CITIZENS ARE NOT CHILDREN.

The palace guard media are giving Anthony Fauci all sorts of opportunities to complain about citizens behaving like citizens.

“I consider the country as my patient, metaphorically, where [I] really want to take care of them,” Fauci said, “It was a real jolt and a shock early on, when you get completely criticized and attacked because you're saying things that is trying to save the lives and preserve the health of people.”

There are people who take that metaphor seriously, just as there are people who think of themselves as the children, metaphorically, of the president, and there is a political party with a lot of court intellectuals trying to sell that case.

Perhaps, though, it is the place of policy advisors, which is what the doctor is, to at least recognize that area specialists might not be in a position to weigh competing objectives, and perhaps policy advisors ought understand that as clever as they are, they're not omniscient.  And policy advisors that get a lot wrong ought be humble, or, as John Hinderaker notes, citizens ought pay them less heed.  "If there is a silver lining to the covid fiasco, it could be increased public skepticism of models and other theories that lack empirical support."

There's ample reason for the public to push back, and for the policy advisors to revise their priors.

Fauci has been everywhere on the public communications, which has served to undermine it from the start. Inconsistency will do that. As someone who has handled public communications in science, you have to be clear and you have to be consistent. When data changes the facts, you have to clearly communicate that repeatedly. I’d grade Fauci an F. He was against masks, for masks, admitted he lied about masks, and then said we should wear multiple masks. He should be telling Biden to knock it off with the masks since he’s vaccinated, and he should try to offer Americans some hope. He seems to want the notoriety that goes with the attention the virus has brought him to go on for as long as possible. And he has never truly acknowledged that lockdowns were highly destructive, piling on economic misery and mental health consequences we could have avoided. It’s likely the lockdowns played a role in fomenting the riots as well.

Maybe he just revises his priors slowly.

On NBC’s Today Show, host Savannah Guthrie asked Fauci about the absurd CDC guidance on summer camps, which says that vaccinated adults and children have to wear mask outdoors unless eating, drinking, or swimming. This even though children are at low risk for severe COVID-19, and the risk of outdoor transmission is extremely low.

“I wouldn’t call them excessive Savannah, but they certainly are conservative,” Fauci responded, having to pause so he could start chuckling. “And I think what you are going to start to see is really in real time continually reevaluating that for its practicality. Because you’re right, people look at that and they say, ‘Well, is that being a little bit too far right now?’”

When you’re losing Fauci, maybe it’s time to rethink whether you’ve gone overboard.

Citizens are not children, and Charles C. W. Cooke lets the word get out from the Free States.

In recent weeks, it has become increasingly obvious to me that the life I am living here in Florida bears no resemblance whatsoever to the lives that are being lived by my colleagues in the Northeast, in the Beltway, on the West Coast, and abroad. My kids have been in school since last August; theirs are stuck at home. We go out to eat whenever we want; they can count their excursions since last year on one hand. Their minds remain addled by the rules and customs of the Coronavirus Age; mine has been re-rewired back to normal without my ever having noticed. Here, we do our own risk assessments; there, they are micromanaged like children. And yet, among the powers-that-be, it is their model that is being praised and perpetuated — even though Florida’s approach has resulted in its sitting below the middle of the pack for deaths while maintaining a strong economy, full classrooms, and a more normal lifestyle than has existed anywhere else in the world. This is utterly ridiculous.

Enough, already.

John Hinderaker calls for Americans to begin disobeying our feckless public health czars. He says “We need people to say, I’m taking this damn mask off. And if a harpy complains, to tell her or him to get stuffed. Seriously. The time has come.” I fully concur. The time for patience and forbearance is over. Let freedom ring.

Indeed.  It's summer, and the Wuhan coronavirus doesn't take kindly to light.