From Jeff Childers ( and George Orwell )

Welp, it’s official now, I guess. Or maybe not. According to NPR, yesterday the public health team’s top insect Anthony Fauci spoke from one bodily orifice saying the country is now OUT of the pandemic phase, but on the SAME DAY he also emitted the exact opposite opinion. I know you can’t believe it, since Fauci’s been an icon of consistency so far. Anyway, the little weasel said it’s OVER on PBS NewsHour yesterday:

“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci said in an interview with PBS NewsHour. “Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So if you’re saying, ‘Are we out of the pandemic phase in this country?’ — we are,” he said.

Fauci actually gassed on about how over the pandemic is for almost a full minute, in fact.

JUST IN: Dr. Anthony Fauci tells our @JudyWoodruff the U.S. is “out of the pandemic phase.”

But then — on the SAME DAY — Fauci told an Associated Press reporter the EXACT OPPOSITE:

“We are in a different moment of the pandemic,” he said. After a brutal winter surge, Fauci added, “we’ve now decelerated and transitioned into more of a controlled phase. By no means does that mean the pandemic is over.”

So which is it? That right there is a mighty fine example of same-day narrative shifting. But what most amazes me is that a lot of people in this country will accept both Fauci’s statements, that “we are … out of the pandemic phase in this country” and also that “by no means does this mean the pandemic is over.” Somehow, some people can hold both thoughts in their minds simultaneously and be perfectly satisfied with that.

It seems like George Orwell had some ideas about this mystical double-brain power, but I can’t remember it right now.