Fauci admits Covid Vaccine mandates, he helped orchestrate, fueled Anti-Vaxx movement
- Dr Fauci was an early vocal supporter of federal and state government mandates
- Mandates were meant to bolster lagging vaccination rates during the delta wave
- READ MORE: Fauci admits he got key facets of Covid public health advice wrong
America’s top infectious disease expert admitted that Covid vaccine mandates he championed may have fueled a dip in confidence in routine shots.
In a rare admission of culpability, Dr Anthony Fauci said the policies were ‘counterproductive’ and turned vaccine skeptics off rather than gain their favor.
Fauci has retired from a long tenure in the federal government, where the White House‘s top doctor was the highest-paid federal employee and made around $400,000 per year.
Dr Fauci, who did not make policy but offered medical advice to people that do, was a vocal supporter of vaccine mandates throughout 2021.
Despite his admission that vaccine mandates backfired, the US still requires proof that travelers coming into the country have been vaccinated against Covid.
Dr Anthony Fauci was the government’s top infectious diease expert during the Covid pandemic, largely viewed at least early on as being a voice of reason amid widespread panic.
In the early days of Covid, Dr Fauci and members of the Trump administration got key public health guidance very wrong, including assertions that masking up would not benefit anyone and in fact limited supplies should be reserved for workers on the frontlines.
Talking about the mandates during a sweeping interview Monday, Dr Fauci told the New York Times: ‘Man, I think, almost paradoxically, you had people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated thinking, why are they forcing me to do this?
‘And that sometimes-beautiful independent streak in our country becomes counterproductive.’
Inoculations for diseases that were once considered deadly in the US have fallen since the mandates were enforced, most notably among children who are especially vulnerable to severe cases of measles, pertussis, and polio.
The percentage of American children entering kindergarten with their required immunizations such as the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) shot fell to 93 percent in the 2021-22 school year, a whole two percentage points below the recommended levels for herd immunity and lower than vaccination rates in 2020-21.
And though approximately 66 percent of US children aged five months were up to date for all childhood vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2016 through 2019, that number declined to slightly over 49 percent by May 2020.
In all, US adults and adolescents have missed more than 37 million routine vaccinations during the Covid pandemic, according to an analysis of insurance claims from health consulting firm Avalere.
Many experts believe the Covid shot requirements fueled vaccine hesitancy that had been brewing in the US for decades.
Over the course of the three-year pandemic, various states and local governments have instituted Covid vaccine mandates to get holdouts on board.
Federally-issued mandates for some private employers, military, and government workers were a response to lagging vaccination rates and climbing infection numbers.
The vaccines, delivered to the public in record time, were initially touted by government officials as key to stemming infection and transmission rates, though it has since become clear that vaccination does not prevent infection very well.
While Fauci himself did not issue the federal mandates, his full-throated support of those issued by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Department of Defense convinced many Americans that he was an architect, if not the main one.
Dr Fauci has been embroiled in controversy since his first week behind the podium in the White House briefing room in March 2020.
He now-famously bungled early guidance concerning masks and was found to have quashed dissenting opinions about the origins of the coronavirus, insisting that it most likely jumped from an animal reservoir before mutating in such a way to prove deadly to humans.
He has also been maligned for having a role in despensing federal grant money to an organization that supports research on coronaviruses that could make them more transmissible or lethal, sometimes referred to as ‘gain of function’.
The federal mandates have largely been removed in the face of myriad lawsuits alleging government overreach, but the vast majority of the damage had already been done with little to show for it.
President Joe Biden’s order that all federal workers must be vaccinated has been blocked in court last month while the Supreme Court blocked a similar federal mandate on the private workforce in early 2022.
And though the most stringent Covid requirements have been unwound, international arrivals to the US still must prove they have been vaccinated before they get on the plane in their home countries.
Still, about half of US states mandate employees in various industries to get the Covid vaccine while over a dozen have broken off in a completely different direction by instituting bans on such mandates.
One such state is Florida, where Gov Ron Desantis has championed efforts to undermine federal efforts to tamp down Covid, including lockdowns and vaccine passports.
Gov DeSantis signed legislation in 2021 that barred companies from requiring their workers to get the shots, and banned vaccine mandates from government entities and educational institutions, despite previously calling them ‘lifesaving’.
Dr Fauci found himself having to repeatedly defend state and private industry efforts to require vaccinations as well as federally-issued mandates applying to civilian government workers and military members.
He said in the fall of 2021: ‘When you are in a public health crisis, sometimes unusual situations require unusual actions. In this case, it’s things like mandating, be they masks or vaccinations.’
Header featured image (edited) credit: Fauci/REUTERS
Emphasis added by (TLB) editors
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