Last week, Republican Congressman Jim ‘Gym‘ Jordan pressed NIAID Director Anthony Fauci on when the horrible infringements on our liberties modest public health measures because it’s just a cloth mask, not a fucking testicle clamp would end. While it’s kinda enjoyable to watch both Fauci and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters smack Gym Jordan around, the reality is Fauci missed an opportunity to provide some guidance.

Rep. Jordan wanted specific guidelines, and it shouldn’t have been hard for Fauci to answer along the lines of something like this:

Before we consider loosening restrictions, the first and critical benchmark should be: can we open our children’s schools safely according to the CDC benchmarks. That is, at the state and county levels, is the number of new cases per week less than fifty per 100,000 and the percent positive rate less than eight percent*. While we have to use common sense–one very small county perhaps shouldn’t hold back a state, and claiming that most counties are good, even as the two counties which have fifty percent of the population are above the thresholds should hold back a state, that should be the first set of criteria for returning to normal. As I’ve said before: the virus makes the timeline.

Currently, only 206 counties in the U.S. and only three states meet these guidelines.

But that would have shut Gym up for a while, and provided some actual metrics to guide policy.

*As we’ve discussed before, that’s too high, but that’s what the CDC endorsed.