(WND News Center) — After repeatedly downplaying the impact on children of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Dr. Anthony Fauci justified the apparent mitigation measures at an event Wednesday while acknowledging they were “draconian.”
“Sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences. Just like when you shut things down, even temporarily, it does have deleterious consequences on the economy, on the school children, you know that,” Fauci said at the event, hosted by The Atlantic magazine.
FAUCI: “You have to do something that’s rather draconian, and sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences.” pic.twitter.com/fEGAbM588a
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 21, 2022
In August, Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief health adviser, dismissed concerns about the impact of the lockdowns and school closures on children in an interview on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto.
“In retrospect doctor, do you regret that it went too far?” Cavuto asked regarding the lockdowns. “Particularly for kids who couldn’t go to school except remotely, that it’s forever damaged them?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s forever irreparably damaged anyone,” Fauci replied.
He charged that “people selectively… pull things out about me.”
Earlier this month, the Department of Education released a report concluding that the school shutdowns and the shift to virtual learning led to “the largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first ever score decline in mathematics” among the nation’s schoolchildren.
Last November, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association declared that the pandemic-related decline in child and adolescent mental health had become a national emergency.
See Fauci’s remarks in August:
“I don’t think it’s irreparably damaged anyone,” says Anthony Fauci when asked if he regrets the forced lockdowns that kept kids out of school.
“People selectively pull things out about me.” pic.twitter.com/HDgJfyMFUX
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 23, 2022
‘Divisive’
At The Atlantic Festival convention Wednesday, Fauci went on to say “you have to make a balance, when… the only way to stop something cold in its tracks is to shut things down.”
Fauci prefaced his response to the question by The Atlantic editor Ross Andersen about the lockdowns by blaming the “divisiveness” of “social media” for turning his guidance into controversy.
“When you have a divisiveness in society where every time you say something, you have X number of people with social media looking to attack it, that adds to the understandable confusion when you’re dealing with an evolving outbreak,” Fauci said.
He argued the “draconian” lockdowns, masking, and vaccination were all necessary because hospitals were being “overrun.”
The G20 comprises the most powerful nations in the world - the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the E.U., Australia, India, China, Russia and Brazil among others - and they are discussing climate policies that are already affecting billions of people around the world.
Most of these countries want the world to run on solar and wind power, forcing an end to the use of gas, oil and nuclear power, as well as crushing beef farmers because of supposed methane emissions.
But the harsh impact of such policies is already being felt, with energy blackouts and soaring inflation hammering people around the world, making it beyond time for all of us to speak out.
SIGN: Tell G20 leaders that their radical climate policies are making basic foods, fuel, heating and electricity increasingly unaffordable for normal citizens.
As western leaders turn off the oil spigots and impose draconian restrictions on farmers, we've all experienced the pain of increased prices, not least at the pump and the grocery store.
This inflation was entirely avoidable if only our politicians prioritized food and energy security over climate theories, but instead they have succumbed to radical environmentalists whose agenda would cripple the livelihoods and living standards of much of the globe.
Communities all around you are feeling the weight of crushing price hikes, which will soon reach your own food isles and gas pumps if it hasn't already.
The effects of inflation are being felt in the developing world most, as fuel and food prices sky rocket, making even worse poverty an inevitabilty for hundreds of millions of people.
Reality hits home.
The harshest effects of energy shortages were felt by many in the west last winter, when our leaders' decisions to cut oil supplies and reject Russian natural gas:
- forced heating, fuel and electricity prices to sky rocket
- continued to make food more expensive
- risked a global depression as inflation spiraled out of control
- prompted blackouts in certain areas
- made civil unrest a real possibility
States like California and countries like England were warning citizens that they faced severe electricity and gas shortages.
Now is the time to speak out and be part of a movement that can halt this runaway train of climate alarmism.
SIGN the petition calling on international leaders to abandon their reckless energy agenda and return the world to economic stability.
The entire climate change industry is based on models that have been consistently inaccurate for decades, with Al Gore among the most infamous prophets of doom to be proven wrong.
In 2009 Gore told the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen that the North Pole would be ice-free by 2014, a claim that remains wildly off the mark.
Arctic sea ice has increased since 2012 and is now close to the average for 1991-2000 – another inconvenient fact for climate change alarmists, alongside thriving polar bears and more coral on the Great Barrier Reef. https://t.co/3m7jcaj1hV
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) September 1, 2022
Al Gore is not alone in getting things wrong however, as this brief timeline of scaremongering headlines proves:
The world needs to wake-up to what's really happening: our lives are being upended on the basis of climate theories and models that have been consistently wrong for decades.
It's time to stop the scaremongering and push back against the radical agenda of international elites.
SIGN & SHARE: Tell G20 leaders that their radical climate policies are making basic foods, fuel, heating and electricity increasingly unaffordable for normal citizens.
Thank you.
However, studies have found the lockdowns had no effect on virus spread or deaths while causing a massive, 26 percent spike in excess deaths among working-age adults. Researchers indicate that this translates into at least 170,000, but probably closer to 200,000 non-COVID excess deaths in the U.S. through 2020 and 2021, with 2022 still having to be accounted for.
A former adviser to the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has compiled a list of more than 400 studies showing that COVID-19 lockdowns, shelter-in-place policies, school closures, masks, and mask mandates have failed to curb virus transmission or reduce deaths.
An analysis of official data by JPMorgan Chase, as WND reported, found the lockdowns that have “destroyed millions of livelihoods” worldwide have had no impact on the spread of COVID-19.
Marko Kolanovic, a JPMorgan Chase quantitative strategist, said governments were scared into imposing the lockdowns by “flawed scientific papers.”
“Unlike rigorous testing of new drugs, lockdowns were administered with little consideration that they might not only cause economic devastation but potentially more deaths than COVID-19 itself,” he said.
A meta-analysis by Johns Hopkins University released in February concluded the costs of the lockdowns outweighed any benefits.
As WND reported in December, the CDC warned that measles has become a growing global threat because of disruptions to childhood vaccinations caused by the lockdowns.
Reprinted with permission from the WND News Center.