By: Mark Glennon*
JB Pritzker didn’t just consult Dr. Anthony Fauci during the pandemic, he publicly attributed much of Illinois’ pandemic governance to him through at least the first two turbulent years of Covid. Pritzker regularly and forcefully endorsed Fauci’s pronouncements in his daily Covid briefings and elswhere. In September 2020, for example, Prizker said he “would not hesitate to follow the advice of Dr. Anthony Fauci” whenever case surges required action. Fauci was a “very reliable source of information, Pritzker also said. “I rely on the guidance I hear from him.”
Even in April 2022, well after Fauci’s credibility was broken by dissenting epidemiologists and other experts and Fauci himself had changed course on some matters, Pritzker was still clinging to Fauci’s authority, saying he “hoped and prayed” Fauci was right that the worst was behind us.
But Pritzker and Fauci were wrong on fundamental issues from the start. Just two months after the pandemic started, it had become glaringly obvious to us at Wirepoints that facts were being grossly distorted and that Illinois’ policy response was patently irrational. Many mistakes were obvious even as they were made, which we documented with dozens of articles collected here.
It wasn’t about measured differences of opinion about science. It was a governor – and many others — who repeatedly hid behind a federal bureaucrat’s pronouncements to justify sweeping, often indefensible mandates on 12.7 million Illinoisans. Among the other guilty is the Illinois General Assembly, which stood aside as Pritzker ruled by executive fiat through his 39 consecutive emergency orders lasting from March 2020 to May 2023.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or relying on legacy media), you probably know that Fauci has already been exposed as a world class fraud. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci was the face of establishment “science” on Covid. Most recently, his published diary exposes levels of narcissism and megalomania for the record books. The diary describes some of Pritzker’s phone conversations with him and Pritzker’s expressed admiration of him. On Thursday Fauci took the Fifth Amendment before Congress on most everything — over 100 times — despite the blanket pardon President Joe Biden gave him.
Among the topics during the pandemic on which Fauci was wrong or dishonest are these: probable leak from Chinese lab as the original virus source, asymptomatic spreading, fatality rates, blanket lockdowns, school closures, impact on youth, relevance of acquired immunity, social distancing, outdoor spread, masks, variant impact, vaccine efficacy and vaccine risks.
Overlay that against the list of Covid policy errors made by Illinois that we printed earlier and is copied below in full. I urge you to read it fully to appreciate the gravity and length of the list. Pritzker’s obedience to Fauci is linked to most but not all of it.
Article continues here.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Leave a Reply