Lessons from the scamdemic

[ajax18]

No it's not another Breitbart article. This one comes from USA Today.

COVID guidelines caused millions to suffer. Now Fauci admits 'there was no science behind it.'

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, I jotted down a makeshift "will" for my four kids under 12. It wasn't official, just a set of instructions for my children and other immediate family members in case anything happened to me. Bank accounts, passwords, and access to other valuable information the family might need were included.

It was the beginning of the pandemic and we had no idea just how serious things would get.

As a single parent, I worried that if I suddenly caught it and died, my children would languish. The virus was rampant, and the risk of dying seemed high and very real. Fear and anxiety took hold.

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COVID-19 deaths weren't exactly uncommon. The pandemic killed more than a million Americans, and there have been about 104 million confirmed cases in the United States alone. A lot of decisions were rooted in fear and brought with them life-changing consequences. Statewide lockdowns, shuttered businesses, school closings: All were based initially on the social distancing rule of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We're now getting answers to questions those decisions raised.

Related video: 'You Didn't Feel An Obligation To Go To Them?': Joyce Grills Dr. Fauci On Six-Foot Distancing Rule (Dailymotion)

In his testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to President Donald Trump, said the 6-foot social distancing rule, which the CDC originally recommended, had not been backed by a clinical trial. This is despite constant claims that COVID-19 protocols were based on science.

These disclosures are damning and maddening for all of us who had structured our lives around these rules for years. As a result, millions of people suffered needlessly.

In testimony, Fauci admits COVID rules weren't based on science
On Monday, Fauci was also asked to clarify his comments during the two-day congressional testimony he gave in January. The transcript of that testimony was recently released.

He specifically responded on Monday to questions about the 6-foot rule: “It had little to do with me since I didn’t make the recommendation and my saying ‘there was no science behind it’ meant there was no clinical trial behind that."

In January, Fauci told staff and members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that "there was no science behind" the 6-foot social distancing rule that state and local governments repeated for months if not years.

What about the next pandemic: The world desperately needs a pandemic agreement. Will we come together to save lives?

“You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever,” Fauci said in January's testimony.

He also admitted in the January interview that there was little science that backed requiring children to wear masks in public and at schools for almost two years.

“Do you recall reviewing any studies or data supporting masking for children?” a staffer asked Fauci.

“You know, I might have," he answered, "but I don’t recall specifically that I did. I might have.”

These revelations are infuriating. Fauci repeated CDC-based COVID-19 protocols as the mouthpiece of President Trump's administration. Desperate for guidance, states, local governments, businesses, churches and schools instituted them.

Closing schools because of COVID guidelines hurt kids

The real effect of social distancing − which Fauci basically admitted Monday and in January's testimony was just an educated guess on how to deter COVID-19 − devastated America's economy, small businesses and families. It interrupted the fabric of American life. For what?

The CDC's now-infamous three weeks to "flatten the curve" turned into months for students and families living with the consequences. Here are some.

Closing schools was devastating to kids, especially poor or otherwise disadvantaged children. Remote learning wasn't as effective as in-person learning, especially in the first year, as teachers had no time to prepare. Kids fell behind their grade levels. Pandemic closings resulted in two decades of learning loss.

Operation Warp Speed: Trump has to disavow his COVID vaccine to keep voters from RFK Jr. and his anti-vax clout

Anxiety and depression skyrocketed, especially among adolescents and teens. Kids with learning disabilities were completely left behind.

Non-urgent but still important medical diagnoses and exams were halted altogether. (This went for adults, too.) When schools did reconvene, masks were treated as sacrosanct, and kids were forced to eat lunch several feet apart.

Children learning to read and write at the beginning of the pandemic are still behind even now. Never mind that kids rarely showed any adverse effects of COVID-19, let alone died from it.

This is not a matter of hindsight being 20/20, either. People, including myself, were calling for schools to open in the fall months after the pandemic began, predicting it would continue to be harmful.

The entire medical profession, well beyond Fauci's purview, seemed to struggle to understand how to mitigate the virus while continuing to provide medical care to those in need. While most providers pushed everyone to get vaccinated, screenings and routine care were pushed off for fear of COVID-19, even though they themselves were vaccinated.

At one point during the first year of COVID-19, one of my daughters became extremely ill. I phoned our pediatrician. Even though the staff was vaccinated, they would only see newborns. Her pediatrician refused to examine my daughter in person, and we tested negative for COVID-19 three times. She lost weight and refused to eat, sleeping all day.

After about 10 days, she eventually recovered. We still have no idea what illness she had, but her pediatrician's treatment, based on COVID-19 guidelines, made no sense.

Hundreds of providers endangered patients based on ideas that had no basis in research. We're only now learning just how much delaying cancer treatments out of the fear of spreading COVID-19 will cost people.

We cannot forget what we learned during the pandemic
Schools were just one example. The economic data, representing millions of families, is no more comforting.

In the second quarter of 2020, 1.2 million jobs were destroyed. In June 2021, 6.2 million people did not work at all or worked fewer hours because their employers closed or lost business. Family-owned businesses were lost, savings wiped, all for rules that had no real scientific basis.

Elderly loved ones, the most susceptible to COVID-19, died alone in hospital beds, with no one holding their hands and whispering last prayers. If funerals were held at all, expressions of affection was banned.

On Monday, Fauci did concede that some COVID-19 preventative measures may have gone too far and led to harmful outcomes. He said it is "very, very clear" that public health officials in the future should consider "the potential collateral negative effects" of controversial ideas like requiring masks and ask "how we can do better next time."

Still, even this seems too little too late.

While COVID-19 measures were set in place immediately, as hundreds, if not thousands, were at risk of dying from the disease, it became clear within months that the disease disproportionately targeted elderly people and hardly affected kids at all.

An adaptable administration led by Fauci, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health would have observed such shifts and lifted strict lockdowns of schools and businesses. A healthy society quarantines the sick, not the young. A robust economy never shuts down its economy and hopes it will thrive.


Because we live in Texas, which remained largely open save for a couple of months, my kids and I watched as friends and family struggled through the pandemic with shuttered businesses and schools. The contrast between living in a state where responsible freedom was encouraged compared with places where local governments kept businesses and schools closed was obvious and remains cemented in my mind.

COVID-19 was four years ago now, but as time marches on, we must never forget its valuable lessons so we don't repeat those mistakes again.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ ... 9894&ei=67

[Doctor Steuss]

The science behind oral/respiratory particulate distribution is at least a hundred years old (the earliest published study I found was from 1923). The science behind droplet virion load, for pathogens distributed via respiration, is at least 30 years old (the earliest published study I found was from 1993).

The basis of masks, and their effectiveness at reducing transmission for respiratory-based pathogens has been recognized by even the most bone-headed skeptics of the medical community since about 1930s.

Fauci is right though that some of the measures likely lead to collateral negative effects. It was unfortunate fallout of having anti-science, conspiracy brained, mouth-breathers at the highest levels of government who could have easily implemented standard contact tracing and quarantine protocols early. Instead we got a weird hydroxychloroquine cult, and brainstorming of bringing lightbulbs into people's bodies, and bleaching their insides.

Fortunately, not a single person ultimately followed Trump's published directives to Governors, or else the economic impacts could have been absolutely catastrophic. One of those hidden blessings of even those in power within his cult thinking he's a joke of a leader, and only a useful tool to maintain their own power.

[Gadianton]

While it's technically not a Breitbart article, it's about as close as you can get without being a Breitbart article. It's even written from Ajax first-person outrage mode.

There was definitely some shaky stuff with the CDC. What do you expect after being gutted by Trump?

I posted against the CDC right out of the gate when they dismissed the effectiveness of N-95 masks in order to stop people from buying them because they wanted them for hospital staff. CNN and other left-leaning outlets followed up with anti-mask articles that contradicted their pro-mask articles from a few years prior. There most definitely were studies done showing the effectiveness of masks. One in particular that had been done years prior to Covid was in Japan, showing that in an elementary school setting, out of different measures implemented to prevent spread of flu virus, masks were the only thing that worked.

How much of social distancing needs to be backed by years of research? What kind of precision are we looking for in a "x-foot rule"? Stores and restaurants had all kinds of nutball rules that didn't matter in order to maintain appearances. Eating in a restaurant was a a huge risk, I didn't dine in for well over a year. My right-wing friend got Covid like 3 times from eating out. Social distancing as much as you could afford to do it was a very good idea, as was wearing as much mask as you could bear to wear.

[ajax18]

Social distancing as much as you could afford to do it was a very good idea, as was wearing as much mask as you could bear to wear.

It's probably still a good idea now if you want to make sure you're not among the 0.04% who might die from the flu and your welfare benefits are electronically deposited making going out into the world and taking on even the smallest risk unnecessary. How much social distancing can an optometrist afford when your livelihood depends on seeing 40 different people/day from all over the world and getting close enough to them to see the back of their retina with a slit lamp and a 90D lens? Did your eye doctor have you keep your mask on behind the phoropter? How did that go? Did the lenses ever fog up, even a little? Now think about the fact that you're probably one of the people smart enough to not forcefully exhale as you're trying to squint out what the letters are. Most aren't. And after a couple of years of being told that I and my governor had blood on our hands for disregarding masks and socialist distancing, it turns out that EAllusion was wrong. Res Ipsa and Kevin Graham were both wrong when they told me that everyone wasn't going to get COVID anyway. It turns out that you can transmit COVID after getting the vaccine. It turns out that those of us that refused the vaccine are still here among the living and no worse off than those who took it. It turns out that natural immunity was as effective as the vaccine. Bring on the next scam. I'm thinking that's going to be climate change. Do you have a better guess?

[ajax18]

I do think masks help reduce spread of upper respiratory viruses.

They were for me I admit, though I seriously doubt that regular surgical masks did much against COVID. I'm not sure that a snotty cloth mask worn all day was in the best interests of kindergartners. But yeah, masks help to avoid upper respiratory infections. But was it worth it for everyone to have to wear them? Were people really guilty of murder for not wearing one? What about anyone who voiced skepticism that COVID came from the wet market but posted evidence that the virus was engineered in the Wuhan lab? Should the government really have the right to censor this information on social media on the grounds that this misinformation was deadly? What if it turns out that the US government bureaucrats like Fauci actually knew that this virus came from the Wuhan lab when they were actively censoring the story?

[Gadianton]

It's probably still a good idea now if you want to make sure you're not among the 0.04% who might die from the flu

Only in your hyperbolic version of the world. And death isn't the only consideration. Omnicron ended up being way worse than I thought it would be. I could have avoided the one instance where I took a chance by driving to a family event rather than flying. I could have also avoided giving it to my wife who got way sicker than I did, passing out and falling multiple times (not something that had ever happened before). The one and only time she got it. Of course, the issue for you is only about what happens to you, and being the least bit careful to avoid screwing over the people around you doesn't factor in even a little.

Funny enough my right-wing friend had his moments of right-wing policy outrage, but all-in-all he was pretty reasonable. It may have had something to do with the number of people he knew in that .04 %. He's as big of a Trump supporter as you. The difference is, I'm guessing, about 20 years or so in age, and so he and his circle of friends were in a higher risk class.

[ajax18]

It's probably still a good idea now if you want to make sure you're not among the 0.04% who might die from the flu

Only in your hyperbolic version of the world. And death isn't the only consideration. Omnicron ended up being way worse than I thought it would be. I could have avoided the one instance where I took a chance by driving to a family event rather than flying. I could have also avoided giving it to my wife who got way sicker than I did, passing out and falling multiple times (not something that had ever happened before). The one and only time she got it. Of course, the issue for you is only about what happens to you, and being the least bit careful to avoid screwing over the people around you doesn't factor in even a little.

Funny enough my right-wing friend had his moments of right-wing policy outrage, but all-in-all he was pretty reasonable. It may have had something to do with the number of people he knew in that .04 %. He's as big of a Trump supporter as you. The difference is, I'm guessing, about 20 years or so in age, and so he and his circle of friends were in a higher risk class.

I can understand an older person avoiding COVID. Young people should have never been locked out of work. That should have been clear to everyone early on.

[Gadianton]

I don't think there was an ideal response, you're dreaming if you think Ron DeSantis would have made all the right decisions if he were dictator and that all on the right would be happy with his best guesswork.

I would be inclined in the future to limit lockdowns. Areas of high population density may be impossible ignore -- inner cities etc. I'd be inclined to allow for government assistance programs for people who don't want to work but not stop people who want to work. I'm all for people choosing their own fate. The biggest question is around the externality, people taking the risk themselves put others in danger, and also the overload of medical facilities. Does the right to work of the young outweigh the right of medical staff to not work 120 hour weeks in dangerous conditions? Maybe there's a way for those who wish to take risks to the health of others to sign wavers that would put them last in line for service at the ER should they end up at the hospital?

I'm definitely pro enforced mask and social distancing at grocery stores, post office, etc. Restaurants -- why bother. The space is too confined. I have no idea about schools.

As much as possible vaccination should be optional (in a situation where development was so quick and not ideal testing). I think people tend accept their fate when they can choose. That's the libertarian in me. A liberal who gets a vaccine injury will accept it much better than someone who felt pressured to get it. I know of someone put in a wheelchair at 18 from a J&j vaccine injury and is accepting because the family was pro vaccine. I know of other vaccine injuries far less but still serious that have turned vaccine-hesitant people who felt really pressured into full-blown conspiracy theorists and they'll never let it go. And same goes for people who went to the hospital who weren't jabbed and nearly died, if they felt they had made their choice. They'll double-down on being right.

[Res Ipsa]

The vilification and political persecution of Tony Fauci lays bare the moral bankruptcy of the MAGA cult and its GOP enablers. In a sane world, the guy would be a hero. In MAGA world, where every day is opposite, he's worse than Dr. Mengele.

This article is so misleading it qualifies as "not even wrong." It's intentional and malicious.

On social distancing: everyone who actually tried to inform themselves during the early stages of the pandemic knew that the WHO recommendation for social distancing was three feet, while the CDC recommended six feet. There was and is science behind social distancing as mitigation measure. It's legitimate to ask the CDC why it chose six feet instead of three feet. It's 100% misleading to use Fauci's testimony about the origin of the 6 foot recommendation to imply that there was and is no science behind social distancing.

I read Fauci's testimony before the same subcommittee from January. Just like every other "investigative" hearting, the Republican members make both false and misleading claims about the testimony through Twitter or other media, knowing that by the time the transcript is made available, the attention will be on some new fake source outrage.

For example, the first Republican questioner asked what I thought on first reading was an odd set of questions. He asked Fauci if he recalled any conversations with 50-60 different individuals on specific topics involving the origin of COVID. Over the course of the pandemic, this is a guy that probably had thousands of conversations with different people and investigating the origin of COVID was neither his specialty nor his actual job during the pandemic, so its not surprising that most of his answers were "I don't recall any conversation with that person on the specific topics you mentioned."

The odd thing was that the questioner did no follow up at all on the vast majority of the questions. Odd until I saw what the Relief Society on the subcommittee tweeted after the first day of the interview. FAUCI ANSWERS "I DON'T RECALL" TO OVER 100 QUESTIONS. See the trick. The content of the tweet was so outrageously false and misleading that the first D interviewer on the second day took Fauci through the tweet, comparing the tweet with Fauci's actual testimony. The stated purpose of the hearing was to take lessons learned during COVID and use them to prepare for future pandemics. But it's clear that the MAGA nutcases had no interest in preparing for future pandemics -- only smearing Fauci for political gain.

For both the claims made about masking and social distancing, neither of those were in Fauci's field or his responsibility during the pandemic. Fauci and his work at the NIH were on vaccines and therapeutics. Oddly enough, Controlling Diseases during outbreaks is handled by a different agency. You know, the Centers for Disease Control. Being a scientific expert on vaccines and therapeutics does not make someone an expert on how to control a disease during an outbreak. Fauci doesn't hold himself out as an expert on disease control, which in the U.S. is handled mainly by local health departments with assistance from the CDC. There is no reason to expect Fauci to know the details of the science behind masks or social distancing. The Relief Society know that, and they also know that Fauci will do his best to answer their questions.

Saying that Fauci was a "mouthpiece for the CDC" is bizarre. The CDC was a part of Trump's pandemic task force and Birx discussed the CDC recommendations. What people like the author won't accept is that Trump is the guy who approved the policies.

The article presents zero evidence for the wild claims it makes: two decades of learning lost by students who are younger than two decades?

As for Operation Warp Speed, Trump signed on to it, but it was developed by Fauci and the NIH. And it was only possible because of basic research on other diseases funded through the NIH. The notion that Trump was somehow forced to abandon "his" COVID vaccine is ludicrous. He chose to flip-flop on vaccination the second he wasn't in a position to claim credit for it.

The claims about children are also ludicrous. Early on, COVID minimizers claimed that children were magical unicorns that just didn't get sick from COVID. The truth is that they were shielded from exposure to COVID because schools, ground zero for contagious diseases, were closed. Once the disease reached them, they got sick and lots of them died.

But, apparently, other people's dead children are acceptable casualties as long as her child gets treatment on demand for something that went away on its own.

[IWMP]

The vilification and political persecution of Tony Fauci lays bare the moral bankruptcy of the MAGA cult and its GOP enablers. In a sane world, the guy would be a hero. In MAGA world, where every day is opposite, he's worse than Dr. Mengele.

This article is so misleading it qualifies as "not even wrong." It's intentional and malicious.

On social distancing: everyone who actually tried to inform themselves during the early stages of the pandemic knew that the WHO recommendation for social distancing was three feet, while the CDC recommended six feet. There was and is science behind social distancing as mitigation measure. It's legitimate to ask the CDC why it chose six feet instead of three feet. It's 100% misleading to use Fauci's testimony about the origin of the 6 foot recommendation to imply that there was and is no science behind social distancing.

I read Fauci's testimony before the same subcommittee from January. Just like every other "investigative" hearting, the Republican members make both false and misleading claims about the testimony through Twitter or other media, knowing that by the time the transcript is made available, the attention will be on some new fake source outrage.

For example, the first Republican questioner asked what I thought on first reading was an odd set of questions. He asked Fauci if he recalled any conversations with 50-60 different individuals on specific topics involving the origin of COVID. Over the course of the pandemic, this is a guy that probably had thousands of conversations with different people and investigating the origin of COVID was neither his specialty nor his actual job during the pandemic, so its not surprising that most of his answers were "I don't recall any conversation with that person on the specific topics you mentioned."

The odd thing was that the questioner did no follow up at all on the vast majority of the questions. Odd until I saw what the Relief Society on the subcommittee tweeted after the first day of the interview. FAUCI ANSWERS "I DON'T RECALL" TO OVER 100 QUESTIONS. See the trick. The content of the tweet was so outrageously false and misleading that the first D interviewer on the second day took Fauci through the tweet, comparing the tweet with Fauci's actual testimony. The stated purpose of the hearing was to take lessons learned during COVID and use them to prepare for future pandemics. But it's clear that the MAGA nutcases had no interest in preparing for future pandemics -- only smearing Fauci for political gain.

For both the claims made about masking and social distancing, neither of those were in Fauci's field or his responsibility during the pandemic. Fauci and his work at the NIH were on vaccines and therapeutics. Oddly enough, Controlling Diseases during outbreaks is handled by a different agency. You know, the Centers for Disease Control. Being a scientific expert on vaccines and therapeutics does not make someone an expert on how to control a disease during an outbreak. Fauci doesn't hold himself out as an expert on disease control, which in the U.S. is handled mainly by local health departments with assistance from the CDC. There is no reason to expect Fauci to know the details of the science behind masks or social distancing. The Relief Society know that, and they also know that Fauci will do his best to answer their questions.

Saying that Fauci was a "mouthpiece for the CDC" is bizarre. The CDC was a part of Trump's pandemic task force and Birx discussed the CDC recommendations. What people like the author won't accept is that Trump is the guy who approved the policies.

The article presents zero evidence for the wild claims it makes: two decades of learning lost by students who are younger than two decades?

As for Operation Warp Speed, Trump signed on to it, but it was developed by Fauci and the NIH. And it was only possible because of basic research on other diseases funded through the NIH. The notion that Trump was somehow forced to abandon "his" COVID vaccine is ludicrous. He chose to flip-flop on vaccination the second he wasn't in a position to claim credit for it.

The claims about children are also ludicrous. Early on, COVID minimizers claimed that children were magical unicorns that just didn't get sick from COVID. The truth is that they were shielded from exposure to COVID because schools, ground zero for contagious diseases, were closed. Once the disease reached them, they got sick and lots of them died.

But, apparently, other people's dead children are acceptable casualties as long as her child gets treatment on demand for something that went away on its own.

My children got very sick in December 2019. We hadn't heard of COVID then. But my daughter was so sick that the Dr sent her to hospital with a tank of oxygen (nebuliser?) in an ambulance and hospital gave her salbutamol 10 times. I asked the Dr if it could have been COVID after the fact and he said probably. I got sick in spring 2020. They weren't testing at that point but I was pretty sure it was COVID. Then later that year my son got COVID on his birthday and we all followed. The kids weren't too bad. I was incredibly unwell. I was being sick constantly, weak pulse, mottled, racing heart. Just awful. Jamie got COVID that was like a mild flu. Then we got it again the next year but relatively mild. My mum got COVID and wasn't massively ill considering she has COPD. She did get vaccine damage to her heart though. Think she had long COVID.

I did not get vaccinated. My kids aren't. They've had the usual vaccines for things like MMR etc. I don't get them the flu vaccine that schools give out. I don't believe children need the flu vaccine unless compromised. I don't take the flu vaccine because the times I have the side effects are worse than when I've had the flu. I didn't get the vaccine because my mum had it early because she was a vulnerable person, she wants allowed to get the second dose and I had known how she reacted before it came out for everyone else. My neighbour had a reaction and was later told she was given the wrong brand and my MIL said she wished she hadn't got it. I had already had COVID by then too and in my mind, the virus itself should have the same immune system response as a vaccine.