America is ‘OUT of the pandemic phase’ says Fauci

The Biden administration’s top medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has declared the United States is now ‘out of the pandemic phase’ of Covid-19, as cases and hospitalizations associated with the disease remain low. 

Fauci, who has been one of the most vocal proponents of draconian Covid measures such as mask and vaccine mandates throughout the pandemic, made the statement during a PBS broadcast yesterday. 

‘We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,’ he announced on air.

‘Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.’

But he insisted the virus could not be stamped out completely and that long-term vaccination programs may need to continue.  

‘We’re not going to eradicate this virus. We can keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people… That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low,’ he continued.

‘But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country.’ 

The chief medical advisor’s comments come as mask mandates have been lifted in most areas of the country as the number of new infections per week nationwide sits at around 50,000 – just 6 per cent of the peak according to Reuters.

Yet Fauci’s monumental declaration – news which the American public has clamoured for since the advent of the pandemic – was buried in the back-end of a PBS interview and has not been repeated since.

And so the question remains: Why did Fauci, who has for more than two years acted as the government’s foremost mouthpiece on Covid, not make an official announcement to inform the American people that the pandemic is no longer a major threat to public health?

Fauci, who has been one of the most vocal proponents of draconian Covid measures such as mask and vaccine mandates throughout the pandemic, made the statement during a PBS broadcast yesterday

Though most Covid restrictions such as mask mandates have been lifted across the country, some egregious examples of unjustifiably strict pandemic controls still remain.

There are no longer any states which generally require people to wear masks in public places, while the federal government’s nationwide mask order for public transit, commercial flights and transportation centers was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this month.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also revised its face-covering guidance in February, recommending that indoor masking only remain for communities thought to be at high risk for Covid, and mask mandates at large public gatherings such as sporting events are no longer in force.

But despite this widespread relaxing of Covid controls throughout the nation, children under five years of age in the New York City public school system are still subject to ‘close-contact restrictions’ including mask wearing. 

The mandate has remained in place there, even as medical experts and virologists widely agree that the risk of children becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid is extremely low.

There has been a sharp reduction in Covid-related fatalities in the US since January, partially due to rising population immunity, but also because newer variants of the virus are intrinsically less severe than those that preceded them.

Daily Covid-related deaths in the US now stand at roughly 300 per day.

Fauci meanwhile has doubled down on his personal policy of mask wearing and general isolation in spite of his comments to PBS yesterday, declining an invitation to the prestigious White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) Dinner this Saturday.

The medical adviser had been invited to attend as a guest of ABC News and had planned on going, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, but he decided to abandon the plans for fears the dinner could become a ‘super-spreader event’.

But this year’s dinner has a vaccine requirement and every guest must show proof of a negative Covid test taken the day of the event to attend.

The WHCA dinners are a time-honoured tradition and are seen as a chance for politicians, celebrities and media types alike to let their hair down in a notoriously serious town. 

Past performers include Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, and since the 1980s, comedians have provided entertainment, making gentle and not-so-gentle fun, or ‘roasting,’ the centerpiece of the dinner.

‘We’re not going to eradicate this virus. We can keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people… That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low,’ Fauci told PBS. ‘But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country.’

Fauci meanwhile has doubled down on his personal policy of mask wearing and general isolation in spite of his comments to PBS yesterday, declining an invitation to the prestigious White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) Dinner this Saturday

Earlier this month, an investigation conducted by Vanity Fair revealed that Fauci silenced any discussion about Covid being caused by a lab leak – and not through animal-to-human transmission – after helping a controversial scientist get millions in federal funding to study bats.

Analyzing more than 100,000 leaked documents, the magazine claimed that Fauci’s approval of Peter Daszak helped his nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, an organization dedicated to shielding society from emerging infectious diseases, to develop the Covid-19 virus in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

They also claim researchers associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including Daszak, tried to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread as lab leak hypotheses began to emerge.

While the report is not conclusive in how the pandemic was started, the magazine provides evidence that Daszak was aware the gain-of-function research his organization conducted was ‘risky’ and that he neglected to provide transparency about his projects to the U.S. government, as promised.

Investigators also allege that Dr. Anthony Fauci (left) shutdown all coronavirus lab leak theories after being lauded by Peter Daszak (right), the father of gain-of-function research. They also claim researchers associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including Daszak, tried to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread as lab leak hypotheses began to emerge

The magazine – which reviewed more than 100,000 internal EcoHealth documents predating the pandemic, interviewed five former staff members and spoke to 33 other sources – said the organization’s paper trail doesn’t specifically state where Covid came from.

However, it did show how the nonprofit operated under ‘murky grant agreements, flimsy oversight, and the pursuit of government funds for scientific advancement, in part by pitching research of steeply escalating risk.’

Some allege that Fauci, whose agency in 2014 issued a $3.7million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, directly contributed to the pandemic spread by providing funds that were used to support gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

EcoHealth issued WIV nearly $600,000 in sub-awards before the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suspended the grant in July 2020 – months following the outbreak of Covid, due its controversial work.