May 11, 2021 - 10:35am

Mask wearing and reverence for Dr. Anthony Fauci have become the twin pillars of Washington DC’s civic religion.

Consider what happened in the District earlier this month. Our mayor, Muriel Bowser, and the city’s public health officials decided that the time had come to lift the mask mandate. As of last Friday the city would allow fully the vaccinated to gather inside without a mask.

The order was rescinded almost immediately. The new order then went further, allowing businesses to ask for proof of vaccination. Even more preposterously the city has also enacted a ban on dancing at weddings (nor are guests allowed to stand during cocktail hour).

What exactly is going on here? It seems the thought of returning to some semblance of normalcy is too much for city officials to even contemplate. In DC the civic religion reigns supreme — even of course if that means not, in this particular case, following the science.

It is emblematic of the hyper-cautious attitude of liberals to the pandemic. Born out of a dismay at the former president’s cavalier attitude towards the virus, liberals in blue states like mine have taken their reverence for Dr Fauci to new extremes.

Everywhere you look in the tonier precincts of our fair capital one sees the posters and placards and pictures: ‘Thank you Dr. Fauci!’ A house I passed by in Georgetown even had its front door covered in pictures of the good Doctor.

There is something peculiar about the way in which this new cult of personality has arisen. How have we gotten to the point where the media and many ordinary citizens have taken to treating Dr. Fauci as a kind of divine figure, as an object of veneration and awe? After all, this is a man who said that he wouldn’t travel or eat at restaurants even though he’s fully vaccinated (CDC guidance says that these activities are safe for vaccinated people who take precautions).

Washingtonians refuse to recognise that the time to move along from the Covid crisis is upon us. Following the science is no way to order a society, and it is an even worse way to order your priorities as a human being. Science is not, has never been and never will be infallible. The unctuous worshipping of an aged public health official and wearing a mask on an empty street in the middle of the night is not evidence of morality: it is evidence of foolishness.


James Carden is a contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation. He served as a policy adviser to the Special Representative for Intergovernmental Affairs and the Office of Russia Affairs at the US State Department.