Welcome to Fauci-World
One of the biggest struggles of the past year has been the total impotence one feels when watching the vast majority of people and, consequently, the larger part of society itself completely lose their minds. It’s like experiencing the sad loss of a loved one to dementia – you watch them slowly slip away and there is nothing at all that you can do except be there for them and hold their hand, if they’ll let you. But, of course, everyone who has disappeared in the fog of coronavirus would never let you hold their hand or touch them in any way whatsoever. They wouldn’t let you within six feet of them and if they did tolerate your presence in any way, it would only be if you were wearing “your” mask.
Startled shoppers have often asked me, “Where is your mask?”, the possessive pronoun indicating that a mask is now deemed a quintessential part of someone. I am reminded of Philip Pullman’s series of novels, His Dark Materials, and feel as though I am being asked where my dæmon is – that unremovable extension of one’s soul. Indeed, if souls exist, then by now I expect they will have masks wedded to them for all eternity.
I generally pass by such distressed people and continue the ritual of my weekly shopping. I say ritual because that is largely what it has become – the masked faces and the quiet, reverential air that is interrupted only by the monotonous droning of public health announcements from the loudspeaker are enough to make me feel like Tom Cruise intruding on some dark ceremony.
But what if I didn’t pass by the other shoppers? What if I tried to respond to the frightened eyes peering out from behind their masks? Would it be worthwhile to refer to how the WHO specifically say in their 2019 manual for mitigating influenza epidemics that “there is no evidence that this (the wearing of face masks by asymptomatic OR symptomatic people) is effective in reducing transmission?”1 Should I attempt to bolster the point by adding that there has been only one study on face masks conducted since then and that study, the Danmask-19 trial, found no statistical difference between wearing a face mask and not wearing one for preventing infection by SARS-CoV-II, thus reinforcing similar trials that came to the same or similar conclusion in previous years regarding influenza like illnesses? Might I venture to offer the fact that the only stated reason the WHO contemplate face masks at all is because “there is mechanistic plausibility for the potential effectiveness of this measure”?2 In other words, it is theoretically possible they are effective even though every attempt at verifying this theoretical possibility has failed to do so.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were a renowned public health expert and I recommended sombreros as a potential tool in the fight against coronavirus. I would, of course, say that there is no evidence they work but given that their wide brim might theoretically catch some viral particles coming down from above that there is, therefore, “mechanistic plausibility for the potential effectiveness of this measure”. I would tell people to wear one because “it’s only a hat” and urge them to do so in order to “save lives”. What would happen though when, after they were made mandatory under threat of arrest or being fined, they inevitably failed and cases in every single country rose? Well, presumably nothing would happen as that is precisely what has happened in virtually every country that has mandated masks. Cases went up, often dramatically.3 But never has that fact weakened the utter conviction that masks nevertheless work.
If an entirely useless measure like sombreros were introduced in multiple regions, I would actually have expected to see far better results than we are seeing with masks. By sheer coincidence, the introduction of the sombreros would likely have correlated with sustained reductions in cases in several places. Yet, this expected coincidental correlation has been so vanishingly rare in the case of masks, almost to the point of statistical improbability. Everywhere you look, masks have failed, just like the evidence suggested they would. And yet here we are, with Anthony Fauci now telling us to consider wearing two of them and people happily obliging.4 So, no, I conclude that there would be no point trying to have such a conversation with frightened shoppers who are demanding to know where my mask is. Covid dementia is too unforgiving for that.
Nor, of course, would there be any point in trying to have a similar conversation about the failure of the wider set of restrictions, specifically lockdowns. It would be a waste of time, no doubt, to point out that there are at least three territories (Sweden, Florida, and South Dakota) that have largely eschewed lockdowns (and masks) and fared no worse than elsewhere.
Sweden, currently ranked 23rd in the world for deaths per million from coronavirus and which has fared far better than heavily restricted countries like the UK, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Peru, etc., might as well not exist. The fact that its cases peaked and troughed in Spring/Summer 2020 and again in Winter 2020/21 just like the pattern followed in most other European countries, despite the absence of lockdowns (or masks), is apparently irrelevant.
Florida too is a forgotten state. It gave up on harsh restrictions in summer 2020 when Governor Ron DeSantis largely reopened the State and banned the enforcement of local mask mandates. In his own words, he said, “Lockdowns don’t work. They haven’t worked to stop the spread.” Despite this disregard for the Covid rules, Florida has remained stubbornly average in terms of deaths per million from Covid-19 and sits in 26th place out of the 50 US states despite being disadvantaged by its famously older population of retirees.5
South Dakota, for its part, never even got started on restrictions. Its Governor, Kristi Noem, has essentially avoided imposing any restrictions on her population. Are they, thus, the worst performing state in the country? No, they’re 6th, quite a way behind New York who Fauci inexplicitly credited as having done it “correctly”.6 Apparently, having literally the worst death rate for any city in the world is doing it correctly in this Fauci-World in which we now live. Most interestingly, as cases rose coming into winter 2020/21, North Dakota introduced a mask mandate and restrictions on indoor dining and events while South Dakota did not. It made no difference. They both went up and down the Covid ladder together and North Dakota quietly rescinded their mask mandate and other restrictions shortly afterwards. If only everywhere else was so willing to accept the evidence of their eyes, admit their mistakes, and loosen the shackles on their citizens.
The wider point, of course, is that none of Sweden, Florida, or South Dakota have ever been overrun by Covid. Their health systems did not collapse. They did not have bodies in the streets. Their stats are all remarkably unremarkable. You would never be able to pick them out of a chart of territories as being the ones who refused to lockdown and mask up. But points such as these, wide or otherwise, have no place today.
Why is that?
Recently, I found myself reading The Emperor’s New Clothes to my son. The relevance of that story to today is obvious enough yet reading it again really illuminates the situation. The citizens of the city will not believe the evidence of their eyes because those around them are all saying something different. More specifically, it starts because a duo of experts (the dastardly tailors) simply state that the clothes are real. This is picked up and repeated by the Emperor’s officials and then by the Emperor himself, all of them too afraid of looking stupid, until soon everyone is perfectly happy to ignore reality and cheer as the Emperor parades naked down the street. They are lost in the fog.
So, it is with Covid. Some experts, whether it was the WHO or the CDC or individual Chief Medical Officers, stated that lockdowns and masks were effective tools to combat the virus and that the price of employing them (the complete devastation of our economies, the cessation of our children’s education, the destruction of our whole way of life) would be worth it. And, so, despite the clear and obvious evidence in front of our eyes that these measures have failed miserably to achieve their stated aims and are nowhere close to being worth what we have lost to accommodate them, we accept it. And many of us even cheer it on just like those raucous citizens who lined the street and roared their approval of the Emperor’s new clothes so that no one could miss their devotion to the cause.
And, at the end of the story, it is worth remembering that even when the Emperor realises his nakedness he carries on walking “even more proudly”. That is where we are now with Covid. Like a great unspoken truth, we all know, deep down, that we’ve been wrong. We do not need to be epidemiologists to see it anymore than the people in the story had to be tailors to see that the clothes were not real. But, like the Emperor, we cannot bear to face it. So, on we march, still naked. For if we’re going to be wrong we might as well be proud.
Meanwhile, what of the two tailors? They escape the city with their riches, their motivation clear to all. But what of our tailors today? The Faucis who tell us night after night to stay in and stay afraid. What is their motive? Will we ever know?
I guess we’ll have to keep reading.
“Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza”, p. 14. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf
ibid.
Florida is the 5th oldest state: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/median-age-by-state
Damian, On a number of occasions you have kept me sane. It was, just today, muttering to myself something about that emperor.....that crazy and dimwitted and bizarre of all stories. It never troubled me as a child. I rather liked it....knowing that MY world that I lived in would never be so foolish. Perhaps it is because I feel this childhood faith in humanity being dashed and that is what I find to be the most painful. A world I thought I knew has become unrecognizable. And your image of a loved one slipping away as from dementia perfectly captures the sorrow I feel. PS- And do you look like Richard Dreyfuss, or just admire him as mush as I do?? thanks
Brilliant!