I don’t hate Fauci but I think this criticism of Facui from epidemiologist and oncologist Vinay Prasad hits the mark:
Lockdown was specifically advocated by Anthony Fauci (“15 days to stop the spread” / “hunker down” / “shelter in place”), and Fauci went on to make hundreds of other specific policy recommendations. Although he initially rejected it, in April 2020 he recommended community cloth masking to slow the spread of the coronavirus (an intervention for which we now have randomized data showing does not work).
Fauci opposed Ron DeSantis in numerous television interviews in spring 2020, when DeSantis reopened schools. He called reopening schools reckless – although it was widely adopted in Western Europe at the time and is now clearly the right policy choice.
Fauci has supported vaccination mandates and border closures. He repeated the false claim that 6 feet of social distancing had an empirical basis. Many in the media and in medicine think it is unfair to criticize him – he did the best he could with what he knew at the time – but it is fair to criticize a scientist who presented his opinions as fact when They were speculations at best. And besides, there is one criticism that no one can deny:
Although he was director of the NIAID and although he controlled a $5 billion infectious disease research budget, he chose to initiate, fund, and conduct precisely ZERO randomized trials of non-pharmacologic interventions.
Hat tip: MD.
