The Ghosts Of Christmas Past – OpEd

As Americans prepare for Christmas, they might recall that five years ago, government bureaucrats warned against holiday gatherings. Consider coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who served in the U.S. Army from 1980 to 1994, attaining the rank of colonel, and from 2005-2014, served as director of the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Global HIV/AIDS (DGHA). In that role, Birx led the implementation of CDC’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) programs around the world. On the COVID task force in 2020, her mantra was “silent asymptomatic spread.” 

Dr. Birx spoke of  “how many people are asymptomatic and asymptomatically passing the virus on.” Basically, everybody was a carrier, so the people needed masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and so forth. The intrepid Alex Berenson was on to her from the start. 

“Birx is obsessed with asymptomatic transmission, the theory that people who are not showing symptoms of illness are very important spreaders of COVID,” which she had to know was untrue. “Before COVID, scientists agreed, people who did not have symptoms of respiratory viruses like influenza did not spread illness.” So as Berenson explained, “Birx likes lockdowns and masks, but she loves forced testing of asymptomatic people for COVID.” She also liked breaking her own rules against travel and holiday gatherings.

On Thanksgiving 2020, Dr. Birx visited her parents in Delaware, contending that her mother and father were so depressed they stopped eating and drinking. That did not sit well with people who had been told not to visit loved ones, even if they were dying. If younger people “made mistakes” over Thanksgiving, Birx contended,  “you need to assume you’re infected and not go near your grandparents and aunts and others without a mask.”

Dr. Birx also told the people of Utah to halt extended family gatherings at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, “until we can show that Utah is flattening the curve.” And so on, from the disciple of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. 

“The blip from Thanksgiving isn’t even here yet,” Dr. Fauci told reporters in early December 2020. To stop the “surge,” Fauci said restrictions and travel advisories would be necessary for Christmas, and the people should gather “virtually” rather than in person. Out in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom went the second mile. As his official rules for gatherings put it:

“Food and drink should be limited to outdoors,” and “while face coverings are removed for eating or drinking, individuals must stay at least six feet away from everyone outside their own household, and put their face covering back on as soon as they are done with the activity.”  The rules warn against “laughing, singing” and “loud talking,” and playing of any wind instruments “is strongly discouraged.” Gov. Newsom added, “Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites,” but like Dr. Birx failed to follow his own advice. 

Five years ago, as Katy Grimes of the California Globe recalls, the unmasked Gov. Newsom, “partied lavishly at the French Laundry restaurant in Napa at a dinner, enjoying the ‘Chef’s tasting menu,’ in which the starting meal cost $310 per person, before wine, and notably one of the few restaurants he failed to force out of business.” So the masks, as Lorena Helmsley said of taxes, were for the little people.

Dr. Fauci told people to wear no mask, one mask, then two masks. The vaccines Dr. Fauci recommended failed to prevent infection or transmission of COVID, which Dr. Fauci confirmed by testing positive. Last year, Dr. Fauci testified that he reviewed “no scientific evidence” for masking children or maintaining the six-foot distance, “sort of just appeared,” and was not based on any data. This is the man who claimed to represent science.

Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration, made the case for “focused protection,” instead of rigid lockdowns and such. National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins tasked Fauci to achieve a “devastating published takedown” of the Barrington scientists, most, if not all, more qualified than Fauci and Collins. By all indications, Newsom never contacted Dr. Bhattacharya for advice on his rules for public gatherings.

On his last day in office, Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Fauci without indicating any crime he had committed. As the people now understand, his rules had little basis in science. Dr. Birx has revealed few, if any, second thoughts on her view that people with no symptoms were dangerous COVID carriers who shouldn’t visit their parents at Christmas. 

The embattled Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is now director of the National Institutes of Health. So have yourself a merry little Christmas, with no need to wear a mask or pull up your mask between bites. Have yourself a happy new year, but always remember: the struggle against white coat supremacy is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

• This article was also published in The American Spectator