Fauci The Fear-Mongerer
America's most famous immunologist is hurting #ReturnToPlay with murky messaging; IHSA needs to counter with data on sports' safe passage through Covid
(Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times)
We’ve never seen a figure in recent American history like that of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
An octogenarian scientist, whom like most researchers, lived the first 79 years of his life in relative obscurity.
But in March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic swept the United States, Dr. Fauci suddenly became the Walter Cronkite of infectious diseases (minus Cronkite’s commanding baritone voice). Daily de-briefings from the White House press room, followed by endless appearances on cable television and other media outlets, lifted the immunologist’s omnipresent authority and bestowed upon him rarified air in popular culture.
We quickly did away with the first name (Anthony just seemed to formal) and in millions of households across the country, starting a conversation with “Dr. Fauci said this today…” became as commonplace as “what’s for dinner?” (order of importance arguable from household to household.)
But now, well over a year into Dr. Fauci’s rapid rise from inglorious allergist to global behavioral influencer, the inevitable fall from grace is now before us.
Too many interviews, too much protection of reputation, and just as likely, too much political rope pulling has diminished Dr. Fauci’s credibility.
And he’s hurting youth sports and #ReturnToPlay.
On April 6, Dr. Fauci went on the long-running ABC morning show “Good Morning America.”
Here was the exchange with GMA host George Stephanopoulos:
Stephanopoulos: You said it’s hitting younger people…what does that mean for parents? What should they do about school and extracurricular activities…sports?
Dr. Fauci: What were finding out is it’s the team sports where kids are getting together…obviously many without masks that are driving it rather than in the classroom spread…when you go back and try and track where these clusters of cases are coming from in the school it is just that.
What? What exactly is the ‘that?’ Is it athletic practices and/or games or something else?
The comment Dr. Fauci gave in the interview is filled with vapid ‘its’ and ‘thats,’ vacant of specifics or data to support his youth sports theory (minus supporting data, what he stated is a theory.)
Being that the interview took place on morning television, Stephanopoulos offered no follow up question and went on to the next question on his script, something about cruise ships and whether he thought it was safe for that industry to start operations again (note to cruise ship industry: don’t listen to Fauci. Fire up the boats.)
The quote Dr. Fauci gave to Stephanopoulos about youth sports is a lot of things but let’s stick with three clear labels—false, misleading and irresponsible.
There remains no evidence that participation team sports results in clusters of cases. If that were the case, how did the NFL play every game in 2020? How did the NCAA just complete both its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments? How did 47 states play high school state basketball seasons in 2020-21? Where were all of these clusters of cases he’s talking about from all of these team sports activities?
Last week, an assistant executive director of the Illinois High School Association, Stacey Lambert, was a guest on the '“Jon and Joe Show” podcast I co-host with Joe Aguilar, former prep columnist for the Daily Herald.
You can listen to the entire show here.
One section is worth highlighting in this article.
Lambert said the following when asked about data the state is gathering from schools about sports participation and Covid and sharing that data with the Illinois Department of Public Heath (and likely not being read by IDPH based on the agency’s continued repressive guidelines and mitigation recommendations):
My role with the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee is I take the sports medicine recommendations and pass those along to (IHSA executive director) Craig Anderson with their reasons and Craig forwards that on to IDPH. I would say he communicates via text or email or phone calls multiple times per week especially leading up to this masking change that we saw (IDPH removed the mask mandate for low risk outdoor sports participants).
At the end of the winter season, we put out a survey to all of our coaches who had a team in the winter season and asked them to fill out some information to tell us if they had an outbreak at their school or an outbreak amongst their team, if they contact traced it where did they contact trace it back to. We were trying to see if we were seeing a spread because of our sports that were taking place in the winter months. We were thrilled to see we did not see a spread in our sports. We had a low number of student athletes who tested positive in our winter sports and if they did test positive and the vast majority of those positives were traced to outside events, outside of high school sports
Lambert’s quote, “the vast majority of these positives were traced to outside events, outside of high school sports” is much different than the comment, “it’s the team sports where they are getting together” said by Dr. Fauci.
Yes, athletes are getting together to play team sports. But there is no evidence that transmission of the virus occurs on the field or court of play. It’s the indoor pizza or video game parties where spread occurs. This is common sense knowledge at this point, not speculative conjecture.
Why can’t Fauci just say that? Why does he have to generalize and gin up fear?
Because when the Chief Medical Officer in the Biden Administration and national spokesperson for Covid speaks in vague generalities, the comments, taken out of context by lazy mainstream media headline writers and editors, leads to more rounds of kid shaming and negative press about youth sports.
Fauci’s remarks came one day after CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, gave equally indistinct remarks about youth sports and tying them together with “extracurricular activities.”
It’s not a coincidence Walensky and Fauci spoke the same fear-inducing message 24 hours apart.
So what’s going on here?
Office-holders like Fauci and Walensky are pushing the vaccine. They hope the more talk of “outbreaks” and “clusters” will in turn force parents to take their kids to the nearest Walgreen’s or school gymnasium and get dosed.
But it’s not that simple.
Recent polling suggests that only around half of parents with kids under the age of 18 say they are likely to get their child vaccinated when it becomes available to that age group. Another report by the parent watchdog group ParentsTogether found that “parents report anxiety about unknown side effects as their top concern, say they want to know more about the research, and need more evidence of the vaccine’s safety.”
There are plenty of parents whom have already had their children vaccinated and don’t share the anxieties of the group polled.
That’s their choice.
But what about the choice of kids, coaches and sports programs that get unfairly labeled as reckless for causing ‘outbreaks.’ What about them?
When Fauci and Wallensky use their sizable platforms to speak in hazy anecdotes connecting youth sports to spikes in cases, it makes people fearful. And when people are fearful, they act irrationally. In this age of Covid, irrational behavior is manifested in many ways, but most carelessly now, in the form of more testing.
Due to irresponsible and inconsistent contact tracing guidelines, more testing of athletes leads to more COVID-19 positives, more shutdowns of programs and more quarantining of healthy young people and adults, a forced isolation from friends and peers.
That’s why the IHSA needs to release the survey results Lambert referenced in our podcast interview. There needs to be more surveying and sharing of results by independent organizations other than the IHSA about Covid and its impact on sports. More hard data that shows what we all already know—sports are safe—and to push back against the continued spread of anxiety-ridden comments by power drunk government officials.
Because functionaries like Fauci can no longer be trusted.
We can speculate what his motivations are—get vaccinated—but can no longer accept the cost of the alarm-sounding messaging.