Posted on 02/24/2021 9:22:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
If you listen to some skeptics of the COVID-19 vaccines, you'll hear various doubts about effectiveness and safety, which have not been validated by the data. To the contrary, the vaccines are working miraculously well and have been proven safe among many millions of recipients across the world. Another argument that certain fence-sitters may advance is that the government isn't eager to give up control over people's lives anyway, so why bother getting a set of injections against a virus that probably won't kill you -- especially if the Powers That Be won't allow your life to return to normal as a reward. I'm concerned that this latter concern is being vindicated by rhetoric from top officials and amplified in the media. Reaching herd immunity is a crucial goal that will allow American life to move past the pandemic. Incessantly telling people that getting inoculated is not an effective ticket back to freedom and normalcy is a mistake. A significant number of people might well internalize that message and reach the somewhat understandable conclusion that if the vaccines 'aren't good enough,' why even bother? This is dangerous and counter-productive.
I have never been one of the swooning fans, or hardcore critics, of Dr. Anthony Fauci. In fact, I've often been put off by people in each of those camps. But I'll admit that his politically-tinged equivocating in the school re-opening debate, his manipulative goalpost shifting, and messaging like this has been wearing on me:
As Gov. Cuomo announced NYC theaters could open - on March 5 - at 25% capacity / no more than 50 per screening,
Dr. Fauci said "there are things, even if you're vaccinated, that you're not going to be able to do, in society. For example, indoor dining, theaters..." pic.twitter.com/lgpR6z2DRM— BG (@TheBGates) February 22, 2021
'Possible' Americans will be wearing masks in 2022 to protect against COVID-19, Fauci says https://t.co/qaiTWPNCcZ— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) February 21, 2021
Reason's Robby Soave is feeling similarly frustrated:
Fauci has admitted that he has previously avoided telling people the plain truth about how long it would take to reach herd immunity because he thought the public wasn't ready to hear it; thus it's not always totally clear whether the doctor's pronouncements reflect genuine uncertainty, public messaging considerations, or a mixture of both...The government should urge everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible, because vaccinated people are overwhelmingly safe from the disease—and are also much less likely to spread it to others. The message should be that vaccination is both a protective shield and a ticket back to speedy normalcy. People who are vaccinated can start doing normal things with other vaccinated people: They can go to weddings, restaurants, and grandparent hug-a-thons. Keep that mask handy for 2022 is a really demoralizing and unnecessary framing...
That's the way Israel has been framing their vaccination campaign, and they lead the world in shots administered, by a mile. They are explicitly incentivizing getting the jab by correctly treating it as the inside track back to an uninhibited life (plus offering free food and booze, which probably helps, too). We now know that the vaccines overwhelmingly protect immunized people -- not only against COVID symptoms, serious cases and death, but also from infection. This means that vaccinated people pose an extremely low risk of passing the disease to anyone else. In other words, they're safe. People with whom they come into contact are also safe from them. Let them live life. Stop prattling on about how common activities still may not be safe even for vaccinated people for an indefinite period of time, and how we may need still to be masking up a year from now. Again, this stuff is needlessly demoralizing and counter-productive:
Despite a sharp decline in coronavirus cases and continued success with COVID-19 vaccines, it’s looking likely we will still be wearing masks for some time to come. https://t.co/Qsp2dBJX8E— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 22, 2021
You’re fully vaccinated against the coronavirus — now what? Don’t expect to shed your mask and get back to normal activities right away. That’s going to be a disappointment, if not a shock, to many people. https://t.co/FTNvDgcr9r— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) February 22, 2021
As for exasperated conservatives crying, "fire Fauci," Allahpundit argues 'be careful what you wish for.' But there are absolutely fair criticisms to be leveled, several of which are laid out bluntly by David Harsanyi in a piece I strongly you encourage to read and consider. An excerpt:
I’m sorry the Constitution is inhibiting Fauci’s work, but he is a public-health official. His job is to relay information to the public, not to threaten doom, or coax or trick us into doing things. Yet even now, despite the immensely promising results of the vaccination program (the United States, incidentally, easily outperforms the European Union’s “unified approach”), Fauci is underplaying the effectiveness of the vaccine for the same reasons, one suspects, that he misled us about herd immunity. Even when most American are immunized, Fauci says, we won’t be back to “normal” until new infections drop “to a baseline that’s so low, it is virtually no threat.” This is a disqualifying statement — an insane standard that no free society would ever indulge. For Fauci, herd immunity is effectively 99 percent.
I'll leave you with two items. First, my straightforward layperson's advice on what the official 'recommendation' ought to be for Americans who are fully inoculated against COVID, followed by an ugly glimpse at how awful things are in the EU on the vaccine front:
The guidance should be: “You can do everything you used to be able to do — the vaccines are your ticket back to a normal life because they work.” https://t.co/4iajwLyfVM— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 23, 2021
Almost March, no progress whatsoever with vaccination in the EU pic.twitter.com/yCxm3JDLet— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) February 21, 2021
I know a lot of Americans on the Left tend to fetishize Europe, but the EU's sclerotic bureaucracy and other factors are producing dreadful outcomes on getting life-saving doses into the arms of EU citizens. The Europeans certainly fancy themselves far more enlightened and "pro-science" than we are, and many Americans would agree. And yet, the good ole USA's rate of doses administered per 100 residents is more than triple the EU's rate, as of this week. Also, looking at the data above, I wonder if any British opponents of Brexit might be coming around to the view that they might have gotten that one wrong.
Fauci doesn’t want the pandemic to end - as long as he can stretch it out, he can get himself in front of cameras. That is his sole purpose at this point - face time.
The vaccine scam only works if you make folks who have not been vaccinated wear a yellow star....
Maybe I am wrong, but I am sensing that Fauci’s 15 minutes are running out.
Like the bureaucrat he is, whenever he senses that a solution to a problem is at hand, he seeks to prolong the problem.
To a bureaucrat, solutions are anathema to job security.
He doesn’t want this to go away anytime soon because he doesn’t see where an 80 something year old guy is ever going to get this kind of attention again.
Having said the above, there comes a point where even the democrats will see this man as inconvenient. That point appears to me to be close at hand.
I can only hope that he doesn’t get the message and has to be ruined in order to get his fraudulent face off the scene.
Fauci is not a reliable source. The one man who has had the most influence on our Covid reaction and response has contradicted himself and his “mandates” repeatedly.
I could be a bit sympathetic towards him for the first few months as there were a lot of unknowns, but as soon as the “data” (his word not mine) became clear regarding who was at risk from this thing he changed nothing. Nothing.
There are many failures we can now point to clearly regarding the China virus, but our “one size fits all” approach combined with ineffective policies were due to him. At the point he admitted that he lied to us “for the greater good” he should have been fired. Period.
Fauci is going to come out and say that everybody should smear strawberry jelly on their faces and hop around on one leg singing Yellow Submarine.
The verdict is going to come due for Fauci. It’s started when liberal media are finally writing critical pieces questioning him.
When “Orange Man Bad” was in the White House he was a “God” for the leftists. Now Biden and the democrats are in charge so results will really matter and here is...... Lord Fauci.
As intended.
Beat me but not by much...
And forty percent of the population would do it without a second thought.
I think that Fauci guy is bipolar.
Dr. Fauxi Is Counter-Productive and Demoralizing
There, fixed the headline
“The vaccine scam only works if you make folks who have not been vaccinated wear a yellow star....”
Leper!! Unclean!! Forced to the outskirts of town, to caves, to sepulchres, forbidden to engage in normal life with and among normal people. Normal, of course, meaning, those who’ve gotten the “jab”.
Private industry will probably and unfortunately be the most effective enforcement arm of this new societal norm. It’s easy to predict that gainful employment will be denied to the un-jabbed.
Needless discrimination will be engaged in with demonic enthusiasm.
This is a true disaster in the making. Quite rapidly in the making, unfortunately, with no effective voices available to prevent or even slow it’s tsunami-like progress.
Who still believes Tony Fauci on ANYTHING - he has reversed himself again and again, always “following the science”.
If President Trump should have fired him long ago for his position of perpetual dithering, then the Harris/Biden regime should drum him out forthwith, because his shifting narrative could stand to start damaging THEM.
This idiot hasn’t practiced medicine in nearly 40 years. He is a POLITICIAN- nothing more. Every time he opens his mouth my BS detector goes into high gear.
Fauci is nothing mote than a self serving ambitious bureaucrat at home in the swamp water of Washington politics.
If that bothers someone like Guy Benson, then so be it.
Every time Fauci opens his mouth he gives any normal, intelligent adult one more reason NOT to be vaccinated.
And no -- I am NOT getting any of these highly questionable and apparently ineffective "vaccines."
So, is covid-19 itself an inniculation against the flu? Was it released as a means of decimating the flu virus? Has anyone had the flu this year?
Somebody needs to tell Fauci that Biden is president now so he can drop the hysteria. He’s not Luca Brasi.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.