By Kevin Roche
A friend asked me if it was okay to have a little smiley burst of happiness when reading that the over-promoted and under-performing Dr. Fauci had contracted CV-19. Let us not wish ill on anyone. Okay, almost not anyone. Fauci draws more than his share of ire because he has been the most visible face of the “official” response to the epidemic. He stands or sits there with a sanctimonious expression on his face and this mild, reasonable tone of voice, and out spews an endless stew of mis-statements and lies. The life-long bureaucrat in action–never really accomplished anything; survives by being politically adept; and if they didn’t start as incompetents in their fields, they quickly get the knack of it. In government it isn’t what you know, it is who you know and how much cow manure you can spread while blaming everyone else for the odor.
Fauci’s major sin was being a willing participant in the terror campaign to have Americans believe that CV-19 was the end of the world unless we ceased all social and economic interaction, locked ourselves and our children in the basement indefinitely and wore six masks, preferably N95s or maybe even N96s; although like all elitists, he thought it was okay for the underclass to take all the risks and keep working so they could produce and deliver food and other necessities to his home. This gentleman is the head of the infectious disease division of the National Institutes of Health, but the adequacy and accuracy of his information about the epidemiology of respiratory viruses wouldn’t fill a thimble. And he certainly didn’t know anything about those grants he was giving to labs in China to study making coronavirus more dangerous.
Dr. Fauci has been particularly fond of spreading mis-information about vaccines, including regarding the recent approval to innoculate children aged 5 and under. There is no evidence of any real risk to these children from CV-19, almost all of them have already been infected and thus have adaptive immunity and the vaccines carry some risks, particularly for young male children. In a rational world the FDA would never have approved use for this age group and no other Western nation has, but this week our politically captive guardian of the public safety went ahead and gave its blessing to the practice. The Pfizer and Moderna trials showed no meaningful benefit. Our own analysis of the Minnesota data shows that children who have been vaccinated are actually at greater risk of infection and hospitalization than those unvaccinated. If you want an outstanding analysis of the weakness of the case for vaccination in this age group, read Dr. Vinay Prasad’s Twitter thread, found here. (Prasad Thread)
Notwithstanding his constant assurance that vaccinations would end the epidemic, apparently being vaccinated and boosted, probably at least twice, also did not protect Dr. Fauci, who is at the other end of the age spectrum. On the other hand, we do have visual evidence that his mask-wearing technique and behavior could use some improvement. Of course, you can’t be a leader of the terror campaign if you aren’t a hypocrite; that has been show to be universally true from Obama to Newsome (see if you go that direction you pick up all 26 letters and I couldn’t immediately come up with an A and a Z example). What is that saying about karma? So yes, enjoy your smiley, warm moment as Dr. Fauci joins the vast majority of Americans who have been infected, often multiple times.
Dr. Fauci has been fundamentally incapable of explaining to Americans the normal course of a respiratory virus epidemic and the nature of adaptive immunity, probably because he does not understand it. He has described both infection and vaccine-derived adaptive immunity as essentially ending transmission when occurring to a large enough portion of the population–the widely ballyhooed “herd immunity”. As I explained in a post last week, there is no population immunity to infection, particularly in the era of overzealous PCR and antigen testing. Adaptive immunity does not stop exposure, and subsequent infection, as long as you are still breathing. Neither do masks for that matter. Adaptive immunity can provide good protection against serious disease, and we are experiencing that. So there is a strong level of population immunity to serious disease.
I am befuddled as to why he has been incapable of explaining that CV-19, like most respiratory viruses, has reached the stage in which there likely will be ongoing exposure, there will be infections, but there will be only a minor number of hospitalizations and deaths, probably far fewer than occur with influenza. This is the standard end stage of a coronavirus epidemic, and CV-19 will be the fifth regularly circulating coronavirus. Earlier this Spring he began to head down this path, but recanted under pressure from his fellow CV-19 terrorists. It would have been nice if our leading infectious disease expert had from the start explained the likely course of the epidemic and been forthcoming about the limitations of any measures to suppress transmission. We would have ended up in the same place faster and with a lot less health and economic pain.
The good doctor has had a few useful moments during the epidemic. His interactions with Rand Paul at Congressional hearings, for example, have been epic episodes in weaseldom, and provided comic relief. But his greatest value may be that he has reminded many Americans that scientists and experts are fallible human beings; very, very fallible as it turns out, full of biases, often ignorant and incompetent and increasingly driven by politics and ideology. And he epitomizes the special danger that ensues from listening to government scientists and experts. If his conduct has caused us to exercise great skepticism and to insist on hearing and weighing multiple perspectives, he deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Think for yourself” would be a great new motto for the nation.