His Holiness, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was the infallible source of science back in 2020. That was the insufferable year when, in league with Fauci, Philadelphia essentially cancelled Easter. Philadelphians were prohibited from hosting gatherings in their homes of more than five or six people. To make sure these guidelines were adhered to, a snitch-on-your-neighbor system was put into place. Neighbors could call a special number and report lawbreakers, whereupon police would be sent out to shut down the private home event.
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Liberals and leftists who claim to love democracy and freedom were all for the crackdown. They went overboard when it came to wearing face masks; they were the first ones to sternly correct anyone in CVS or Rite AID for not keeping fake social-distancing rules.
On that first 2020 “COVID” Easter, I attended a dinner party at the home of a friend with 15 non-mask wearing guests who toasted the holiday as passersby on the sidewalk peered into the windows at us, some looking as if contemplating filing a report. Although we were not reported, it was astonishing to see Orwellian activity like this taking place in a city that always prided itself on its rustic individualism.
On the street, one strident female mask warrior scolded me publicly for walking outdoors without a mask. The city had become a virtual dead zone when it came to restaurants, events, theater, and gallery openings. Cultural life was at a standstill. “Staying home saves lives,” was Dr. Fauci’s most famous piece of advice. And people listened like little children. A family member would die and relatives put off having a funeral or a memorial. People died in hospitals alone because family and friends were afraid to disobey Fauci, or because the hospital itself implemented visitation rules direct from the Fauci hotline.
When the Fauci philosophy influenced the management of luxury apartment houses and condos — essentially forbidding their high-paying tenants from having visitors during the lockdown — these dwellings became like high-rise prisons.
Imagine paying exorbitant fees for a high-rise condo in Center City, then being told by condo management you weren’t allowed to have visitors. What’s even more astonishing is the complacency with which these rules were accepted and obeyed. The condo associations in Philadelphia went along with the restrictions, because you were not allowed to question the science, or Fauci.
Questioning the science made people angry, and it still makes people angry.
At a small dinner party recently, some casual friends of mine wound up discussing the effects the 2020 lockdown had on the city, when I brought up Fauci’s philosophy about staying home and how that rule ruined families, friendships, careers, and especially the education of children. I talked about that Easter 2020 Easter dinner; I mentioned how, when people were getting vaccinated, I tried to get into the Pen and Pencil Club with friends in Center City when we were met at the door by someone who demanded to see our vaccination “report card.” The level of questioning and seriousness was like crossing the border from East to West Germany before the fall of the Wall.
It was like that everywhere, of course. At theaters, art galleries, you had to produce your vaccination report card. I talked about the absence of parishioners at the Orthodox church where I served as a tonsured Reader. The overwhelming majority of parishioners stayed away — “Staying home saves lives” — while a very small minority, mostly newly arrived immigrants, attended regularly. The American parishioners believed the “science” and avoided the Eucharist as if IT carried remnants of the plague. The experience taught me that when it comes to faith versus so-called science, the latter tends to win hands down. (I thought it ironic at the time that parishioners who identified as Democrat comprised most of the Sunday absentees.)
At the dinner party, my narrative on the lockdown didn’t go over well, especially when I said I didn’t like Fauci. One man told me not to “go there.” When I questioned him, he announced, in a huff, that he was going home.
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Dr. Fauci was his hero.
The lockdown also ushered in the work-at-home phenomenon. While that option was a growing trend before the pandemic, it was awarded primarily to worthy employees who had been with a company for some time, not new hires, and certainly not everybody.
Yet suddenly everybody was working at home. This caused a ripple effect throughout the city: empty streets and empty subway and regional rail trains, which in turn led to cutbacks and reduced scheduling.
The effects of the lockdown changed my view of people I’d formerly thought of as being “full of life and vigor” because they were now hiding at home in their basement (like Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign), turning down offers of Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner with their families and refusing to attend weddings and funerals.
Ironically, it seemed to me that the double- and triple-vaccinated people were the only ones getting sick or getting COVID for the fourth or fifth time, while the rugged and dirty homeless who panhandled the streets day in and day out never seemed to get sick, their immune systems bolstered by their interaction with life and other people.
Long after the pandemic, there were fanatics who said that COVID was still a threat. Indeed, these were the same people The UK Telegraph had in mind when it reminded readers, “We must resist the siren calls of the mask fanatics.”
These are the same people The Federalist referred to in its 2020 article “Mask Fanatics Have Officially Abandoned Science to Control Your Life.” They are the same people that Vox surveyed in its 2021 piece, declaring: “Most Americans like remote work—but Democrats like it more.”
Lockdowns, as The Federalist noted, were dubbed an “unproven” hypothesis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And even the World Health Organization called forced isolation and quarantine “ineffective and impractical.”
So much for Dr. Fauci.
Image generated by ChatGPT.