We’ve all seen the various flip-flops of the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci over the last 18 months.
To help keep track, I present “Fauci vs. Fauci,” chronicling the twists, turns, contradictions and backtracks from the man and his agency.⤵️
To start, we need to focus on Dr. Fauci’s perspective on the virus itself and it’s risk to the United States.
In late January 2020, Fauci said that COVID was a “very, very low risk to the United States.”
I think it goes without saying that his perspective has evolved since.
One big, obvious area of flipping is around the benefits of wearing a mask. Dr. Fauci originally said that masks weren’t effective & publicly encouraged Americans not to buy them (guidance he doesn’t regret).
Now even vaccinated people need to wear masks.
And it wasn’t just the efficacy of masks in general. Less than a month ago , Dr. Fauci declared confidently that the CDC wasn’t going to change its recommendation about masking given the Delta variant.
We’ve already seen changes, and more are under consideration.
And how many masks were we all supposed to wear, anyway?
Was it one mask? Two masks? No mask? A face shield? Goggles? Depending on when you asked Dr. Fauci, it could’ve been anything.
Dr. Fauci was a leading voice suggesting for months that the pandemic couldn’t possibly have leaked from a lab in Wuhan (one that received US tax dollars, by the way).
That was until the consensus changed. And then, suddenly, the theory couldn’t be dismissed.
Complete 180
These reversals cut in both directions. Back in September, the CDC changed its rules - reportedly under political pressure - to reduce the people it advised getting tested, before quickly reversing course after pressure.
And you may have forgotten, but the CDC had a brouhaha also in September when new guidance about airborne transmission - including beyond 6 feet - went live on the agency’s website.
It was quickly scrubbed after a brief medical & news firestorm.
Not exactly confidence-inspiring
Schools have seen lots of reversals. In February, the CDC Director said schools could reopen safely w/o teachers vaccinated.
Well, a few calls from the teachers union later, the CDC reversed course. Weeks later, new guidance (sensing a theme?) was released focusing on teachers.
And we had plenty of flips when it came to teachers wearing masks.
First, the CDC said that they had to, back in May 2020.
Then earlier this month, the CDC said vaccinated teachers and students don’t need one.
But now? Back to where we started - masks for the vaccinated.
And who could forget the approval, then pause, then unpause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a move that diminished American confidence in vaccines in the midst of a vaccine rollout during a global pandemic?
The coronavirus pandemic is unlike anything any of us have seen before. There should be some charity and humility about bad predictions.
But the idea that Dr. Fauci and the CDC haven’t flip-flopped? That’s just preposterous.
Is it any wonder Americans don’t trust public health experts after this? Does it surprise anyone that Dr. Fauci and the CDC aren’t seen as reputable now?
These failures have consequences, and you can measure them in lives.
I don’t have anything to sell or subscribe to, but if you’re able, this is still an incredibly difficult time for local food banks. Here in DC, Capital Area Food Bank is well worth your charity. capitalareafoodbank.org
Important 🧵 addition. You may remember that, back in April, Dr. Fauci said new case levels meant we were primed for a surge.
As you can see by the case count, that didn’t happen (1/2)
But now, as blue states who have supposedly done everything right see their counts increase, Dr. Fauci has realized (too late, IMO) that case counts actually aren’t worth worrying about.
Interesting how that happens. (2/2)
This news comes on the heels of CDC Director Walensky giving the game away on isolation periods, admitting that their guidance changed not with any science but because they didn’t think folks could “tolerate” longer periods (again, now that it’s the Good Guys getting sick)
That led to a backlash from the media and powerful unions which - somehow - has caused “the science” to quickly shift once again, requiring “further clarification” imminently
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The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.
The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?
But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.
Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.
Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.
But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.
The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.
I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.
Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”
The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
It should go without saying, but the media cultivating this type of baseless hysteria about an admin for partisan reasons is much more of a threat to the underpinnings of our democracy than anything Trump has actually done.
Quick 🧵⤵️
A couple quotes:
“If you think that there’s this thing out there called America, and it’s exceptional, that means you don’t have to do anything” to stop fascism.
What? What does that even mean??
That if you, like millions of Americans!, believe in American exceptionalism…you’re a fascist?
Really?
“The powers that be can do whatever they want to you”
Trump can’t even deport people who have deportation orders against them without a federal judge stepping in.
Many in the media are trying to claim that the press was merely duped by Biden’s White House about the former president’s cognitive decline.
That simply isn’t true. The media actively took part in the coverup.
Don’t let them forget. I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I’ve done a number of threads on this but putting some of the most egregious stuff in one place.
Perhaps the most damming: Two weeks before the debate made Biden’s cognitive decline inescapable, @washingtonpost gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to allegedly edited videos showing Biden clearly displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype” while quoting the White House to say the videos were “cheap fakes” — all to defend Biden against criticisms about his age and well-being.
That story came four days after a previous effort from @washingtonpost to write off these videos as Republican efforts to mislead voters: proof, the Post claimed, that “the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the waters edge.”
I’m not sure people realize just how egregious some of NPR’s “journalism” has been. Amid the debate about defunding the network, I wanted to walk down memory lane to revisit some of its worst coverage.
There’s a lot. ⤵️
First, perhaps the most egregious display of activist journalism: their response to the Hunter Biden laptop story of corruption involving a major party candidate on the eve of the election.
Not only did @NPR not cover it, they bragged about refusing to do so.
Insofar as @NPR did cover the Hunter Biden scandal, they actively tried to cover it up.
They applauded Facebook & Twitter strangling the story as part of a push against “misinformation and conspiracy theories.”
The story, of course, turned out to be far from invented.