Writes James Bovard in the NY Post on ‘All-knowing’ Tony Fauci’s memory suddenly vanishes when he has to testify‘:
The transcript has not been released, but a few “pants on fire” snippets have come out. After Fauci championed lockdowns to vanquish COVID, top scientists from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard in October 2020 issued the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued that “focused protection” for high-risk groups (such as the elderly) was vastly preferable to shutting down society. When asked about his role in assailing that Declaration, Fauci declared, “I have a very busy day job running a $6 billion institute. I don’t have time to worry about things like the Great Barrington Declaration.” But less than two weeks after the Declaration’s release, Fauci emailed Deborah Birx, the White House COVID chief, “I have come out very strongly publicly against the Great Barrington Declaration.” Fauci did multiple media interviews castigating any suggestion that lockdowns were unnecessary to save America.
Fauci apparently sees himself as part of a caste of politically favored scientists entitled to rule Americans’ lives. Schmitt tweeted that Fauci declared during the deposition that “the rest of us ‘don’t have the ability’ to determine what’s best for ourselves.”
Fauci has consistently behaved as if federal health officials deserve unchallengeable dictatorial powers. When a federal judge in April struck down the Biden administration mask mandate for airplane travelers, Fauci caterwauled, “This is a CDC issue, it should not have been a court issue.” Fauci neglected to reveal the secret provision of the Constitution that entitles political appointees to nullify the rest of the nation’s founding document.
Fauci has had more flip-flops than a Ringling Bros. trapeze artist. In early 2020, he scoffed at the notion that masks would prevent COVID transmission — and then jumped on the bandwagon to champion unreliable cloth masks. In May 2021, Fauci said the vaccinated would not transmit COVID — a claim he continued to repeat long after the evidence debunked that claim. He opposed vaccine mandates until he endorsed them.
Endless flattery convinced Fauci he is sacrosanct. When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggested prosecuting Fauci for his false congressional testimony regarding his funding of the “gain of function” research in Chinese labs that may have unleashed COVID, Fauci huffed that his critics are “really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” But not as dangerous as a megalomaniacal political appointee secretly wielding power to undermine American freedom.
Fauci declared in August that the COVID lockdowns he championed had not “irreparably damaged anyone.” What about the 51% increase in suicide attempts by young girls during the first year of the lockdowns? Forced isolation made far more people depressed and contributed to the 25% increase in alcohol-related deaths in 2020 and record drug-abuse fatalities. The National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that Americans suffered “171,000 excess non-COVID deaths during 2020 and 2021.” Many of those fatalities were “collateral damage” from shutdowns and other COVID policies.