PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, October 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most prominent member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, recently proposed that even with a vaccine, social distancing and mask mandates may be necessary through 2021 and “into 2022.”
The immunologist, who has served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 36 years, made these statements during a Zoom meeting with the medical community of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia earlier this month.
When asked how long masks and social-distancing will be needed, Fauci stated that, presuming a vaccine is 70% effective, many months will pass prior to society reaching herd immunity, according to the Inquirer.
“You’re not going to have a profound degree of herd immunity for a considerable period of time, maybe toward the end of 2021, into 2022,” he said. “I feel very strongly that we’re going to need to have some degree of public-health measures to continue.”
Fauci also advised against expectations a vaccine would be a “knockout punch” for COVID-19, stating that for respiratory viruses, vaccines are often less effective.
“It’s not going to be the way it was with polio and measles, where you get a vaccine, case closed, it’s done,” he said. “It’s going to be public-health measures that linger for months and months.”
In a later CNN interview, Fauci was more explicit on the public health measures he had in mind, emphasizing his strong support for mask mandates.
He stated, “If people are not wearing masks, then maybe we should be mandating it … I think that would be a great idea to everybody doing it uniformly.”
Dr. Fauci’s comments come following a recent “White Coat Summit” gathering in the nation’s capital, where a group of well-credentialed doctors, called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” was most critical of the government’s and the media’s response to the coronavirus.
With regards to efficacy of masks, physician and attorney Dr. Simone Gold stated, “The facts are not in dispute: masks are completely irrelevant to blocking the SARS-CoV-2 virus … Prior to masks becoming political in March 2020, there was never even an attempt at a pretense that masks, let alone bandanas, stop a virus. It’s a complete fabrication.”
Gold cited a March 2020 interview of Dr. Fauci himself to confirm her point. On 60 Minutes, the immunologist said, “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often there are unintended consequences; people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”
In addition, Gold cited the New England Journal of Medicine which acknowledged that “masks serve symbolic roles” and are thus mere talismans “that may help increase” a person’s “perceived sense of safety.”
Dr. Lee Merritt, a spine surgeon and member of the group, explained, “I spent 40% of my life in a mask. And I can tell you in my entire career … nobody was talking about masks as a control mechanism for viruses.”
Viruses are passed by tiny “.12 micron” particles “that sneak out through the mask and around the mask … Even the very best medical masks cannot screen out, cannot protect, from this type of small particle virus.”
Indeed, she continued, “the atmosphere and the whole air fluidity is filled with viruses. We have it around us all the time. You can’t mask that away.”
Therefore, she concluded, “masks don’t control viruses, they control you.” They “may look like they are not much … just a little soft piece of cloth over your face. What’s the big deal? The big deal is, they may be soft, and they may look okay, but this is George Orwell’s boot on a human face forever if we don’t get this off.”
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