Trust science? Fauci’s admission he misled public puts scrutiny on Biden alliance!
Fauci’s “apparent willingness to mislead the public in support of his preferred policy objective should disqualify him from providing public policy advice in any official capacity,” said Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University.
Joe Biden’s decision to hold over Dr. Anthony Fauci in his administration as his chief medical advisor as a symbol of his commitment to “trust science” is coming under new scrutiny following Fauci’s recent admission that he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls.
In a Christmas Eve interview with the New York Times, Fauci acknowledged he had offered a lower estimate of the level of herd immunity necessary to stop the COVID-19 pandemic because he thought Americans would be demoralized by his true thoughts on the issue.
Fauci recently raised his estimate on the herd immunity threshold “partly based on new science,” the newspaper reported, “and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”
Fauci had previously admitted that in the spring, during the early phase of the pandemic, he misled the public about the efficacy of face masks in limiting the spread of COVID-19.
Fauci’s admission that he tailored his herd immunity threshold estimate to PR needs drew the ire of Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University. Bhattacharya is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for replacing “devastating” coronavirus lockdown policies with a new, less restrictive strategy.
“Dr. Fauci’s apparent willingness to mislead the public in support of his preferred policy objective should disqualify him from providing public policy advice in any official capacity,” Bhattacharya told Just the News on Monday. “Dr. Fauci’s advice throughout the epidemic has ignored the science regarding the devastating physical and psychological harms of the lockdowns, to which he seems utterly blind. For a policy advisor, science should inform policy preference, not the other way around.”
Dr. Harvey Risch, professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale University, said Monday that Fauci seems to have ignored the acquired immunity of the 20 million Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19, as well as the estimated 125 million Americans who have had the infection asymptomatically.
“I don’t believe that Fauci has ever provided unvarnished, truthful advice,” Risch told Just the News. “What he really meant is that 90% of the population needs to be immune for the pandemic to more-or-less go away completely. But this is not what he said.”
“Also, you may notice that the WHO removed the fact that having the infection provides immunity,” Risch continued, “now bizarrely stating that immunity only occurs from vaccination. You can guess why WHO (and Dr. Fauci) would manipulate public opinion against scientific knowledge.”
Fauci’s office at the National Institutes of Health did not respond to request for comment from Just the News.
With no vaccination, the pandemic “will be largely over by spring in the Upper Midwest and by summer in a large part of the U.S., with the states that have had the strongest lockdowns continuing their epidemics the longest, perhaps into the fall,” Risch said. “Vaccination may help to make this earlier. The issue is mortality not case counts. Everyone is focused on case counts but that is wrong. Whether by natural immunity or vaccination, we need people to become immune, that is what ends the pandemic.”
Fauci’s New York Times interview drew a scathing rejoinder from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who tweeted: “Almost everything Fauci has said this year has been exaggerated, misleading, and/or flat-out wrong. He is not to be trusted under any circumstances. Americans must reject his doctrine of destruction before his fantasies lead to the end of our freedoms.”
op-ed from The Australian is behind paywall, but Sanjeev has posted following link, where you can enlarge text & read in full, with Swedish data:
30 Dec: The Australian: Swedish Covid-19 data exposes our fatal lockdown hysteria
by Sanjeev Sabhlok
Three months ago I resigned as an economist in the Vitorian Department of Treasury and Finance to protest against disproportionate public heath measures by (Victorian Premier) Daniel Andrews that had led to a police state...
As I have written previously, this pandemic is not the Spanish flu. Data is now telling us that is is not even in the league of the Hong Kong flu.
In May, modellers had said Sweden would experience more than 100,000 additional deawths from COVID this year, with 96,000 additional deaths by July if lockdowns were not imposed...
https://sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/Misc/Op-ed-TheAustralian-30December2020.png
from a summary Sanbyjeev:
1) Sweden’s 2-yr average death rate will likely be the second lowest in ten years. This has been a “bad flu” but less lethal than the Hong Kong flu.
2) Lockdowns have only been used once in 500 years: for Ebola, and were not effective even for it. “When lockdowns are rejected by the science even for a lethal virus such as Ebola, the idea of lockdowns being applied for a flu-like virus does not arise”.
3) Vaccine can be helpful for those >75. Compulsion would amount to the same intellectual and spiritual cowardice that we’ve seen throughout 2020.
FINALLY: when folks compare COVID with earlier diseases/flu etc., please adjust for the world’s population at the time.
for example:
Wikipedia: The Spanish flu infected around 500 million people, about one-third of the world’s population...
death toll is typically estimated to have been somewhere between 20 million and 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million...
therefore, for all those in FakeNewsMSM/politicians/health officials saying COVID-19 is the worst pandemic in a century/since the Spanish flu, please note:
2.5 billion people would have to be infected by covid; between 100 million and 500 million would have to die from COVID.
