I’m sure some conservatives who have insisted the past six months that any and all criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci is off limits will claim he’s being misinterpreted or that he simply isn’t thinking about what he’s really saying, but to be frank, I don’t buy it.

(see Dr. Fauci Was Asked If He Regrets Lying About Masks, His Answer Tells You Everything)

Dr. Fauci took to PBS yesterday, one of his many media hits he’s been racking up, to give a breakdown of what he feels is “doing it correctly” in relation to suppressing the virus. His answer: New York.

Dr. Fauci: "We have got to do the things… that we need to do to turn this around… When you do it properly, you bring down those cases… We have done it in New York. New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly…"https://t.co/AyhXRvnFDd pic.twitter.com/0NuHmJdt3m

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) July 18, 2020

New York has 32,000 deaths. They only saw a decline in cases after they killed off 6,000 seniors (and that number is laughably low and skewed by New York’s government) and 32,000 total people. Claiming they did anything right is absolutely insane, but it also happens to be exactly what the liberal media want to hear. After all, they’ve made a cottage industry of praising Gov. Andrew Cuomo while trashing red state governors who did 8-10x better than New York.

Fauci is not an idiot. He knows exactly what really happened in New York. They allowed the virus to run through their population, killing magnitudes of people compared to other states. That led to a natural decline in cases as the most vulnerable either got the disease and recovered or, in many cases, died. That scary peak chart Fauci was bandying about early on in the pandemic? New York followed it to the letter, with massive death totals and overwhelming of their healthcare system. That’s not “doing it correctly.”

Whether New York is actually at herd immunity is unknown, but there are new studies showing that as little as 10-20% of a population being infected could be effective. That’s a far more valid explanation for their drop off in cases than pretending they magically learned to mitigate compared to other states that are doing exactly the same things, such as California, which is seeing a spike in cases while being broadly locked down and under a mask mandate.

As I’ve said many times, these experts often have no more information than you do. Common sense says that when different states see vastly different outcomes while doing the same mitigation techniques, that means those mitigation techniques are obviously not a deciding factor. Lockdowns, masks, etc. have shown really no continuity across outcomes. Fauci continuing to pretend they have is insulting to everyone’s intelligence at this point. In reality, we simply do not know who has done “it correctly” because we don’t have the final death counts. What we do know is that New York certainly isn’t among that list.

Janice Dean responded succinctly to Fauci’s statement.

This is garbage. https://t.co/nhvzfXFFul

— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) July 18, 2020

Meanwhile, Fauci is doing InStyle magazine spreads and his umpteenth cable news hit twisting himself into a ball of contradictions.

Conservatives have this silly habit of wanting to appear “fair” and apolitical when it comes to bureaucrats. Perhaps it’s our thirst for normalcy and order at play? It’s how you get plaudits thrown on a hack like Alexander Vindman or years of insisting that James Comey is actually just a guy trying to do his best. Then, inevitably, a few years later, everyone admits these people are just as partisan as anyone else. Dr. Fauci is not immune from political leanings, which explains his reluctance to ever speak ill of New York or critique the World Health Organization (see Dr. Fauci Needs to Amend His Praise of the WHO) while he routinely criticizes red states that have far outpaced others in positive results.

We should stop bestowing upon these people a special mantle of non-partisanship when we actually have no evidence they are anything of the sort. A skeptical eye is conservative in this case. Fauci is not aloof. He knows what he’s saying and how his words will be used. This case was no exception.