Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday defended deliberately moving the goalposts and lying about Covid-19 herd immunity during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
In an interview with the New York Times last week, Dr. Fauci admitted to moving the goalposts on his Covid-19 herd immunity projections based on polling.
Fauci previously stated that it would take 60% to 70% herd immunity to halt the China Coronavirus.
Fauci moved the goalposts and is now claiming it will take closer to 90% immunity to halt the virus.
Dr Fauci’s estimate for reaching herd immunity has been steadily inching up, @nytimes’ Donald McNeil Jr reports. Fauci told us at last week’s @CNBC #HealthyReturns that it may be 75-85%. https://t.co/j18nUYZ3cV pic.twitter.com/hIKewMAFim
— Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) December 24, 2020
On Sunday, Fauci defended lying when CNN’s Dana Bash asked him about raising the bar on his projections about herd immunity based not on science, but because the country was ‘ready to hear it.’
Dana Bash asked Fauci why he “wasn’t straight with the American public to begin with.”
“No actually, Dana, I don’t think it can be interpreted as being straight or not,” Fauci said.
“The calculations that I made 70, 75 percent, it’s a range. The range is going to be somewhere between 70 and 85 percent,” he said. “The reason I started saying 70, 75 percent, I brought it up to 85. That’s not a big leap.”
“When you get below 90 percent of the population vaccinated threshold with measles, you start seeing a breakthrough against the herd immunity,” he said.
“So I made a calculation that COVID-19 is not nearly as transmissible as measles… I would imagine that you would need something that you need something less than the 90 percent — that’s where I got to the 85,” he continued.
WATCH:
.@DanaBashCNN presses Dr. Fauci on his comments about “moving the goal posts” on herd immunity based on polling. “Why weren’t you straight with the American people about this to begin with?” she asks.
He deflects multiple times. She presses and he says it’s just a “guesstimate.” pic.twitter.com/kquQvlwZ8j
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) December 27, 2020