Maximum Carnage Week Game Thread

“The risk when you’re outdoors – which we have been saying all along – is extremely low,” Fauci, who is notorious for flip-flopping on COVID-19 guidance, said. “And if you are vaccinated, it’s even lower. So you’re going to be hearing about those kinds of recommendations soon.”

Dr. Scott Atlas was one of the first and only voices in the COVID fight who pushed back on masking outdoors and questioned the dominant narrative that conquering the virus required a fear-filled approach.

“Why in the world would you wear a mask if you’re riding your bicycle all alone outside? Why in the world would you wear a mask if you’re in your own car driving? Why in the world would you wear a mask if you’re in the desert all alone?” Atlas told Real Clear Politics in October.

The mouthpieces at the CDC, however, were clearly opposed to Atlas’s thinking. During the 2020 lockdowns and reopening controversies, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said that “everything [Atlas] says is false.”

Fauci also hinted that while most of the COVID task force seemed to be on the same page, there was an obvious “outlier.” The people lobbing these criticisms, Atlas said, are motivated by the attention they are granted by the media and are “simply used to groupthink and not to informed people who have a critical thought process.”

“The CDC has many fine scientists, I am sure of that, but when the head of the CDC held up a mask and said a mask is better than a vaccine, that is absurd. That is not science. That is contrary to all rational thought,” Atlas noted.

The left’s corporate media mouthpieces also took cues from these critics and repeatedly hammered Atlas for recommending schools and cities reopen amid the pandemic, avoiding masking except for in certain instances, and advocating against silencing scientific dissent. A former Obama official even called for Atlas to lose his medical license.