Wear the mask, but respect is optional.

Say it ain’t so, Tony.

I remember back in February whenCOVID-19 was getting constant coverage and was getting pretty fucking serious. Trump just got his fat ass saved by the Senate only a few weeks earlier and corporate news had a brand new void to fill their repetitive 24 hour culture of fear format. Then a novel virus fell on their laps and the news cycle went with it. (And for once it’s a good thing they did and didn’t downplay the severity of the spread)

It only took weeks when a few more cases spread out thru the nation after landing in Washington weeks earlier; anxiety was setting in on the general public which shortly progressed into widespread panic as people were grabbing anything they can get to ward off the contagion as liquid soap and detergent and hand sanitizer were ravenously devoured off the supermarket and chain pharmacy shelves (oh and toilet paper too). Then another PPE product was suddenly in hyper high demand; protective face masks. What was once a reliable and cheap staple for doctors, nurses and construction workers were getting cleared off the shelves during the panic buy frenzy.

Around that time, Trump came up with the travel ban against China, then declared the virus defeated and went back to dissing his foes in Twitterworld and golfing then he left whatever news and updated info about coronavirus being broadcasted and published by mass media to be handled by Dr. Anthony Fauci, epidemiologist and career government worker.

When 15 cases suddenly appeared in disparate cities across the nation which Trump remarked would go immediately back down to zero in utter incomprehension of how a disease spread, Dr. Fauci was thrust into the spotlight to tamper the President’s wacky summations which at the time provided sanity and relief to the press and the public.

When the press queried Dr. Fauci about preventive measures to defend against contagion he advised the American citizenry to thoroughly wash their hands for 120 seconds, stay six feet apart at all times in public places and not to touch their faces with their hands (and that includes face palm reactions). Then he advised the nation that protective face masks were not necessary for daily use and it was best and in the long run safer if those masks were instantly available and sufficiently supplied to hospitals so doctors and nurses that need them and use them the most (which he repeated to a national televised audience on 60 Minutes as COVID-19 was ravishing Northern Italy killing hundreds of people a day.)

At the time this was a rational response from the good doctor, these masks needed to go to essential workers in the front line to battle the insidious contagion.

After this, Dr. Fuaci has been the go to good guy face wrestler to President Trump’s bad guy heel wrestler with corporate news, celebrity entertainers and the majority of citizens. The reliable arbiter of all information about COVID-19, especially during the nadir of President Trump’s heinous interpretations of the disease when he looked to his task force and suggested injecting bleach and UV rays to stem the spread of the pathogens inside the body.

In this current health crisis with no determined end in sight, Dr. Fauci was and is still revered like a rock or a movie star in a world where those icons don’t currently exist. Which is why it’s quite a dismaying and revolting shock with what he flippantly said a few weeks ago on some news blog I never heard of called The Street:

“Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N-95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci said. “And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”

Masks are not 100% protective. However, they certainly are better than not wearing a mask. Both to prevent you, if you happen to be a person who may feel well, but has an asymptomatic infection that you don’t even know about, to prevent you from infecting someone else,” said Fauci. “But also, it can protect you a certain degree, not a hundred percent, in protecting you from getting infected from someone who, either is breathing, or coughing, or sneezing, or singing or whatever it is in which the droplets or the aerosols go out. So masks work.”

So right now, unequivocally, the recommendation is, when you’re out there particularly if you’re in the situation where there is active infection, keep the distance phsyically and wear a mask. So although there appears to some contradiction of why weren’t you saying this then and you’re saying this now, the circumstances have changed, that’s the reason why.

My fucking eyes and ears must be deceiving me, but no that’s definitely the good doctor.

Say it ain’t so Tony.

But he did say it. He said it loud and as disingenuous just like all the misinformation that was given to Americans from the start of the coronavirus outbreak took the country by storm and under siege to this day. Of which he was a seminal part of.

In a way, Dr. Fauci is dropping this as if it’s OK to reveal the truth now because of the three month window, which is kind of like the amount of time that has to elapse when you make a joke about a dead celebrity or a tragedy with high casualties. Except this outstanding revelation would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if Dr Fauci legitimized the usefulness of the masks instead of keeping it like a secret for 4 months.

It might be vitriolic to call Dr. Fauci a lying prick and hyperbolic and inappropriate as well given that he’s still the all star cleanup hitter and is still the only trustworthy official on Mike Pence’s coronavirus response team that Trump authorized back on leap day 2020 but his response in that video is terribly and blatantly contradictory, confusing and condescending. Especially the last paragraph there where he quipped about the “appearance” of “some contradiction” as if the 320 million citizens who are asking his hypothetical question are the ones contradicting themselves then caps with a nyah nyah response since the circumstance is quite convenient for him now because of his status as the nation’s epideomologist. (It’s also quite convenient for all elected officials running states and cities who get to determine whose essential enough to run a business or not and where gatherings are allowed or forbidden.)

The guy is trying to cop out of the fib he made with the subtlety and sleaze of a snake oil salesman or a public relations tool. But technically that’s actually part of Dr. Fauci’s job in the administration besides mopping up after Trump’s erroneous COVID takes and his and Pence’s arrogant defiance to avoid wearing the masks themselves. Because even though Anthony Fauci is a doctor first beloved and trusted by the people and starstruck journos from corporate news networks and newspapers, he’s still a bureaucrat and serves at the pleasure of the President who happens to be a obstinate self-serving motherfucker and also a careerist because dishonesty is essential to his job as one.

Consider Fauci’s other rather odd circumstantial moments before and after he recommended with conviction that it was unnecessary to wear masks . During an interview with Greg Kelly in January, Fauci told him and the United States that the novel virus was nothing to be alarmed about at that time and then on March 26th, Fauci suggested wearing the mask not because Trump declared a national emergency but to wear it symbolically as a sign of respect to others while still claiming of how ineffective they are against infection. This notably stands out because President Trump has never been seen wearing a mask since the outbreak exploded and still refuses to this day. But a sign of Fauci’s circumstantial convenience narrative that he used on The Street was revealed in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper when he made a Faucian Slip about the prospective data of the amount of cases to deaths from COVID-19 as he predicted the amount of deaths under his tongue after he used that same number to predict the amount of cases.

Going by these appearances, the good doctor Fauci has been eloquent yet still dishonest and has exhibited quite a proclivity for double talking and double backing on his statements and advisories.

It was around this time that (most) state governors decided to ratify mask mandatory wearing and social distancing guidelines, but a majority of Americans still did not adhere to them. Despite the lionization of Dr. Fauci by corporate news and social media, he still was not deemed credible by masses of people. Particularly in the young adult demographic and Trump’s base.

And despite Fauci’s ill-advisory recommendation for people to be selfless and not buy masks; hospitals were still under supplied of face masks as well as other PPE’s like smocks and gloves and COVID-19 naturally spread like wild fire, infecting the entire country. As of today over 120,000 people have died (and still dying but in smaller daily increments) and infections are still going up as more get duly tested.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop the mass panic buying of them by the general public and also from greedy wholesalers looking to gouge prices because of the scarcity of the product which went along with hand sanitizer and rubber gloves, bringing the prices of these cheap items to upscale retail price levels, leading to bare shelves in stores everywhere. Making it unavailable and unattainable for the people suddenly alarmed by the novel virus encroaching into their zip codes. The PPE shortages got so extreme that in New York City, NYPD Chief Patrick Monahan ordered cops to pick up steal hundreds of thousands of face masks from a FEMA warehouse that were meant to go to hospitals that were ran out of them, but got pinched by Dr. Oxiris Barbot of the City Health Department who caught the brazen heist and fed the chief his lunch by cursing his ass out and getting the masks to doctors and nurses that were already getting swamped with COVID positive cases. What makes this police high brass malfeasance even worse is that a vast majority of cops are constantly photographed without masks on.

But the most warped thing about Fauci’s circumstantial advisories is that even the emperor of China, the nation were the virus originated, advised his citizens (and the world) to wear the masks in January. Which makes it bizarre (and suspicious) that Fauci would blow even that off considering everyone is blaming that nation for birthing coronavirus. It also didn’t help that the majority (or maybe the entirety) of the masks were made in China and Trump’s travel ban against them had an impact on exportation.

The most bothersome thing about Fauci’s evolution from his initial lackadaisical response in January as the novel virus decimated Wuhan to his immediate dismissive to not buy masks in February is that what if he did take this seriously like you would expect a professional virus analyst to do. Maybe Trump could have fully authorized the Defense Production Act sooner to replenish the National Emergency Stockpile, then masks and tests would have been mass produced earlier for everyone to wear and get access to, certainly over hundreds of thousands of citizens wouldn’t have perished, millions of people wouldn’t have contracted the disease and millions of people wouldn’t be out of work and the country wouldn’t be mired in a new depression.

But Dr. Fauci never asked or advised that, he just did his and is still doing his job like a good careerist and bureaucrat. But it’s enhanced with iconic status and celebrity in an era when there really is no interest in celebrities or icons. Which only enhances his credibility despite the utter lack of it. Which is why he can circumvent questions from a starfucking talk show host or timid corporate news show hosts with aplomb and not get followed up with jedi mind trick responses like this after following Trump’s bullshit with his own palatable pile of bullshit with his fog of war take. Which was based on another tragedy that also cost over hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.

The unsettling problem is Big Tony is still around giving interviews and making statements while Trump is still calling the shots. In a way, Fauci is not out of place in Trump’s administration, because he’s just another self-serving deceiver in an administration full of them. He’s definitely not going to resign because he’s still the only one most of the public still believes, fortunately for him it’s hard to play catchup to what even the seemingly credible people say in a 24 hour news cycle integrated with social media platforms that update every minute.

And Fauci is needed now more than ever because COVID positive cases are rising again in the southern states that opened too soon. Plus vaccine trials are occurring and we need the good doctor to mollify us with more vague determinations and sound(s good) advice to give us a semblance of hope to all of us as we live under the New Normal in #COVID19World.

Who knows, maybe working for Trump and covering his fat ass for continuing to undermine the contagion as his popularity wanes, Fauci will quit and explode into a rage and use his iconic status for good, making the rounds on TV and streaming media while yelling about how much he hated working and lying for the President.

But now that the (his, our) circumstances have changed. For the time being or for good if a vaccine doesn’t surface or if another flu strain suddenly manifests. Do like Big Tony says (now), keep the distance and wear the mask.

Technically with all this uncertainty, mostly by Fauci, you really don’t have a choice.

That’s the reason why.