News/Commentary

Birx: ‘Sometimes we use mandates because we don’t want to take the time to explain the science and data’

June 3, 2022 | | Print Article

Former Trump administration COVID adviser Dr. Deborah Birx admitted this week that the government sometimes applies mask mandates because it’s easier to force people into compliance than to explain to them the alleged benefits of wearing a mask.

“I think sometimes we use mandates because we don’t want to take the time to explain the science and the data and really have people understand who should be using them and why they should be using them,” she said in a Newsmax interview.

The admission came after host Shaun Kraisman contrasted the Biden administration’s push to reinstate a public mask mandate with emerging evidence that mask mandates are not actually effective in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

Birx initially replied by suggesting the emerging data is wrong.

“Well, the key thing about masking is you have to wear them in order for them to work, and so when you see these rates in cities, it’s because a lot of us, when we get together, we don’t wear masks when we’re with our friends and families around the dining room table, and frankly, that’s where a lot of spread is occurring,” she said.

“When you’re in contact with people and their air that they’re breathing because it remains suspended in the air, then that can be a very real reason why it isn’t really evident that masks are working well. But I know masks work well because I have worn them in multiple situations where people on either side of me were positive, and I have not become infected.”

It’s true that Birx never contracted COVID, despite then-President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s top aides contracting it.

“And the nine of us in my immediate household that have had to stay negative because we have vulnerable people in our household, we’ve upgraded our masks to make sure that they are working and they fit well,” Birx continued.

“And so I still mask on airlines, but mandates should never be an excuse for not empowering the American people with the knowledge that they need to understand why masks work and why they should be used in certain situations.”

She then made the bombshell admission about why the government “sometimes” imposes mask mandates on the public.

The remark provoked backlash on social media, with critics arguing that what Birx was really saying was that the government uses mask mandates to force the public into compliance for political reasons, not because the “science” actually makes sense.

Birx’s remarks were made a day after the Biden Justice Department “asked a federal appeals court to overturn a U.S. District Court judge’s April order that declared the government mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses and in transit hubs unlawful,” according to NBC News.

“None of the district court’s quarrels with the CDC order comes close to showing that the CDC has acted outside the ‘zone of reasonableness,'” the Justice Department reportedly wrote, adding that the CDC’s findings offers “ample support for the agency’s determination that there was good cause to make the order effective without delay.”

Except that new research says otherwise.

But government officials appear to be ignoring this research just like they — Birx included — had ignored the lockdown research that emerged in 2020:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has for his part claimed that the Biden administration’s push to reinstate a public transportation mask mandate is solely about exerting authority.

“One of the issues that I have articulated in the past, and I will in the future, [is] it’s less about mandates on the plane than it is about who has the right and the authority and the capability of making public health decisions,” he said Wednesday on Fox News.

“And I believe that the Department of Justice is operating on the principle that decisions that are public health decisions belong with the public health agency, in this case, the CDC,” he added.

Vivek Saxena
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