tyrannical, Democratic governors in states like New York and California have kept their populations in a state of semi-permanent lockdown, while Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem have maintained some semblance of normal life for their citizens – with virtually the same COVID-19 results?
It isn’t just the changing and seemingly arbitrary decisions Fauci has delivered over the past year that can be so infuriating to Americans like Hume.
It’s the evident disparity between facts as they are witnessed on the ground and what many politicians — overwhelmingly liberal politicians — claim to justify their actions during the pandemic.
From the time Americans were told a two-week shutdown was necessary back in March to “flatten the curve” to Fauci’s latest pronouncement that even having the vaccine won’t necessarily mean life is going back to normal, Americans and the rest of the world have been told a series of shifting stories — and asked to believe each one as much as the one before.
And are now expected to believe the one that comes next, with equal, blind devotion.
It’s no wonder Hume has had it with Fauci. It’s a rock-solid bet that millions of other Americans have, too.
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