How Covid amnesia spread through the right and left

In August 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control released new Covid testing guidelines, which called for increased vigilance in nursing homes and other hotbeds, while leaving hypochondriacs free to sodomize their noses to their hearts’ delight. The document sought to move away from mass testing for its own sake, which served the dual purpose of, first, generating panic-inducing headlines that could be used to justify lockdowns and drive cable TV ratings and, second, not doing a thing to protect the elderly. The Coronavirus Task Force led by Vice President Mike Pence had signed off on the change a week before in a situation room meeting without any objection from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases lead Anthony Fauci, as White House advisor Dr. Scott Atlas later recounted. But when the new guidelines hit the airwaves, the celebrated doctor let it be known that he was “concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations.”

He turned to CNN: “‘I was under general anesthesia in the operating room and was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations’ at that meeting, Fauci told CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.” A classic Anthony Fauci quote, from the unsubtle passive aggressiveness to the more subtle lie by omission. Sure, he had signed off on the CDC recommendations, but he was absent from a subsequent meeting in which its release was discussed — hence the separation of “at that meeting” from the quote.

Anthony Fauci is nothing if not precise when it comes to interacting with reporters. It is a different matter when he is under oath. We have only summaries and leaks from members of the House Select Committee on Coronavirus to go by, but it seems that Fauci has forgotten a great deal of the decisions that earned him TIME magazine’s 2020 Guardian of the Year designation. When he faces the penalty of perjury, the “symbol of scientific integrity” develops amnesia on everything from onerous lockdowns to the gain-of-function research he loudly championed. In sworn depositions, the octogenarian has suddenly remembered his age; “I do not recall” became his chorus. The pattern coincidentally sabotaged his ability to answer more than a hundred questions when he testified to Congress behind closed doors.

As we mark the fourth anniversary of “two weeks to slow the spread” that locked down many parts of the country for nearly two years, Fauci’s faulty memory is almost endearing. It reflects a hint of shame absent from nearly everyone who ruled over the American public during the pandemic. The Atlantic called for a “pandemic amnesty,” so that a spirit of charity will prevail and Americans would forget that the Atlantic delighted in the deaths of their friends and relatives. That amnesty has given way to pandemic revisionism.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers’ union in America, lobbied at the state, local and federal level for remote learning lest her million members be forced to teach children. “Our agenda was the opposite of wanting to keep schools closed,” she told Congress in 2023. A classic Weingarten quote, from the lying to the lying some more.

The AFT went on strike in multiple cities to protest the reopening of schools long after medical research and experience had shown that Covid was the first plague in history that did not kill children. Suicide attempts among minors skyrocketed. “Learning loss” entered the lexicon. “Learning loss” is the type of passive phrase that could only have been invented by someone with a brain injury or a PhD, but it translates roughly to “adults used children as human shields.” It is already well documented that Weingarten and her state and local deputies lobbied for mask mandates for children and delayed reopenings in private communications with public health officials long after we knew Covid did not threaten kids. She publicly decried efforts to get kids back in the classroom, but Weingarten wants the public to forget all that.

Weingarten’s sudden epiphany is not surprising given the bipartisan outrage over the predictable suffering the lockdown regime caused children. What has been more surprising is the right’s willingness to entertain that same spirit of revisionism for the sake of defending Donald Trump against a 2024 primary challenge from Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

“He had the third-most deaths of any state having to do with the China virus or Covid — even Cuomo did better,” Trump said in a May 2023 campaign video. The attack line was startling given Trump’s private and public disputes with the Democratic governors who turned their states into open-air prisons during the pandemic, not to mention his own grumbling against the public health authorities that undermined him at every turn. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Covid policies eventually prompted a recall election in California. He may have easily survived it in that deepest of blue states, but he was smart enough to distance himself from California’s draconian lockdown measures — from arresting people on the beach to filling outdoor skateparks with sand and seizing property from churches that challenged restrictions.

It is no wonder Newsom, who is widely seen as a front-runner to succeed — or replace — Joe Biden on a Democratic presidential ticket was not sweating when he stepped to the podium to debate DeSantis on Fox News late last year. The Florida governor called out Newsom for bowing to the teachers’ unions to keep schools closed. Newsom defended himself by criticizing DeSantis for mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s name. “Shame on you. It’s Kamala Harris, Ron. It’s Kamala Harris. Madam Vice President to you.” That was about the most substantive thing Newsom could muster to defend his record.

Newsom’s confidence on the debate stage was no doubt bolstered by the praise Trump heaped on him throughout primary season. The governor returned the favor, speaking out about the “incredible relationship” he forged with the White House during Covid — yet another form of revisionism no one saw coming. Trump’s demolition of DeSantis happened early in the cycle, but it may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory, for he has robbed himself of one of the sharpest lines of attack against the Democratic Party. The science is now firmly on the side of DeSantis, who put in place in Florida the very policies of reopening that Trump could only stew about on social media. The 2024 cycle presents Republicans with the opportunity to go on offense against Democrats from both a philosophical and practical standpoint with Covid as cudgel, but the presumptive nominee has sabotaged that line of attack.

The uncomfortable truth about the Trump administration’s response to Covid is that the former president coasted on a playbook written by Deep State bureaucrats. Americans knew by his tweets that he personally opposed the lockdowns, not to mention the muzzling and isolation of children. But when it came to public policy, well, who was he, the president of the United States, to impose his will on a “Guardian” such as Anthony Fauci? For all the public talk about “Deep State” schemes to undermine “America First,” the problem of Fauci, Deborah Birx and all the fearmongers on the White House Coronavirus Task Force could have been easily resolved with a simple pink slip. Instead, Trump let the Chicken Littles who despised him fly across the country telling the nation’s governors not to reopen. All the while Jared Kushner reassured physicians who questioned lockdowns that, “Dr. Birx is 100 percent MAGA!”

That is a classic Jared Kushner quote: well-mannered and dumb as a rock. Birx was briefly famous for wearing scarves and touring the country to champion mask mandates and arbitrary closing times for bars and restaurants. Her scientific expertise rested in her ability to devise color-coded charts to reflect state test rates, on par with the science behind the post-9/11 TSA terror warning system. She retired after she was caught violating her own public pronouncements to cancel Thanksgiving nationwide.

Birx may be the only lockdown champion who has not revisited any of her positions. She is the person producers call when they are looking to boost their ratings among homebound hypochondriacs. “We’ve never gotten to zero. The hospital admissions have never gone to zero. Now we’re living in this, a bit of a fantasy world, where we’re pretending that Covid is not relevant. But I can tell you, if you can hear my voice and you know two or three people who have Covid, that means that 5 to 10 percent of your friends already have Covid. That means that there is a lot of Covid out there,” Birx told ABC News in summer 2023.

She is enjoying her golden years by helping hawk air purifiers, while taking up residence at the George W. Bush Institute. It is a fitting landing ground for the “100 percent MAGA” scientist. The pandemic apologists of 2024 sound awfully like the post-Iraq War Republican Party. For years, when confronted with Saddam Hussein’s lack of weapons of mass destruction, the Republican was duty-bound to say, “the best intelligence at the time told us it would be irresponsible not to invade.” It was the type of heads-I-win, tails-you’re-a-terrorist-loving-traitor argument that passed for intellect right up until the moment Donald Trump rode the golden escalator down, hit a debate stage and called out party leaders for their lack of judgment. “The war in Iraq was a big fat mistake… George Bush made a mistake. We can all make mistakes. But that one was a beauty,” Trump said. “They lied! They said there were weapons of mass destruction. And there were none.” The assembled crowd booed, but voters flocked to him.

America, for all its bluster about liberty and individual rights, has been mostly sympathetic to the rulers who so badly mishandled the pandemic, happy to accept the excuse that leaders operated on “the best science” they had at the time they confined us all to our homes so they could stop the spread. In the midterm elections, Nevada was the only state where voters ousted a lockdown governor. But the revisionism indicates erstwhile lockdown champions are now seeking to scrub the record as the fallout from Covid is better understood. Democrats and their activist class have seen what happened to other lockdown stalwarts. The backlash against onerous Covid regimes helped bring down leaders in New Zealand, Australia and Italy. Justin Trudeau survived by the skin of his teeth despite the far more liberal leanings of Canadian voters.

It is worth revisiting August 2020 when America was in the grip of Anthony Fauci and the mandates and paranoia he foisted upon the public. The reason he was under anesthesia was because doctors had to operate on his vocal cords — Democrats’ best hope for dodging scrutiny over their lockdown support is for Trump’s to remain healthy.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2024 World edition.