Today Bob Somerby happened to quote something Lisa Boothe said on Fox News yesterday:
Joe Biden took a stage at the end of July [2021], CNN Town Hall, telling Americans that if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus. So we were lied to the entire time, and Dr. Fauci is corrupt and evil and was the person spearheading a lot of those lies.
My interest in this is a little different than Bob's. I'm increasingly perplexed by memories of the pandemic that don't gibe with what I remember happening at the time. Now, my memory is no great shakes, but I have the advantage of being able to use the internet to check myself.
So: Were we, in fact, lied to the whole time? The answer is plainly no. As early as December 2020, a few days before the vaccine was first distributed, Fauci said very clearly on CNN:
Just because you're protected, so-called protected, by the vaccine, you should need to remember that you could be prevented from getting clinical disease, and still have the virus that is in your nasopharynx because you could get infected.
We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected. We know for sure it's very, very good, 94 percent, 95 percent in protecting you against clinically recognizable disease, and almost a 100 percent in protecting you for severe disease.
Fauci and others said this over and over and over. Eventually test results were available that allowed this question to be answered definitively, and it turned out the vaccine protects against severe disease but doesn't protect against infection or against spread of the virus (though it reduces it).
But even in the early days of vaccine distribution Fauci's comments were being deliberately misconstrued. A viral Instagram video in March 2021 went like this:
After Fauci says, “We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected,” the edited Instagram clip plays a record scratch sound effect and a voiceover asks in disbelief, “We’re not sure? At this point? That the vaccine protects you against getting infected?”
This was all part of the anti-vax movement, and was meant to imply that Fauci had admitted we didn't know if the vaccine even worked. This, needless to say, was not at all what he said.
But three years later Boothe is still misconstruing Fauci. In her case, it's not clear if this is deliberate or if her MAGA sentiments have simply warped her memory and she really believes what she said.
(But how about Biden? Did he say that "if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus"? Yes he did. He was urging people to get vaccinated and generally sticking to the facts, but then blurted out, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” This was a typical Biden gaffe; he should have said "serious COVID." It was hardly a big deal, but years later it's still part of conservative mythology.)
More generally, my recollection is that the "experts misled us" crowd is almost always referring to things that were genuinely unknown at the time. Recommendations changed when the evidence changed, as it has to. For example:
- The reason the CDC initially recommended against wearing masks was because they thought you could just avoid people who were sick, so it was best to reserve limited supplies for doctors, who couldn't avoid sick people. When researchers discovered that COVID could be asymptomatic—which meant you couldn't tell if someone was sick—they changed their advice.
- The CDC never recommended that kids not be allowed to play outside due to the risk of infected playground surfaces. This was something put in place by local officials who were being urged by parents to be ultra cautious.
- The CDC didn't recommend that schools remain closed. Quite the opposite. Closure decisions were made locally, usually with the strong support of parents.
- In any case, it's unlikely that school closures caused much harm. Test scores generally fell about the same in states that kept schools open.
- Businesses were not shut down for an entire year. Shutdowns were ordered in both red and blue states and generally lasted only about three months.
- Nobody ever said the lab leak theory for the origin of the virus was impossible. Every scientist who looked at the question said we couldn't know for sure but the evidence pointed strongly to a natural origin. They said this because it was true.
- A lot of public health experts did say it was OK to join the George Floyd protests because they were more important than stopping the spread of COVID. This was stupid.
- That said, this is an example of health experts considering the social impacts of their recommendations. It's just not true that they never considered tradeoffs. They considered them constantly.
- Epidemiologists initially said that COVID was spread by droplets. That's because the evidence pointed that way. When evidence piled up that aerosol transmission was also important, they changed their public statements. But their safety guidance didn't change, because in most cases it didn't matter how the virus was spread. Standard epidemic hygiene was mostly the same either way.
- Dr. Fauci did not admit recently that the CDC just made up its social distancing rule. He said only that he wasn't sure where the specific six-foot guidance came from. As it turns out, six feet was probably too stringent, but at the time there was no research to provide a firm number and advice varied across the globe:
The World Health Organization recommends a distance of “at least one meter.” China, France, Denmark and Hong Kong went with one meter. South Korea opted for 1.4 meters; Germany, Italy and Australia for 1.5 meters. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended “at least six feet,” or 1.8 meters. [Britain, Canada, and Spain recommended two meters.]
Are there some I'm missing? Probably. I told you my memory was so-so. Feel free to add to this list in comments.