Dr. Flip Flop: A Timeline of Fauci’s School Reopening Positions

Dr. Anthony Fauci has held many positions when it comes to whether to keep schools open in America. Over the past several months, he has made an incredible transformation from a man who viciously attacked school reopening proponents, to quietly now siding with them. Schools have been open throughout most of the world during the entirety of the pandemic, but thanks to U.S. “experts” like Dr. Fauci, millions of schoolchildren in America have not been able to access in-person education for many months. Today, Fauci falsely claims that he was for keeping schools open all along. The data has always been very clear during the pandemic that keeping schools open is both incredibly safe and prudent, and finally, the esteemed Dr. Fauci has caught up with the overwhelming data supporting open schools.

Didn't @RandPaul point this out to Fauci like 4 months ago and media got all hysterical?

Fauci: “Look at the data, the spread from children and among children is not very big at all, not like one would have suspected” pic.twitter.com/TDvz3bzqzN

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) November 29, 2020

Here’s a timeline on all of the positions Fauci has taken on schools:

3/12/20: Dr. Fauci calls for nationwide school closures and says he supports states that decide to follow his advice.

“The one thing I do advise and I said this in multiple hearings and multiple briefings, that right now we have to start implementing both containment and mitigation. And what was done when you close the schools is mitigation,” Fauci told reporters in the White House driveway. “We have to try as best as we can to distance ourselves from each other.”

NIH's Dr Anthony Fauci supports school closings. Says steps need to be taken for containment and mitigation of Coronavirus. Says we need to distance ourselves from each other. Denies it's overreacting. And says restricting travel from Europe is "the right public health call." pic.twitter.com/iZJi4zlabA

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 12, 2020

4/12/20: The New York Times reported that Fauci “gave his blessing” to Mayor Bill DeBlasio to shut down the entirety of the New York City public school system for the rest of the school year.

Striking that Cuomo is undercutting de Blasio's decision *after* the mayor spoke to Fauci — who agreed that city schools should be closed through June.
Source close to City Hall says gov's office was informed of city's decision to close *before* today's press conference.

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) April 11, 2020

4/13/20: Fauci slams Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who announced at the time that he wanted to get schools open as soon as possible. Fauci claimed that opening the schools will get children infected with the coronavirus.

“If you have a situation where you don’t have a real good control over an outbreak and you allow children together, they will likely get infected,” Fauci proclaimed.

5/12/20: Without evidence, Fauci claims COVID-19 is dangerous to children, citing “Kawasaki syndrome” as a potential outcome in schoolchildren.

In a tense and memorable back and forth with Sen. Rand Paul (who argued that schools must remain open), Fauci dismissed the idea that schools should be opened back up fully because “we don’t know everything about the virus.”

CNBC reports:

Fauci then turned Paul’s own phrasing on him. “You used the word we should be ‘humble’ about what we don’t know. I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus, and we really had better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children,” Fauci said.

“Because the more and more we learn, we’re seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China or in Europe. For example, right now children presenting with Covid-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome,” Fauci said.

Fauci urged Americans to "better be very careful particularly when it comes to children" because this cohort is now presenting with inflammatory symptoms very similar to Kawasaki Syndrome. https://t.co/phTFIb9YkZ

— National Herald (@NH_India) May 13, 2020

5/14/20: President Trump openly expresses his disagreement with Fauci on school reopening policies:

"You're going to have — you’re having bedlam already in the streets, you can't do this. We have to get it open. I totally disagree with him on schools."@realDonaldTrump "totally" disagrees with Dr. Fauci on keeping schools closed next fall.https://t.co/dmzkBjgW3c

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 14, 2020

6/30/20: Testifying on Capitol Hill, Fauci says school reopenings depend on the “dynamics of the outbreak.”

He explains:

“One of the things we want to emphasize and have been emphasizing is to take a look at where you are in the area of the so-called opening America again. Are you at the gateway phase one, phase two, phase three?” Fauci asked. “The CDC has guidelines about the opening of schools at various stages of those checkpoints. The basic fundamental goal would be as soon as you possibly can to get the children back to school and to use the public health as a tool to help get children back to school.”

7/15/20: The NIAID chief supports looking at schools on a case-by-case basis.

"You can't treat all schools the same because they're in different phases of the outbreak," Dr. Fauci on a @TheAtlantic Summit on Health Care interview, saying that if the priority is to open schools (which he agrees it is), all the other work must be done to ensure safety

— Sandi Villarreal (@Sandi) July 15, 2020

7/24/20: Fauci continues to advance his vague ideas about school reopenings, but again makes clear that he opposes having schools open in areas where the coronavirus is spreading.

He tells The Washington Post:

“It depends on where you are. We live in a very large country that is geographically and demographically diverse and certainly different in the extent to which there is different COVID activity. So, If you live in a county or a place where there is very little activity, then there might be very little you have to do [to] send the children back to school. If you are in an area where there is viral activity, you want to look at what the schools can do and their planning.”

8/4/20: Dr. Fauci calls for the continuing closure of schools in areas with high transmission, and a hybrid learning system in areas with moderate transmission, in elaborating on a scaled approach that allows for schools to remain open based on unspecified area transmission numbers.

8/4/20 Fauci on schools:

"There may be some areas where the level of virus is so high that it would not be prudent to bring children back to school."

In clip, he endorses Zoom education & school closures in areas w/ COVID transmission. Fauci has never been for full reopening. pic.twitter.com/eORstr2Lf8

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) November 30, 2020

8/4/20: ABC reports that Fauci is still concerned that schools could be vectors for transmission of COVID-19.

Some schools close after reopening as the COVID-19 crisis escalates. @SteveOsunsami reports on the latest warnings by Dr. Fauci and officials. https://t.co/Jfz3olAkGO pic.twitter.com/06l1StNlGW

— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 4, 2020

8/4/20: Open up the schools if transmission is low, Fauci advises.

"The default position should be to try as best as you possibly can to open up the schools for in-person learning."#Covid19USA: Dr. Fauci @NIAIDNews tells why schools should reopen if #coronavirus infection rates in the region are low pic.twitter.com/kbLytjQCbI

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) August 4, 2020

8/13/20: Fauci falsely states that bars are vectors for transmission, argues for a trade off that involves shutting down some industries while keeping schools open.

In an online forum, Dr. Anthony Fauci calls #RI a "green" state re: #coronavirus infections; he tells communities, "You have a choice. Either close the bars or close the schools. Because, if you have people congregating in bars, it's likely you're going to stay red." #WPRO pic.twitter.com/CVkeq3V3Nd

— Steve Klamkin (@NewsProvidence) August 13, 2020

8/13/20: Fauci agrees that the future entails “many months” of virtual learning, in supporting keeping schools physically closed.

.@JudyWoodruff: Are we looking at many months of virtual learning before schools can safely open nationwide?

Dr. Anthony Fauci: "In some places, Judy, that may be the case." pic.twitter.com/fVgss0y4ol

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) August 13, 2020

9/3/20: Schools can only open back up once the virus is “under control,” Fauci tells CNN.

You can open schools for instruction, Fauci says—once you’ve gotten the virus under control. pic.twitter.com/Y21v3u4MMu

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) September 3, 2020

9/20/20: Fauci declares that “some” schools may be able to open safely, but that places with high COVID-19 transmission levels “may want to pause before they start sending the kids back to school for a variety of reasons.”

Worth noting that Fauci does think places like D.C. can open schools in some capacity. And CDC says DC can open with a "lower risk" of infection. (Mayor and others have noted these metrics not the only factors.) https://t.co/JNZh3G2CFb

— Perry Stein (@PerryStein) September 21, 2020

11/29/20: Fauci discovers the almost year-old data showing that schools are not vectors for COVID-19 transmission. He continues to call for bars being shut down as a trade off, although bars are not vectors of transmission. He says in an ABC interview:

“We get asked it all the time. You know, we say it — not being facetiously, as a sound bite or anything — but, you know, close the bars and keep the schools open is what we really say … Obviously, you don’t have one size fits all. But as I said in the past … the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school.”

“Close the bars and keep the schools open,” Dr. Anthony Fauci says, adding that while there is no solution that is “one size fits all,” the “best way to ensure the safety of the children in school is to get the community level of the spread low.” https://t.co/kUSbAXCqpE pic.twitter.com/47TC3QuLp5

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) November 29, 2020

Source: The Dossier