LILLEY: What else did Fauci recommend that wasn’t based on science?

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If Anthony Fauci knew that social distancing wasn’t based on science, why did he push the idea and help impose it on America and the world?

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It’s just one of many questions I have after his appearance last week before House Select Committee on Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington.

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Fauci served as the point man for America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and as such was one of the most influential doctors in the world in some of its darkest moments.

Yet, at a two-day committee hearing last week, Fauci said the recommendation to practice social distancing – keeping 6 feet apart – “sort of just appeared” and wasn’t backed by science.

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If that’s the case, how many other practices, recommendations or requirements “sort of just appeared” and weren’t backed by science?

We know that early in the pandemic, Fauci, like most doctors, wasn’t recommending average citizens wear masks. He said as much in media appearances, and he gave a detailed explanation to Sylvia Burwell who had been Secretary of Health under Barack Obama.

Burwell wrote Fauci in February 2020 asking if she should wear a mask while travelling. Fauci responded that masks are for infected people to stop them spreading an infections.

“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keeping out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you,” Fauci said, adding he did not recommend Burwell mask up.

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That was the view of virtually all doctors at the time.

But as public and political pressure grew, the medical community changed its tune and insisted masking was the answer. Fauci went from saying there is no need to mask to recommending double and triple masking.

The real problem during the pandemic is that too many decisions were made on the basis of political expediency driven by fear. Governments felt they needed to be doing something and the public was all too often clamouring for greater and greater restrictions, at least here in Toronto.

When restaurants were shut down just before Thanksgiving in 2020, I asked to see the evidence used to make the decision. It didn’t exist, there were thousands of restaurants in Toronto alone shut down over just a handful of COVID cases with no clear evidence pointing to the restaurants being the point of transmission.

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Businesses were closed for an extraordinary length of time, people lost their jobs or their livelihood, and now we are hearing from those who imposed such rules, like social distancing, that the idea “sort of just appeared.”

Saying, “sounds about right to me” after someone voices a dumb idea isn’t exactly the scientific method but it appears that’s what they did.

How many people had their lives ruined due to this unscientific decree? How many kids were forced out of school over an idea that “sort of just appeared.”

We may never know the full damage of the pandemic.

Beyond the lives lost, we had lives destroyed by financial hardship, loneliness, depression, addiction. We have a generation of children with maladapted social skills due to years out of the school system with limited physical or social interaction.

Now we are told some of the very recommendations that led to this weren’t backed up by science at all. It’s maddening, it is outrageous, but it is not shocking.

If the media had done their job and asked pointed questions and demanded evidence to back up decisions instead of acting like a cheering section for lockdowns, maybe things would have been different.

Instead, we were failed by the media, failed by our political leaders and failed by the so-called top doctors – like Fauci.

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