News/Commentary

‘The View’ diva defends Fauci from critics of COVID measures: He was just an adviser

April 26, 2023 | | Print Article

Alyssa Farah Griffin, the ostensible conservative voice on “The View,” is facing backlash for defending former Trump and later Biden administration official Dr. Anthony Fauci, despite all the flip-flopping and mistakes he’d made during the coronavirus pandemic.

In tweets posted Tuesday, she specifically defended him from the allegation that he’s at least partially to blame for the unproductive, harmful lockdowns that were pursued during the height of the pandemic.

She posted the tweets in response to a profile about Fauci written by The New York Times. In the profile, Fauci himself claimed he wasn’t responsible.

“Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that,” he said.

Now view Griffin’s response below:

“Unpopular truth: Fauci is correct. If you disagreed with Fauci’s *recommendations* being put into place, your issue is with Trump & Biden. The Presidents decided what policies to put into place. Fauci et al only had authority to advise,” Griffin tweeted.

“The vilifying of Dr Fauci shows a lack of understanding of how the executive branch works. Dr Fauci had virtually 0 authority to make unilateral decisions. He was an advisor to both Trump & Biden. If you dislike COVID policies from either WH, your issue is with the 2 presidents,” she added.

Her defense of Fauci provoked a whirlwind of backlash, with critics noting that he’d been portrayed by Democrats and their media allies as  “the leading expert” on COVID — one whose recommendations had to be followed to a T.

Look:

Instead of engaging with her critics in good faith, Griffin predictably turned off all the replies to her tweet — a move often made by leftists.

As for Fauci, he continued his self-defense in the Times’ piece by stressing that he’s not an economist.

“I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. I’m not an economist. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not an economic organization. The surgeon general is not an economist. So we looked at it from a purely public-health standpoint,” he said.

“It was for other people to make broader assessments—people whose positions include but aren’t exclusively about public health. Those people have to make the decisions about the balance between the potential negative consequences of something versus the benefits of something,” he added.

Reason magazine, a libertarian outfit, admits that this is true. However, the magazine also notes that Fauci is “woefully understating the role that he played in creating the mess.”

“From the start, Fauci pushed for the Trump administration to tell states to lock down. ‘No bars, no restaurants, no nothing. Only essential services. When you get a place like New York or Washington or California, you have got to ratchet it up,’ he told Science magazine in an interview in mid-March 2020,” the magazine notes.

“Fauci also pushed back against evidence that lockdowns were causing unintended (though totally predictable) problems. A group of epidemiologists and other public health experts in October 2020 signed The Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a focus on protecting the vulnerable and letting everyone else resume normal life. Soon after it was published, Fauci denounced the document as ‘nonsense and very dangerous,'” the magazine continues.

He also reflexively dismissed the “lab leak” theory and flip-flopped on masks at least twice. But in Fauci’s re-telling of history, all of this is of course conveniently omitted …

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Vivek Saxena
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