OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly has torn into Dr. Anthony Fauci after he gave an interview in which he appeared to say masks were not that effective against COVID.
“From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins — maybe 10 percent,” he said in the interview, and that made Kelly furious.
“WE HAD OUR KIDS IN THESE THINGS FOR TWO YEARS YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD,” she said on Twitter.
WE HAD OUR KIDS IN THESE THINGS FOR TWO YEARS YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD https://t.co/8RhZCuMI0Y
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 26, 2023
But to take his full quote in context he did not say that masks were only 10 percent effective.
“From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins — maybe 10 percent. But for an individual who religiously wears a mask, a well-fitted KN95 or N95, it’s not at the margin. It really does work,” he said to The New York Times.
“But I think anything that instigated or intensified the culture wars just made things worse. And I have to be honest with you, David, when it comes to masking, I don’t know. But I do know that the culture wars have been really, really tough from a public-health standpoint. Ultimately an epidemiologist sees it as an epidemiological phenomenon. An economist sees it from an economic standpoint. And I see it from somebody in bed dying. And that’s the reason it just bothers me a lot — maybe more so than some others — that because of the culture wars you’re talking about, there are people who are not going to make use of an intervention that could have saved their lives,” he said.
Still, it is not the first time Kelly has shredded Fauci either. In August, after he announced his impending retirement, she eviscerated him on her SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast, Kelly opened her show with a brutal takedown of Fauci, arguing why she believed he should never be in a position of power again.
“Good riddance,” she said, adding that he would “not be missed.”
“The truth is that Dr. Fauci, who had a greater hand than anyone in causing Americans to lose their jobs, years of learning, and even their lives — thanks to the social and economic upheaval he helped foist upon us during the pandemic — ought to be ashamed to show his face in polite society,” Kelly explained. “Instead the man is self-congratulatory.”
“He said he changed the number when he thought the public would tolerate a greater percentage,” the former Fox News host answered her own question. “Another lie that he admitted to. This wasn’t the evolution of anything, besides Anthony Fauci’s con.”
“He mocked the idea of natural immunity, eliminating the need for his beloved, mandatory vaccines,” she added. “Despite admitting years earlier that natural immunity is in fact the gold standard. His unexplained reversal cost millions their livelihoods. As of October of 2021, 5 percent of unvaccinated adults said they had lost a job due to a vaccine mandate, according to the Kaiser Foundation.”
“But Fauci’s biggest lie was told under oath when he testified before Congress that his group at the NIH [National Institute of Health] never funded gain of function research in Wuhan, China,” Kelly continued. “The kind that experiments on bat coronavirus to try to make them more lethal or more transmissible in humans.”
The host said despite Fauci’s denial, the “NIH was later forced to admit in writing … that it had indeed funded” the research in China.
“We should pray this guy never gets near another grant or health group again in his life,” Kelly concluded in her 19-minute takedown. “He has destroyed the trust in public health. His decisions have hurt countless numbers of people … and we did indeed suffer irreparable harm sir, whether you care to admit it or not. Good riddance Dr. Fauci. You are not truth and you will not be missed.”
Fauci announced in August that he would be departing his roles as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as chief medical officer to President Joe Biden at the end of the year.
“I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said.
