Anthony Fauci clarifies Christmas gathering remarks, says he will be spending day with his family

Fauci encouraged people to have a ‘good, normal Christmas’ with their families

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday sought to clarify remarks he made over the weekend that it was “too soon” for families to consider gathering in person to celebrate Christmas.

Appearing on CNN, Fauci claimed the comments he made on CBS’s “Face the Nation” were “taken completely out of context,” and that he never intended to convey that people couldn’t spend Christmas with their families.

“It is just too soon to tell,” Fauci told CBS anchor Margaret Brennan on Sunday when she asked if people could gather. “We have to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time.”

Fauci, who was heavily criticized for the remarks, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan that people, especially those who are vaccinated against the coronavirus, could plan to have a “good, normal Christmas” with their families.

“I also said something over the weekend that was taken completely out of context. I was asked what could we predict for this winter, for like December and Christmas,” Fauci said. “I said we don’t know because we’ve seen slopes that went down and then came back up.”

He stated that the best way to ensure the country would be in good shape going into the winter would be for more people to get vaccinated, and that it was “absolutely not the case” that people couldn’t spend Christmas with their families.

“I will be spending Christmas with my family. I encourage people, particularly the vaccinated people, who are protected, to have a good, normal Christmas with your family,”

Fauci said. “The way all of the other disinformation goes around, you say something talking about a landmark of a time, and it gets misinterpreted that I’m saying you can’t spend family Christmas time, which is nonsense. You can.” <Source>

When AIDS spread among gay men and intravenous drug users four decades ago, it became conventional wisdom that the plague would soon devastate the rest of the American population. In 1987, Oprah Winfrey opened her show by announcing, “Research studies now project that 1 in 5—listen to me, hard to believe—1 in 5 heterosexuals could be dead of AIDS in the next three years.” The prediction was outlandishly wrong, but she wasn’t wrong in attributing the scare to scientists.

One early alarmist was Anthony Fauci, who made national news in 1983 with an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association warning that AIDS could infect even children because of “the possibility that routine close contact, as within a family household, can spread the disease.” After criticism that he had inspired a wave of hysterical homophobia, Dr. Fauci (who in 1984 began his current job, as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), promptly pivoted 180 degrees, declaring less than two months after his piece appeared that it was “absolutely preposterous” to suggest AIDS could be spread by normal social contact. But other supposed experts went on warning erroneously that AIDS could spread widely via toilet seats, mosquito bites, and kissing. <Source>

Can you trust the government’s medical “experts?”

Experts study their subject, continually narrowing their focus on individual aspects of their field as they grow their expertise. Over time they know more and more about less and less until they know everything about virtually nothing. It is highly doubtful that this hyper-specialized knowledge can be transferred to other areas, especially outside their narrow field of expertise.

Those experts who head institutions or individual departments within institutions become bureaucrats over time. Bureaucrats that are subjected to outside forces to maintain their positions, advance to the next level of their careers, gain or avoid media attention, or serve their self-interest agenda.

Those who operate within a bureaucracy controlled by politicians are those most likely to ignore data and the conditions on the ground as they struggle to maintain their position in a hostile political environment.

This is why I wonder about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the physician/researcher who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 -- 36 years under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

Indeed, Dr. Fauci’s expertise does not extend to the economic, cultural, social ramifications of medical decisions driven by politics rather than objective science.