Thread by @JewhadiTM

Against Faucism: Public health bureaucrats will never let COVID-19 restrictions go away. They even admitted it. reason.com/2021/12/20/aga… via @reason

When Fauci was asked if we would ever reach the point where we did not need to wear masks on planes, he responded: "I don't think so. I think when you're dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step …"

This is Faucism distilled down to its very essence. For the government health bureaucrats who have given themselves sole authority over vast sectors of American life—from travel to education to entertainment to housing—it doesn't matter what the CEOs of these companies think.

It doesn't matter what their customers want. It doesn't matter if maskless air travel is, for the most part, quite safe (especially for the vaccinated). It doesn't matter if the mask mandate makes air travel impossible for families with young children.

All that matters is the calculus of the most risk-averse people: unelected public health “experts” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Like Fauci, NIH Director Frances Collins said this past weekend that air passengers should be masked—and should think twice about large gatherings, and even about going anywhere at all.

"I'm not going to say you shouldn't travel, but you should do so very carefully," he said, before adding that the unvaccinated should definitely remain at home.

Taking their cues from the public health establishment, political leaders are rushing to reimpose punitive mitigation efforts. DC @MayorBowser ended the city's "brief experiment with letting people make their own choices about masks," even though she has flouted the mandate

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul initially said that the state would not enforce the new mask mandate, but as cases continue to rise she abruptly reversed course and promised to send out inspectors.

These efforts reflect government officials' need to appear like they are doing something to battle COVID-19, even though it is no longer clear that mandates, lockdowns, and closures are doing much to prevent death.

After D.C. reimposed the mask mandate over the summer in response to the delta wave, cases continued to rise due to the variant's increased infectiousness, but the death rate remained exactly the same—probably because vaccination rates are quite high.

It’s obviously not the case that we are just one more round of booster shots away from triumphing over the disease. The reality is that COVID-19 will be with us for years to come, no matter how faithfully people wear masks, practice social distancing, and get boosted.

Yet the Faucists talk about COVID-19 as if the pandemic is still some kind of we're-all-in-this-together civilizational struggle that justifies and necessitates the suspension of civil liberties, whole industries, and school time.

In his ABC interview, Fauci said that he's never walking away from his position of authority until COVID-19 is defeated.

"You know, we're in a war, Jon," he said. "It's kind of like we're halfway through World War II, and you decide, well, I think I've had enough of this. I'm walking away. You can't do that. You've got to finish it—and we're going to finish this and get back to normal." ~ Fauci

But the U.S. government is unlikely to ever defeat COVID-19 in the same sense that it defeated Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In the meantime, the government is claiming more and more power for itself;

this power is being wielded by the agencies least accountable to the democratic process, and it is being used to enact harmful restrictions on people's lives that will apparently last for years, for decades, or forever.