How Fauci Fooled America

[whatbogsends]

It is a fact that people who have already had the virus and recovered, are still better off getting the vaccine than not.

Americans failed their elderly.
Too many Americans started off denying that Covid was deadly "It's just a flu"
Too many Americans fought against masks and instead caught and spread the disease
Too many Americans are currently fighting against vaccines and are instead catching and spreading the disease.
The failings of USA to combat this disease are not because of Fauci's recommendations for people to wear masks, to isolate, to get vaccinated.
Just utter nonsense.

More nonsense.
We all know that children are less likely to have adverse affects from the disease. It is not surprising, even when schools are open that kids aren't dying in massive numbers.
The real problem with opening schools during an out of control pandemic is that the kids bring the disease home and their parents and grandparents get ill and some of them die, this all contributes to more rampant spreading in the community and large amounts of death all around.

Sweden has done horribly badly, for a country with a population of just over 10 million they have had over 15,000 Covid deaths. In comparison NZ has had lockdowns, mask restrictions, border restrictions and for a population of just over 5 million we have had 28 deaths.
Sweden's approach has been nonchalant and negligent and the results are abysmal.

As we all know, Fauci is one of many advisers, he represents the scientific crowd.
Fauci has no power to close schools. Closing of schools was made by politicians and governors.
In my view school closures was the correct thing to do, in the middle of an out of control deadly pandemic. Certainly, keeping them open wouldn't in the least help fight this pandemic.

This opinion article and this thread are complete nonsense.

Good to know that i can take the opinion of a random person on the internet (you) over a Harvard epidemiologist and Stanford professor of medicine (the authors of the article).

 

[stevil]

Good to know that i can take the opinion of a random person on the internet (you) over a Harvard epidemiologist and Stanford professor of medicine (the authors of the article).

I'm just addressing the main points that you quoted.

Everyone is up for criticism, everyone.
You can choose to address my points (but you don't have to)
You can appeal to authority (which you have done)
We are entitled to criticise points that people with authority make (which I have done)

 

[timothyu]

We are entitled to criticise points that people with authority make (which I have done)

There may be a vaccine for free speech soon. For now they will have to settle for quarantine.

 

[rambot]

My hot take:
Interesting edit:

Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity. [Eds.: Long-term trends are still unclear. A recent study reached the opposite conclusion, but was criticized by an author of this op-ed.]

Protecting the elderly. While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in mortality risk between the old and the young. After more than 700,000 reported COVID deaths in America, we now know that lockdowns failed to protect high-risk older people.

That is incorrect. It is incorrect to assume lockdowns didn't limit the number of deaths. Most studies on the matter, infact DO show lockdowns and restrictions have direct relationshpis with outcomes.

In fact, in my province, we had out 4th wave OUT OF CONTROL (amongst the unvaccinated almost exclusively). It did get BACK under control until we had lockdowns in place again.

What can we do now to minimize COVID mortality? Current vaccination efforts should focus on reaching people over 60 who are neither COVID-recovered nor vaccinated, including hard-to-reach, less-affluent people in rural areas and inner cities.

Why are these doctors pushing vaccines? Isn't tha tthe point of this thread?

Throughout the 2020 spring wave, Sweden kept daycare and schools open for all its 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, with no masks, testing or social distancing. The result? Zero COVID deaths among children and a COVID risk to teachers lower than the average of other professions.

There is a reason that they, with surgical precision restricted this comment to "the 2020 spring wave" and it is because Sweden's hospitalization rates and their handling of COVID went to pooptown.

That said, a lot of europe did follow suit with schools and as I understand, it was generally under control. As a teacher, it was really worrisome because I am in a high risk group, but ultimately, we managed okay too.

Masks. The gold standard of medical research is randomized trials, and there have now been two on COVID masks for adults. For children, there is no solid scientific evidence that masks work. A Danish study found no statistically significant difference between masking and not masking when it came to coronavirus infection. [Eds. A recent study showed that masks do reduce infections.] In a study in Bangladesh, the 95 percent confidence interval showed that masks reduced transmission between 0 percent and 18 percent.

I'm sorry but quoting 2 studies is UTTERLY laughable when I can come up with a list of I think it's 50.

Contact tracing. For some infectious diseases, such as Ebola and syphilis, contact tracing is critically important. For a commonly circulating viral infection such as COVID, it was a hopeless waste of valuable public health resources that did not stop the disease.

Poor execution from an inept government that did a terrible job does NOT mean that contact tracing was useless.
These Elite Contact Tracers Show the World How to Beat Covid-19
Poor execution does NOT mean the strategy was bad.

Collateral public health damage. A fundamental public health principle is that health is multidimensional; the control of a single infectious disease is not synonymous with health. As an immunologist, Dr. Fauci failed to properly consider and weigh the disastrous effects lockdowns would have on cancer detection and treatment, cardiovascular disease outcomes, diabetes care, childhood vaccination rates, mental health and opioid overdoses, to name a few. Americans will live with—and die from—this collateral damage for many years to come.

To an extent, I agree with this point. HOWEVER, it should be noted that the impact of COVID on the health care system provided it's own challenges to those SAME effects. And if the response had been lesser, likely the healthcare system would have been impacted for long stretches from COVID instead of lockdown measures.

To be fair also, opiod overdoses (at least in my province) has been due to a disruption in the supply chain and dealers making poisonous drugs....well, AND the closing of local safe injection sites so people would be overdosing at home alone instead of a safer place.


FYI, Newsweek has new ownership and their bias is become clear.

 

[rambot]

There may be a vaccine for free speech soon. For now they will have to settle for quarantine.

whoa! Looks like you're thinking there!

There's gonna be a vaccine for thinking too.

I also heard there's going to be a vaccine for eating Italian food.

 

[timothyu]

I also heard there's going to be a vaccine for eating Italian food.

I'm safe. I'll stick to Greek burgers and P*psi.

 

[rambot]

I'm safe. I'll stick to Greek burgers and P*psi.

They're coming for your Pepsi next!

 

[timothyu]

They're coming for your Pepsi next!

It comes as a concentrate now. Easier to stash. Made to add to bubbly water for now, but soon may be injectable.

 

[stevil]

Various media people and politicians have spoken about him lying or telling "noble lies", and how he could have actually been more honest going back to what he said about regular people shouldn't buy masks in early 2020.

It was a point in time comment that he made. At that time USA had 15 cases. Fauci said that all of USA don't need to wear masks right now, but that the situation could change. Fauci was obviously considering that there weren't enough masks for everyone and that it was much more important for medical professionals to get the needed masks.

And before that there were stories that he lied to Congress as far as studies on gain of Function research where he was trying to play some kind of word parsing game.

Fauci wasn't lying, there was no gain of function research.

 

[loveofourlord]

Again, you've been corrected on the nonsense about, "Natural immunity many times." natural immunity won't save you from dying the first time. You still have to survive, vaccines protect you to give you a chance to get natural immunity. stop spreading lies about immunity and vaccines.

 

[whatbogsends]

I'm just addressing the main points that you quoted.

Everyone is up for criticism, everyone.
You can choose to address my points (but you don't have to)
You can appeal to authority (which you have done)
We are entitled to criticise points that people with authority make (which I have done)

What i hear time and again from the ultra-pro-vaccine crowd is that laypeople shouldn't be questioning professionals/experts. I agree that arguments should be about their merits, and not solely based on credentials.

If you want a point by point rebuttal, here you go:

It is a fact that people who have already had the virus and recovered, are still better off getting the vaccine than not.

Not a fact. A claim made and repeated with little data to support or contradict.

From another article by one of the two authors (the epidemiologist):

Concerning the Covid recovered, there are two key public health issues. 1. Would the Covid recovered benefit from also being vaccinated? 2. Should there be vaccine passports and mandates that require them to be vaccinated in order to work and participate in society?

The CDC study did not address the first question, while the Israeli study showed a small but not statistically significant benefit in reducing symptomatic Covid disease. Future studies will hopefully shed more light on this issue.

A Review and Autopsy of Two COVID Immunity Studies ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Americans failed their elderly.

Sending the infected back into care facilities was absolutely horrific.

Too many Americans started off denying that Covid was deadly "It's just a flu"
Too many Americans fought against masks and instead caught and spread the disease

You do recall Fauci saying masks are worthless near the onset of the pandemic, don't you? I mean, he had noble intentions, but it certainly didn't send a consistent message. That being said, i've been wearing mine, although i question the efficacy in any prolonged exposure situation (which is why i don't engage in prolonged exposure situations).

Too many Americans are currently fighting against vaccines and are instead catching and spreading the disease.

The vaccinated are also catching and spreading the disease.

The failings of USA to combat this disease are not because of Fauci's recommendations for people to wear masks, to isolate, to get vaccinated.
Just utter nonsense.

Why attribute the failure of the USAs response to Covid on the person leading the response to Covid? What nonsense!

More nonsense.
We all know that children are less likely to have adverse affects from the disease. It is not surprising, even when schools are open that kids aren't dying in massive numbers.
The real problem with opening schools during an out of control pandemic is that the kids bring the disease home and their parents and grandparents get ill and some of them die, this all contributes to more rampant spreading in the community and large amounts of death all around.

The children are not only less effected, they spread it less.

Study Finds Kids Under 10 Unlikely to Spread COVID-19 at School

Why you're more likely to catch a cold than COVID from your kids

Coronavirus: Children half as likely to catch it, review finds

Sweden has done horribly badly, for a country with a population of just over 10 million they have had over 15,000 Covid deaths. In comparison NZ has had lockdowns, mask restrictions, border restrictions and for a population of just over 5 million we have had 28 deaths.
Sweden's approach has been nonchalant and negligent and the results are abysmal.

There are a number of Scandinavian countries, and they all did significantly worse in terms of Covid deaths than New Zealand.

In terms of "Covid deaths", Sweden was worse than it's neighbors, although not by as significant margin as comparisons with New Zealand.

Sweden is currently in a 6 month period of low Covid.

Sweden COVID: 1,174,273 Cases and 15,006 Deaths - Worldometer

Finland: Population of 5 million, 1100 deaths, and now in their highest rate of infection of the pandemic.

Finland COVID: 159,798 Cases and 1,170 Deaths - Worldometer

Denmark:

5.8 million people, 2700 deaths. Higher rates of transmission now than Sweden.

Denmark COVID: 391,221 Cases and 2,716 Deaths - Worldometer

It would seem that New Zealand is an outlier of all the Scandinavian countries.


Scott Alexander has a very long and thoughtful article on the effectiveness of lockdowns, and does a good job of presenting both points of view. Here’s what he says about Sweden:

Anyway, a reasonable conclusion might be that Sweden had between 2x (if we compare it to an average European country) and 6x (if we compare it to an average Scandinavian country) the expected death rate in the first phase of the pandemic.

Philippe Lemoine is extremely against this conclusion. He first argues that since we don’t know why Finland+Iceland+Norway+Denmark did so well, we can’t assume it’s a “Scandinavia effect” and so we can’t assume Sweden would share it. Therefore, we should be judging it against the European average rather than the (better) Scandinavian average. I would counter that, although we can’t prove that just because X is true of Finland+Iceland+Norway+Denmark and not other European countries, that it should also be true of Sweden, but we should have a pretty high prior on it . . .

That’s exactly my view. In the past, I did a cross-sectional study of developed countries, and while doing so I found that the Nordic countries are actually quite distinctive. According to a wide range of measures they are quite similar to each other and quite different from other countries. So I have the same prior as Alexander, and thus lean toward the view that Sweden really did do much worse. But . . . I don’t believe this was primarily due to Sweden’s lockdown policies.
...
So what are we left with? Lockdowns are overrated in importance in two different ways. First, they didn’t save nearly as many lives as their proponents assumed. Second, their economic cost was lower than their opponents assumed. Most of the economic damage was due to voluntary behavioral changes. But lockdowns also restricted human freedom.

What can we infer from the Swedish Covid policy? - Econlib

Sweden has been a lightning rod since early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Opponents of lockdowns and mask mandates in the U.S. and U.K. pointed to its more-relaxed approach and relatively modest death toll as evidence that drastic measures were not only overkill, but counterproductive.
...
Sweden’s relative performance is actually better than the chart indicates, given that it has been more aggressive than most countries in attributing deaths to Covid-19. By the estimates of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Sweden’s reported Covid deaths account for about 90% of excess deaths (that is, deaths above normal levels) during the pandemic. For France that’s 78%, for Germany 68% and for the Netherlands only 58%. (Denmark, Finland and Norway all have lower reported-to-excess-deaths percentages than Sweden too, but not nearly enough lower to come close to bridging the mortality-rate gap.)

So Sweden has had middling success in battling Covid-19. Given how much more successful its Nordic neighbors have been, and the fact that it entered 2020 with such built-in advantages as a very healthy populace and among the world’s highest percentages of people who (1) live by themselves and (2) can work from home, that has to be seen as something of a disappointment. But Sweden’s approach of few forced shutdowns of schools and businesses and lots of reliance on personal responsibility does seem to have worked better than the U.K.’s careening back and forth between strict lockdowns and paying people to eat in restaurants, or the cacophony of different policies followed by state and local governments in the U.S.


So Was Sweden a Covid Success or Failure?

As we all know, Fauci is one of many advisers, he represents the scientific crowd.
Fauci has no power to close schools. Closing of schools was made by politicians and governors.
In my view school closures was the correct thing to do, in the middle of an out of control deadly pandemic. Certainly, keeping them open wouldn't in the least help fight this pandemic.

While it was politicians who made the decisions, many US politicians certainly did so using Fauci's statements as their guidance.

How something impacts the pandemic shouldn't be the only criteria to assess something on. Locking everyone up in solitary confinement for a month would end the pandemic, but it isn't the right thing to do.

This opinion article and this thread are complete nonsense.

Thanks for your opinion.

 

[stevil]

1. Would the Covid recovered benefit from also being vaccinated?

The CDC study did not address the first question, while the Israeli study showed a small but not statistically significant benefit in reducing symptomatic Covid disease. Future studies will hopefully shed more light on this issue.

If you had COVID-19 and recovered, will you still be able to or need to get the vaccine? | The Immunisation Advisory Centre
Data from clinical trials and from countries with a lot of COVID-19 cases have shown the vaccines to be safe and effective in this group of people. It is expected that the vaccine will boost the immune response and provide good protection for those who have previously had SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Frequently Asked Questions about COVID-19 Vaccination
Evidence is emerging that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19. One study showed that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19 again.

If You’ve Had Covid, Do You Need the Vaccine?
Those with powerful natural immunity may be protected from reinfection for up to a year. But even they should not skip the vaccine, experts said. For starters, boosting their immunity with a vaccine is likely to give them long-lasting protection against all the variants.

Only 85 percent to 90 percent of people who test positive for the virus and recover have detectable antibodies to begin with. The strength and durability of the response is variable.
For example, while the immunity gained from vaccines and infection is comparable among younger people, two doses of the mRNA vaccines protected adults older than 65 better than a prior infection did.

About 43 percent of recovered people had no detectable neutralizing antibodies — the kind needed to prevent reinfection — according to one study. The antibodies drop to undetectable levels after about two months in about 30 percent of people who recover.

Sending the infected back into care facilities was absolutely horrific.

I agree

You do recall Fauci saying masks are worthless near the onset of the pandemic, don't you? I mean, he had noble intentions, but it certainly didn't send a consistent message.

That was in the beginning in USA when around 15 people only were infected. Didn't need 330 million USA folk rushing in a panic to buy masks.
Masks are more useful when a person is infected as it prevents much of the virus being expelled into the environment, not so useful in protecting people from catching it.
So those 15 people could have benefited society by wearing the masks, the other 330 million wouldn't have benefited from it.

That being said, i've been wearing mine, although i question the efficacy in any prolonged exposure situation (which is why i don't engage in prolonged exposure situations).

The mask protects others from you, not you from others.
If virus is in droplets in the air, it can get in your eyes.

The vaccinated are also catching and spreading the disease.

At a much lower rate than people with no immunity.

Why attribute the failure of the USAs response to Covid on the person leading the response to Covid? What nonsense!

Fauci doesn't make laws, he doesn't make mandates, he doesn't close schools, he doesn't procure ventilators or vaccines. He analysis data and offers advice.

Where Fauci got on stage at the Task force briefings and promoted social distancing and masks, you then had Trump get on stage and tell people he wouldn't be wearing a mask and that they should try unproven treatments...
Fauci didn't have the power to stop Trump getting in front of the cameras.

 

[muichimotsu]

Various media people and politicians have said all kinds of things about all kinds of people. Some of them were true, some weren't. But the truth of the accusations isn't really the point, is it?

The evidence was indeed thin on the subject at the time, but he should have been more transparent.

That would be one of those things somebody dredged up to make Fauci look bad, no matter how extremely tenuous the connection was with him. What did Fauci have to do with approving that study (assuming it was accurately described, which remains to be seen)? He's not involved in approving funding for individual studies.

Put another way, there were politically motivated stories playing some kind of word parsing game to make it look like he'd lied. Why conservatives have decided to use Fauci as their punching bag is unclear to me. Perhaps it's because he's a genuine, respected expert in infectious disease -- demonization and hatred of expertise in general and a rejection of anything resembling competence when in comes to infectious disease in particular, seem to be the norm for the American right at the moment.

Well, yes, maybe he can go on doing his job, serving the public and trying to improve human health, without being taken down by all the vicious stuff being thrown at him or being put off by the death threats. I don't see why that would be a bad outcome.

I mean, sometimes the best way to address those that treat you like garbage is to not really give them any satisfaction, but there's no easy one-size-fits-all solution to delusional paranoid schizophrenics who'll find any excuse to treat others like monsters as a defense mechanism for their own insecurities.

You might deal with some by ignoring them, taking the wind out of their sails, but others will just be encouraged by it through delusions of grandeur or persecution that treat anything as a win

 

[muichimotsu]

Except several orders of magnitude more deadly.
But at least you don't have the inconvenience of wearing a mask when in public. I really empathise for you on such hardship.

Pst, you forgot the quote marks around "hardship", otherwise they might take you seriously

 

[muichimotsu]

One other thing. If he was lying about masks then, that implies that the truth is that we should all be wearing masks. Somehow I doubt that most of those accusing Fauci of lying believe that to be true.

Or they don't understand that lying and being wrong about something based on initial assessments aren't the same thing. He was going based on limited info and had he known what we know now, he most definitely would've requested universal masking in major traffic areas.

 

[muichimotsu]

800,000 dead and you guys want to talk about beagles?

The world is crazier than I would have ever imagined.

You expect people to actually confront the moral failures of treating this disease like it's nothing when the evidence contradicts that thoroughly both in the short AND long term instead of deflecting and trying to make some new scapegoat on top of those they already use? This is America, the land where mental healthcare is a freaking luxury or so commoditized that it is barely better than glorified talk therapy (like I was told after the fact with Cerebral and basically wasted $90+ on).

 

[muichimotsu]

When the OP has to characterize everyone that supports getting vaccinated (and brings up how not getting vaccinated when you have no legitimate medical exemption or even religious ones founded in your scriptures) as "ultra pro vaccine", not sure I can take the arguments seriously, given how much of a caricature and hyperbole you have to do in order to demonize your opposition; as if a pro choice angle for this somehow doesn't make you a hypocrite when you'd very likely (not 100%) also consider yourself pro life in regards to abortion rights and say pro choice should call themselves pro abortion (when that's dishonest characterization).

Not everything works on a personal choice and has no consequences to others: vaccination in particular is NOT and has NEVER been some personal choice in a vacuum, it is for PUBLIC HEALTH, pure and simple, a community based decision rooted in simple human empathy towards others.

 

[sfs]

That is his wife's job

No, that's false. When did spreading false rumors become such a widespread practice among Christians?

 

[whatbogsends]

When the OP has to characterize everyone that supports getting vaccinated (and brings up how not getting vaccinated when you have no legitimate medical exemption or even religious ones founded in your scriptures) as "ultra pro vaccine", not sure I can take the arguments seriously, given how much of a caricature and hyperbole you have to do in order to demonize your opposition; as if a pro choice angle for this somehow doesn't make you a hypocrite when you'd very likely (not 100%) also consider yourself pro life in regards to abortion rights and say pro choice should call themselves pro abortion (when that's dishonest characterization).

Not everything works on a personal choice and has no consequences to others: vaccination in particular is NOT and has NEVER been some personal choice in a vacuum, it is for PUBLIC HEALTH, pure and simple, a community based decision rooted in simple human empathy towards others.

I don't call anyone that supports getting vaccinated "ultra pro vaccine".

There are plenty of people who support getting vaccinated that:

a) don't believe mandates are appropriate
b) believe that those who have previous infection and detectable antibodies don't need the vaccine
c) believe that there is not yet enough data to indicate all children should be vaccinated
d) understand that not all vaccines are equally effective and safe

When i say "ultra pro vaccine", i'm referring to people who:

a) believe that the mandates should be unquestioned
b) jeer those who chose not to get vaccinated when coerced for employment, including health care workers, who were on the front lines in this pandemic and have equal or better protection that the vaccinated as they have naturally acquired immunity.
c) deride any negative information about the vaccine as "anti-vaxx" regardless of the source of the information

Personally, i believe in vaccination as a scientific fact, but note that there are several things about the Covid vaccines that are substantially different than other vaccines that are being used. I'm up to date with other required vaccinations, and did so without hesitation.

If the Covid vaccines actually stopped the spread of Covid in a meaningful way, i would have gotten vaccinated for that as well.

 

[ozso]

I think it would have helped a lot if our President at the time this thing started had united the country instead of trying to shirk his responsibility. Fauci became a focal point because we had no leadership. Our President wanted to play it down instead of getting in front of it. Pitiful. Masks, from the beginning, were played down, which was a lie. They said there were studies that said we didn't need them. In a couple weeks, we already had studies. Come on. If they had been honest from the get go, things would have been different, I think.

In the beginning Fauci said masks weren't needed. Mask wearing was played down because he wanted masks to go to front line medical workers.