Anthony Fauci has never struggled to speak his mind. But now that he has left government, he is finally speaking at least some of the truth about government policies and Covid. For instance, the six-feet rule for social distancing “sort of just appeared” without a solid scientific basis. That’s one of the admissions that Members of Congress say the former National Institutes of Health potentate made this week in two days of closed-door testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
It’s not news that the six-feet rule lacked scientific rhyme or reason. A BMJ article in August 2020 explained as much. It noted that the virus’s transmissibility depends on many factors, including ventilation, the host’s viral load and symptoms, and the duration of exposure, among other things.
Officials nonetheless promoted the arbitrary rule because they didn’t trust Americans to understand scientific nuance or, for that matter, anything. Businesses, churches and schools that weren’t forced to close had to spend money reconfiguring their operations to comply with these government guidelines.
It’s nice of Dr. Fauci to acknowledge now that the rule lacked a scientific basis. But at the time he and other officials didn’t want to acknowledge this lest the public question other Covid nostrums. Dr. Fauci had already undermined public trust by confessing that his advice not to wear a mask early in the pandemic was guided by political expedience.
Dr. Fauci also told the House that vaccine mandates “could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future,” according to Chairman Brad Wenstrup. Yes, it may, as we warned when President Biden imposed his vaccine mandates. Yet Dr. Fauci insisted that making life difficult for unvaccinated Americans would compel them to fall into line.
Making life difficult may have also been the point of the six-feet rule. Officials effectively forced businesses and schools to close by making it exceedingly burdensome to stay open, all the while dodging responsibility.
“Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down,” Dr. Fauci told the New York Times last April. “Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that.” He’s too modest. He knows his recommendations, backed by a conformist press, put pressure on politicians to agree with him.
Government lockdowns caused enormous economic and social damage that may never be made up. It will also be hard for health officials to recoup the public trust they squandered with their hubris and prevarications.
