In an interview with the New York Times on Christmas Eve, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted his determinations of the level of herd immunity necessary to stop the COVID-19 pandemic depended on what he thought the public wanted to hear. In the interview, he stated he recently raised his estimate on the herd immunity threshold “partly based on new science…and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”
“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci told the Times reporter. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I. went to 80, 85.” Regardless of what Fauci said, another level of potential misinformation is from the scientists.
Scientists, “really don’t know what the real number is” said Fauci, who added that he himself estimates the “real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent.” That’s quite a range. “But, Fauci added, “I’m not going to say 90 percent” because “doing so might be discouraging to Americans.”
It’s no wonder Americans have been on the worst rollercoaster of their lives in 2020 when scientists, doctors and politicians have behaved like Fauci. Citizens’ health, wealth and livelihoods are completely in the hands of those weighing their own knowledge and biases against public perception and likeability.
Just the News reminds us of Dr. Fauci, “like most public health authorities” at the outset of the pandemic, “advised against wearing face masks, telling the public that doing so was unnecessary unless an individual was showing symptoms of COVID-19.” When asked why he made those remarks which were then vehemently turned 180 degrees, Fauci said it was because the public health community was “concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply.”
