The Public-Health Mafia

By Philip Klein

Thursday, December 16, 2021

 

The public-health community is behaving like the Mafia. They come offering protection. They control the politicians. And they threaten businesses that don’t accede to their demands.

 

Led by boss Anthony Fauci, and comprising many federal, state, and local officials, they have exploited the Covid pandemic to orchestrate a campaign of fear and intimidation to consolidate their power, and they have no plans to give any of it up.

 

The protection racket is based on the conceit that if we simply do as they command, we will vanquish Covid. It started with the now-infamous “15 days to slow the spread” and the effort to “flatten the curve” to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. This quickly turned into six weeks and then months of rolling lockdowns and, in some areas, more than a year of closed schools.

 

Vaccines, they assured us, were to be the end point of the pandemic. But a year after they became available, and eight months after they have been widely available, the medical Cosa Nostra still insist that people who are fully vaccinated — and boosted — need to wear masks in public (even though they initially convinced people that masks were ineffective).

 

When the policies that they propose do not produce the promised results, and as one variant after another surfaces, the response is to argue that we have shown insufficient respect to them and that we need to make amends by being more loyal to their guidance.

 

It is not only the public to whom the public-health mafia offers protection but also politicians. Any politician who defies the orders of the public-health community can expect blistering media coverage whenever there is a surge in cases, as has been the case with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Politicians who follow public-health guidance might not be protecting their constituents from the virus, but they are protecting themselves from getting blamed, as with New York governor Kathy Hochul, by operating with the imprimatur of the family. Recall how it was common to blame Donald Trump for the hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths on his watch. But President Biden, who has deferred to health officials, is spared any blame, despite the fact that more people have died of Covid under Biden.

 

“His two big promises were to get Covid behind us and to get rid of Donald Trump,” NBC’s Chuck Todd said on Sunday. “Covid’s not behind us, and Donald Trump’s still lurking. It’s not his fault, but is that why we’re in this no-man’s land here for him?”

 

And herein lies the essence of the control over political leaders. The current Covid surge, while openly reported on, isn’t being framed as Biden’s fault, because he has agreed to defer to the experts. He is granted protection, and any blame for the persistence of Covid is targeted at those who are challenging his mandates.

 

To be clear, it is perfectly appropriate for public-health officials to present the best and most up-to-date evidence to decision-makers and advise them on what they believe to be the best course of action to fight the spread of infectious diseases. But it is the role of elected leaders to weigh any such advice against other priorities.

 

Unfortunately, too many leaders have uncritically ceded authority to public-health officials, myopically focusing on reducing Covid spread over all other priorities — including economic well-being, religious observance, social interaction, and the education and mental health of children (who face virtually no threat from the virus). And they continue to do so — even though following the advice of these so-called experts has not shut down the virus.

 

This week, New York’s Hochul, citing the health commissioner, implemented a more severe statewide mask mandate, attributing it to a post-Thanksgiving surge despite the state’s 82 percent adult vaccination rate. Under the new rules, all offices, restaurants, stores, and businesses of any kind will be required to confirm vaccination status for all or force everybody to wear masks. Hochul’s policy calls for masking two-year-olds and requiring proof of at least one dose starting at age five.

 

Failure to comply carries steep fines for businesses. But beyond the fines, there is a further threat that is left unsaid. That is, political leaders, egged on by health officials, already showed that they could shut down businesses with the stroke of their pens. The press release announcing the new mandate claimed it was to “prevent business disruption.” All new mandates carry an underlying whiff of “Nice business there; shame if something were to happen to it.”

 

While some, frustrated by the never-ending Covid restrictions, have rallied around the cry to “Fire Fauci,” the reality is that doing so would not make much of a difference. If history has taught us anything, it’s that if one boss gets taken down, another will pop up in his place.

 

What needs to change is that elected leaders have to learn to stand up to the public-health mob.

 

Last week, another Democratic governor, Colorado’s Jared Polis, provided a better example.

 

“The emergency is over,” he said. “You know, public-health [officials] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that’s just not their job. Public-health [officials] would say to always wear a mask because it decreases flu and decreases [other airborne illnesses]. But that’s not something that you require; you don’t tell people what to wear.”

 

It’s time for more leaders to break up this public-health mafia.