Video Catches Fauci in Vaccine Mandate Flip-Flop That Is Embarrassing Even by His Standards
Sometimes the best arguments against Anthony Fauci’s opinions have already been made — by Anthony Fauci.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – and the country’s de facto coronavirus czar – already has a well-established reputation for flipping on issues related to fighting the coronavirus. (Masks, anyone?)
But a comparison of his statements last year about a national mandate for COVID-19 vaccination with his latest pronouncements is stunning even by Fauci standards.
During a CNN appearance last week, Fauci responded to President Joe Biden’s announcement that American businesses with 100 or more employees would be forced to require workers to be vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19 — or face steep fines — by saying Biden was going too easy.
The draconian, and very likely unconstitutional, use of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to impose the mandate on private businesses that aren’t contracting with the government was an attempt to be “moderate,” Fauci said.
“Well, I think the President is, is, is, you know, being somewhat moderate in his demand — if you want to call it that — in that, there are some people who really don’t want to get vaccinated but they don’t want to lose their job,” Fauci said.
“You got to give them an off-lane and the off-lane is if you get tested frequently enough, and find out you’re positive, you won’t come to work and you won’t infect other people. So, it really is somewhat of a compromise there. Myself, I would make it just vaccinate or not. But he was trying to be moderate in what his pronouncement was.”
That’s the Fauci of September 2021 – an unabashed advocate for the federal government to exercise virtually unlimited powers over its citizens if it can be justified by the exigencies of the coronavirus pandemic.
Only a little more than a year ago, however, as a video promoted by the Republican National Committee last week showed, Fauci had a less abrasive take — one that actually acknowledged the role of personal freedoms in American life.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation where you mandated for the general population,” Fauci said at the time.
Anthony Fauci, July 2020: “I don’t see [a vaccine mandate] on a national level merely because of all the situations you have upon encroaching upon a person’s freedom to make their own choice of their own health” pic.twitter.com/iHHr2TwIUj
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 10, 2021
“Let me give you some examples of mandating,” he said. “I’m a physician. I see patients in my hospital … at the NIH clinical center. During the flu season, the administration of the hospital mandates that I have to get a flu vaccine, otherwise I won’t be able to see patients the way I usually do.
“That has not happened ever, to my knowledge, at a national level, or even at a state level.
“So I can see individual institutions mandating a vaccine. I don’t see it on a national level. Mainly because of all the situations you have upon, encroaching upon, a person’s freedom to make their own choice of their own health.”
Now, of course, there’s a new president in the Oval Office, and Fauci isn’t quibbling about “personal freedom” anymore. Far from making Fauci nervous about encroaching on individual choices, his beef with the Biden announcement is that it doesn’t go far enough.
If it were up to Fauci, apparently, Americans who work for employers covered by Biden’s mandate would have one choice and one choice only: Get vaccinated or get fired.
Considering Biden’s OSHA rule would apply to an estimated 100 million American workers, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the national workforce at about 160 million in 2020, he’s talking about almost two-thirds of employed Americans living under direct a fiat from the man in the White House that threatens livelihoods to enforce compliance.
The Anthony Fauci of 2021 might be OK with that. The Anthony Fauci of 2020 had some hesitation.
And critics of the Biden mandate aren’t showing any hesitation about sounding off about it.
Nothing about a vaccine mandate for 100 million people is “moderate.” But Dr. Fauci said it, so you know it’s a lie.https://t.co/VwBO2LFl4o
— Bongino Report (@BonginoReport) September 10, 2021
Biden’s vaccine mandate proposal is unconstitutional. Period.
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) September 13, 2021
NO VACCINE MANDATES.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) September 12, 2021
You cannot force medical decisions onto Americans against their will.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) September 12, 2021
As is always the case with social media — particularly the liberal-dominated cesspool of Twitter — there were plenty of liberals standing up for Fauci and his flip-flops, pointing out that much more is known about the coronavirus now than before and claiming that opinions can change as known facts change.
But what Fauci was talking about a year ago was personal freedom and the restrictions on government power that are part of the American system.
That hasn’t changed over the course of the past 230 years, and it hasn’t changed in the past 13 months — though Democrats have proven time and again since January that they want nothing more than to abolish the whole conception of limits on the federal government.
Anthony Fauci is an overpaid, octogenarian career bureaucrat who should have been put out to pasture long before the coronavirus ever appeared on the horizon.
Now, he’s a functionary, flacking for a president who’s himself a doddering figurehead for his party’s left-wing and its assault on the Constitution.
A year ago, Fauci appeared to understand the limits the Constitution imposes — even if he didn’t like it. Now, he seems to think it doesn’t matter.
Come the 2022 midterm elections, and the 2024 presidential race, millions of Americans need to remind him and the administration he serves that it’s a matter of life and death for the country as it was founded.
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