For those who may be disappointed by some of our postings, those postings that discuss a potential worsening of the Covid scamdemic, one word of clarification. We do not in the least suggest that such a possibility could be a natural development of a virus out of control. Rather, such posts are meant to warn the public of the real possibility of an escalation of the scamdemic by the same means that made it possible in the first place. The same agenda that triggered the phase one of the plandemic continues against the public, only at a more heightened level.
Data from: NHS England
by Chris Sweeney,
Quarantine hotel, military camp, Taiwan © RT
Britain is the latest country to introduce quarantine periods in hotels for those arriving from abroad. RT spoke to four people currently isolating in hotel rooms around the world to find out the challenges they’re facing.
Boris Johnson has confirmed that hotel quarantining will begin in the UK from Monday. Anyone – including British citizens – traveling from 30 ‘red-list’ countries will be transported from the airport they arrive at and expected to stay under supervision for up to 10 days.
A host of other governments implemented the policy many months ago to try and stop the spread of Covid-19. And now it seems more could follow suit, as the virus continues to proliferate and more variants are discovered.
The result will be that in the short term at least, foreign travel will become extremely expensive, time-consuming and unappealing. But if you do decide to take the plunge, what can you expect if you have to quarantine? RT spoke to three people who have endured the experience to find out what it’s like being cooped up in a hotel room all day, every day.
British architect Charlie is on the final day of a 14-day quarantine in Taiwan and compares the experience to being “in prison.” He asked for his full name not to be used as some people have received death threats for speaking out about conditions inside the Asian country, which has generally been lauded for the way it has handled the health crisis.
Charlie lives in Taiwan and flew back to the UK to be with his family for Christmas, as he hadn’t seen them for over a year. On his return – along with his wife – he was assigned a hotel for free. The rules have since changed and arrivals are charged around £50 per day.
He said, “We arrived at the airport in Taipei and were shepherded off to fill in some forms, then informed that we would be being transported by bus to a city roughly one-and-a-half hours away in the central region of the country.
“There were seven of us in total. We actually got lucky that we are staying in a hotel. Some other arrivals got taken to unused military camps, and the state of those places is a bit depressing.”
Charlie has heard from some in the camps and they complain of it being extremely cold at night. There are no heaters in their rooms, and they have only been issued with thin blankets. Even though his conditions have been luxurious in comparison, Charlie has been unable to get any fresh air for the duration of his stay. His windows don’t open and the balcony in his room is inaccessible, as the authorities have jammed the door shut.
He continued, “No amount of negotiation would persuade them to open it. I spent a couple of hours trying to pick the lock so I could get some fresh air, but that was a bit too ambitious.
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“The rest of my time has been spent playing Football Manager. The best thing anyone can do though is stick to a routine and avoid lying in bed all day. I quickly learnt how important it was to get up at breakfast time and stay up all day until an arbitrary bed time – I use 10pm. Even though I’m sat at a desk all day with a sore neck and back from a rigid chair, at least I can sleep OK at night.”
Adding to his frustration, the food has been a massive disappointment. There is little variety, and the Taiwanese Center for Disease Control has banned any deliveries, so Charlie is unable to order his own meals.
He said, “It seems as though they have started to penny pinch as lunch and dinner are what is called a lunchbox. It’s a partitioned box with rice, a type of meat, some veg, and then some random unknown terrifying looking foods. It’s incredibly oily. You get this twice a day, every day. I can’t eat rice, so they substitute the rice for a Pot Noodle.”
Charlie admits to finding the process gruelling, but adds, “I wouldn’t say I feel depressed. I’m fortunate in that my wife is also quarantined here as well [in a separate room] and we can video call, so you are sharing the terrible experience with someone else.
“I would be really concerned for anyone doing quarantine like this on their own though. No one on the outside knows quite what it is like, I certainly didn’t.”
Quarantine hotel, military camp, Taiwan © RT
And now he’s experienced the process first-hand, Charlie is adamant that he will never undergo it again. He stressed, “Not a chance. I won’t be flying anywhere until there is no chance of quarantine.”
Someone who’s had a slightly more pleasant experience is cross-cultural consultant and author Tanya Crossman. She has just completed a two-week quarantine in Sydney’s five-star Sheraton Grand, spending a lot of time binge-watching Netflix.
Her room was on the 12th floor, but Tanya said, “I could not leave the room at all. I didn’t even have a key to the room, I had no balcony and no windows that opened. I sat in one room by myself with no fresh air and no direct sunlight for two full weeks.”
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Tanya was responsible for the cost, which is AU$3,000 for a single adult, but she added: “You get absolutely no say in what hotel. The state government booked out several hotels and on arrival you’re taken by bus to whatever is available.”
Food was provided but deliveries were allowed in Sydney. Tanya’s friends dropped off care packages and she was able to use Uber Eats too. Although she couldn’t meet her friends, they found a small strip of pavement than Tanya could see from her window, and waved at each other.
Keeping busy was key to passing the time. Tanya said, “I had lots of work calls and meetings, some of which I deliberately scheduled in such a way that it would give me something concrete to do each day. I also spent lots of time on video calls with my young niece and nephews.”
To get some basic exercise, Tanya walked around her room during phone calls and had also packed a yoga mat, so was able to use that. But she struggled mentally, despite having support, and is worried that others may not be so robust, and may be severely affected by being alone in a room for days on end.
She explained: “Depression and anxiety were definitely an issue. Not all the time, and some days were harder than others, but being alone in one room for so long was really rough. Waking up in the morning was the hardest for me. To look around the room and realise I’d be here alone inside these walls for the entire day.
“The state government provided regular phone check-ins with psychologists, and 24-hour access to a mental health team on site. But I did often wonder if I, as an introvert quite accustomed to enjoying alone time, struggled this much, what must it be like for extroverts to go through this?”
Dr. Emily Furlong spoke to RT on the final day of her two-week quarantine in Perth. The Australian moved home after completing postdoctoral research at Oxford University’s School of Pathology. She was assigned a hotel by the government but had to cover the cost.
Emily said, “It is AU$120 per day and AU$60 per day for meals for each person in the room, so all up I will have to pay AU$2,520 within 30 days of leaving quarantine. There are payment plans available and those experiencing financial hardship can apply for a full or partial fee waiver.”
As with the others, she was unable to leave the room or open a window, and she found a daily routine helped her deal with the tedium. She explained, “I set myself some work tasks to be completed during quarantine, but I also had some fun activities to do, including a jigsaw puzzle and games on my phone.
“For me, it has really helped to have a daily routine. I wake up, go to bed and eat meals at roughly the same time each day. I have been doing a yoga class in the afternoon and then I talk to people and watch a bit of TV in the evenings.”
Meal times were very organised in her hotel. Staff would come three times a day and knock on her door, Emily then had to acknowledge them before waiting 20 seconds for the staff to clear the area before opening the door. She said, “For each meal, I have a choice between two options and every day I get a call from the hotel staff to confirm my order for the following day.”
For Emily, the major issue has been the time she has had to sacrifice. She’d be prepared to quarantine again, though… but only if she was visiting somewhere for three months or more.
She concluded, “Australia has had a low number of Covid-19 cases relative to other countries and a main reason for that is the border closures and enforced hotel quarantine for international arrivals. I was more than happy to quarantine to ensure the safety of the Australian community, including my friends and family.
“I haven’t felt depressed or anxious while in hotel quarantine, and for me the time has passed quite quickly. We are called by medical staff once every few days, who check in with how we are going, so there is support available for those who are struggling.”
While most of those stuck in hotels are people traveling for business or to visit relatives, Bill, from Maryland in the US, is currently in quarantine because he had to visit the Thai city of Pattaya for medical reasons.
He is there for the pain management and Thai physical therapy, due to a series of previous spinal surgeries. Even though the treatment works wonders for him, the mental impact of quarantine almost saw him ask to be repatriated.
Police officer Bill arrived on January 15 and spoke to RT on the final day of his two-week stay, which cost 37,000 Baht (US$1,250). He said, “My first room had a balcony that faced another empty hotel and no people. “However, it got no sun and depression hit me from day one; it was the lack of sun and human interaction.
“The hotel moved me to a smaller room with two single beds, but a balcony with sun and it was facing a road, so I could see people walking and hear birds singing. If not for my friend bringing me things and if not for the room change, I would have asked the Thai government to let me return to the US early.”
The rules Bill had to abide by meant he was kept in his room, only coming out for Covid-19 tests on days three and 10. They were both negative so on day 12, he was allowed to spend time walking or sitting outside in designated zones. Even so, he would not endure the process again. He said, “I would not take a pleasure trip if I had to quarantine like I do here, the pleasure is not worth the pain and the added expense.”
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.
A 2011 report by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that fewer than one percent of all vaccine adverse events are reported to the government:
Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health. New surveillance methods for drug and vaccine adverse effects are needed. (Source.)
Currently, data from the two experimental mRNA COVID injections that have been voluntarily reported is available for a two week period from the end of December through January 13, 2021.
The data covers 7,844 cases, including 181 deaths.
The largest amount of deaths occurred in people over the age of 75.
There was at least one death recorded of an unborn baby dying just after the mother received an experimental mRNA Pfizer shot while pregnant:
I was 28 weeks and 5 days pregnant when I received the first dose of the COVID19 vaccine. Two days later (12/25/2020 in the afternoon), I noticed decreased motion of the baby.
The baby was found to not have a heartbeat in the early am on 12/26/2020 and I delivered a 2lb 7oz nonviable female fetus at 29 weeks gestation. (Source.)
As we have previously reported here at Health Impact News, the guidelines for emergency use of the experimental mRNA Pfizer injection in the UK warned pregnant women, and women planning to soon become pregnant, to NOT get the experimental jab.
But the FDA guidelines issued in the U.S. for the same experimental Pfizer injection did not include such warnings. See:
When reading the accompanying notes from these cases that were reported to VAERS, it is clear that many healthcare professionals are reluctant to report these cases, probably fearing repercussions for doing so.
In some cases, family members filed the report because the healthcare facility refused to do.
Some examples:
(VAERS ID # 913733) My grandmother died a few hours after receiving the moderna covid vaccine booster 1. While I don’t expect that the events are related, the treating hospital did not acknowledge this and I wanted to be sure a report was made.
(VAERS ID # 914621) Resident in our long term care facility who received first dose of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine on 12/22/2020, only documented side effect was mild fatigue after receiving. She passed away on 12/27/2020 of natural causes per report. Has previously been in & out of hospice care, resided in nursing home for 9+ years, elderly with dementia. Due to proximity of vaccination we felt we should report the death, even though it is not believed to be related.
(VAERS ID # 914895) Injection given on 12/28/20 – no adverse events and no issues yesterday; Death today, 12/30/20, approx.. 2am today (unknown if related – Administrator marked as natural causes)
Since so few reports are actually recorded in the VAERS reporting system, what is the true number of people being killed by these lethal injections? For those who are not killed, how many will be crippled or suffer autoimmune diseases for the rest of their lives?
If during pre-COVID times less than 1% of all vaccine injuries and deaths were reported to VAERS, let’s make a conservative estimate and say that because it is widely known that the COVID injections were fast-tracked to market and have not yet been approved by the FDA, that a greater percentage are being reported, like 10% of the adverse reactions, including deaths.
We are looking at a pace of nearly 1000 deaths per week by injection due to non-FDA approved mRNA injections among nearly 40,000 cases a week of injuries due to these injections.
This is a public health crisis that is 100% avoidable and 100% caused by Big Pharma and the U.S. Government!
It is well known now that due to federal funding for COVID in 2020 that nearly all deaths were recorded as “COVID” deaths, even in cases where the death occurred by traffic accident, shooting, heart attack, etc.
Now we are seeing the exact opposite happen with the roll-out of the COVID experimental injections. NONE of them are being recorded as vaccine deaths. Why?
Because the CDC does not provide a category for “vaccine deaths” to be used on death certificates. To learn more about this, see an article we published in 2018 from a Death Certificate Clerk whistleblower who revealed the politics behind listing “cause of death” on death certificates.
She wrote:
Our current system for capturing mortality rates can and does provide a mostly uninvestigated and inaccurate picture of what causes a death. The process for creating and registering causes of death for public records is a complicated, convoluted, politicized, completely open to both ignorance and the manipulations of personal, professional, and governmental interests.
I’m the one creating these statistics and I offer you this: If you take one thing away from this, take away a healthier skepticism about even the most accepted mainstream, nationally reported, CDC or other ‘scientific’ statistics.
What most people don’t know is that doctors are not allowed to attest to anything that is not a strictly NATURAL cause of death. (Full article.)
We are witnessing the mass murder of Americans right before our very eyes, and the genocide of our elderly population!
Complicit with these murders is the Pharma-controlled corporate media that not only fails to publish these statistics derived from a government reporting system, but actually publishes lies and fake news to encourage people to receive lethal injections.
As an investigative journalist, I have consistently presented the evidence that should be used to arrest and charge the criminals behind this atrocity which is nothing less than MASS MURDER, and crimes against humanity.
In the spirit and legal protection of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment which protects Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press to criticize public officials, here is the short list of government officials who need to be arrested immediately and have charges brought against them for intent to commit mass murder by lethal injections, among many other charges such as fraud.
There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands that should be arrested and charged, but these are the top 3 most responsible and who should be brought to justice immediately.
The evidence against Anthony Fauci for mass murder is overwhelming. Not only does he profit from bringing an experimental mRNA vaccine to market, something he has worked on for decades together with Bill Gates, but he has publicly demonized safer, effective drugs already approved by the FDA, such as hydroxychloroquine, that many doctors have been using successfully to treat COVID patients.
He has used his public office at the NIH to bring great harm and death against the American people, by capitalizing on so-called “health crises” such as COVID, and HIV in the past.
For more of the evidence against Anthony Fauci, see:
Stephen Hahn was appointed by President Trump to lead the FDA, and his actions prevented doctors across the country in emergency room and hospital settings from using safe, already approved by the FDA, drugs that doctors were saving lives with, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
In addition, Hahn allowed fast-track approval of the experimental mRNA COVID injections illegally, because there were already other successful therapeutics in the market to treat COVID.
Hahn also ignored an ADMINISTRATIVE STAY OF ACTION that was filed with the Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop emergency use authorization of the COVID injections, because the trials used the faulty PCR tests to determine the presence of COVID in evaluating the “effectiveness” of these new experimental injections. See:
His failure to act upon this “Stay of Action” makes him criminally liable for all of these deaths resulting from the COVID experimental mRNA injections. For more evidence against Stephen Hahn, see:
I don’t know if Donald Trump is the current or only former President of the United States (depends who you ask), but one thing nobody can disagree about is that President Trump initiated “Operation Warp Speed” which resulted in the theft of America’s wealth and transfer over to Big Pharma, for several TRILLION dollars, to develop experimental mRNA COVID vaccines.
He ordered the military to participate in their distribution, and he pressured the FDA to issue emergency use authorization, threatening to fire the FDA director for not issuing the EUA quicker.
Up until his last day of this first term, he bragged about how these “vaccines” were brought to market in record time, whereas the normal FDA approval process takes 5-10 years.
These experimental COVID mRNA injections would not be in the market today killing people, if it were not for President Trump leading the way to their approval.
Donald J. Trump should be arrested and charged with mass-murder. For more evidence against President Trump, see:
If these three are indicted by a Grand Jury, brought to trial in front of a jury of their “peers”, and then convicted as “guilty,” they should be publicly hanged on a gallows for all to see, and Joe Biden and his administration and health officials should be warned that they are next, unless they stop these injections IMMEDIATELY.
To do this, of course, we will need the restoration or formation of militia groups as provided by the Constitution, and they will probably have to convene Grand Juries to bring charges against corrupt judges first, to remove them from the bench so honest judges can be appointed, or elected, so law and order can be restored to the Court Houses.
Constitutional Sheriffs can also be utilized (many of their deputies serve as bailiffs in the court rooms,) as these crimes have been committed in probably every county in the U.S. where people have been injured or killed by these injections, and most every county is going to have dishonest, corrupt judges who need to be brought to justice and removed from the bench.
Because otherwise there is little hope for any political solution. We the People need to start exercising our Constitutional rights, and take our country back from the Globalist pedophiles who now run the show.
See Also:
This morning I received an email from my Medicare provider in regards to the Pfizer and Moderna “vaccines” (DNA disrupters), being available to me and requiring that I make an appointment to receive mine.
My return response to my doctor was this; “I have decided to decline vaccination. Thank you.”
I also downloaded the PDF they supplied on both “vaccines” and the first two paragraphs on both are very telling.
“The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine may prevent you from getting COVID-19.
“There is no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19.”
via ZeroHedge
Were the ‘conspiracy theorists’ just proven right about the “fake rescue plan” for COVID?
Did the ‘science-deniers’ just get confirmation that it was political after all?
The short answer to both of these questions regarding the COVID-19 ‘casedemic’ and the fallacy of asymptomatic PCR testing is YES and YES!
We have detailed the controversy surrounding America’s COVID “casedemic” and the misleading results of the PCR test and its amplification procedure in great detail over the past few months.
As a reminder, “cycle thresholds” (Ct) are the level at which widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test can detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus. The higher the number of cycles, the lower the amount of viral load in the sample; the lower the cycles, the more prevalent the virus was in the original sample.
Numerous epidemiological experts have argued that cycle thresholds are an important metric by which patients, the public, and policymakers can make more informed decisions about how infectious and/or sick an individual with a positive COVID-19 test might be. However, as JustTheNews reports, health departments across the country are failing to collect that data.
In fact, as far back as October, we brought the world’s attention to the COVID-19 “casedemic” and the disturbing reality of high-cycle threshold PCR tests being worse than useless as indicators of COVID-19 “sickness”. PJMedia’s Stacey Lennox said at the time:
Biden will issue national standards, like the plexiglass barriers in restaurants he spoke about during the debate, and pressure governors to implement mask mandates using the federal government’s financial leverage.
Some hack at the CDC or FDA will issue new guidance lowering the Ct the labs use, and cases will magically start to fall.
In reality, the change will only eliminate false positives, but most Americans won’t know that.
Good old Uncle Joe will be the hero, even though it is Deep-State actors in the health bureaucracies who won’t solve a problem with testing they have been aware of for months. TDS is a heck of a drug.
And now, as Lennox explains in detail below, we have been proved 100% correct as less than one hour after President Biden’s inauguration, the WHO proved us right.
In August of last year, The New York Times published an article stating that as many as 90% of COVID-19 tests in three states were not indicative of active illness. In other words, they were picking up viral debris incapable of causing infection or being transmitted because the cycle threshold (Ct) of the PCR testing amplified the sample too many times.
Labs in the United States were using a Ct of 37-40. Epidemiologists interviewed at the time said a Ct of around 30 was probably more appropriate. This means the CDC’s COVID-19 test standards for the PCR test would pick up an excessive number of false positives. The Times report noted the CDC’s own data suggested the PCR did not detect live virus over a Ct of 33. The reporter also noted that clinicians were not receiving the Ct value as part of the test results.
Yet a PCR test instruction document from the CDC that had been revised five times as of July 13, 2020, specified testing and interpretation of the test using a Ct of 40. On September 28, 2020, a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases from Jaafar et al. had asserted, based on patient labs and clinical data involving nearly 4,000 patients, that a Ct of 30 was appropriate for making public policy. An update to the CDC instructions for PCR testing from December 1, 2020, still uses a Ct of 40.
Shortly before the New York Times article was published, the CDC revised its COVID-19 test recommendations, saying that only syptomatic patients should be tested. The media went insane, and Dr. Fauci went all over television saying he was not part of the decision to change the testing standards:
“I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is.”
So, of course, the Mendacious Midget™ had spoken, and the guidelines went back to testing everyone, all the time, with an oversensitive test.
The idea that asymptomatic spread was a concern as of August was just one of many lies Dr. Fauci told. At the beginning of the pandemic in late January, he said:
The one thing historically that people need to realize is that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there is a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.
There is not a single study or meta-analysis that differs from Fauci’s original assessment.
Today, within an hour of Joe Biden being inaugurated and signing an executive order mandating masks on all federal property, the WHO sent out a notice to lab professionals using the PCR test. It said:
WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1).
The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load.
Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.
literally one hour after Biden takes the oath, the WHO admits that PCR testing at high amplification rates alters the predictive value of the tests and results in a huge number of false positives pic.twitter.com/iDtXmappRw
— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 20, 2021
This translates to “in the absence of symptoms, a high Ct value means you are highly unlikely to become ill or get anyone else sick in the absence of very recent exposure to an infected person.”
Dr. Fauci knew this in July when he said that tests with a Ct above 35 were likely picking up viral debris or dead virus.
Even at a Ct of 35, the incidence of virus samples that could replicate is very low, according to Jaafar et al.
The only state I know that requires reporting the Ct with every test is Florida, which started this policy in December.
The WHO went on, stating:
Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.
In short, a positive PCR test in the absence of symptoms means nothing at a Ct of higher than 30,according to the experts interviewed by the New York Times and according to Jaafar et al. Yet positive tests is the number CNN loves flashing on the screen.
If the percentage found by the Times in August holds, there have been approximately 2.43 million actual cases to date, not 24.3 million.
There is also no way to calculate the deaths from COVID-19 rather than deaths with some dead viral debris in the nostrils.
What I have referred to as the “casedemic” since September will be magically solved just in time for Joe Biden to look like a hero. For doing absolutely nothing.
Do not tell me there is not a politicized deep state in our health agencies. Do not ever tell me I need to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci again. And every business owner who has been ruined because of lockdowns due to a high number of “cases” should be livid. Any parent whose child has lost a year of school should be furious.
None of this was for your health. It was to get rid of Orange Man Bad.
now they will drop the cycle rates and you can watch the curve go negative… like magic… because the new magic man isn’t the bad man and the masks he ordered worked!!!!!
— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 20, 2021
As an aside, this also clearly explains the disappearance of the “flu” during this season as the plethora of high Ct PCR Tests supposedly pointing to a surge in COVID are nothing of the sort.
As Stephen Lendman noted previously, claiming “lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks, (outbreaks) plummet(ting) by 98% in the United States” ignored that what’s called COVID is merely seasonal influenza combined with false positives (extremely high Ct) from PCR-Tests.
And for that reason, the great 2020 disappearing flu passes largely under the mass media’s radar. Media proliferated mass deception and the power of repetition get most people to believe and having successfully “killed the flu”, they will now do the same with COVID… and, if allowed by our betters, we will all return to the new normal they desire.
By Peter Doshi and Jennifer Block
Dr. Doshi, an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, leads the Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials Initiative. Ms. Block (@writingblock) is the author of “Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution.”
Most people have been hearing for months that a coronavirus vaccine, given to a sufficiently large proportion of the population, will induce herd immunity and ultimately end the pandemic. And that now, with two authorized vaccines, the challenge is to inoculate as many people as we can — which means convincing the significant number of people who are hesitant.
But before we demonize the 40 percent of Americans who say they aren’t ready to roll up their sleeves, let’s step back and consider whether herd immunity is actually the right goal right now.
If the clinical trial results presented by Pfizer and Moderna hold up in the real world, the vaccines will be highly effective at protecting the people who receive them from getting sick with Covid-19. But the trials did not measure whether vaccinated individuals can still infect others. This means we can’t assume that the vaccines — even adequately deployed — will eradicate the virus. They might; we just don’t know. That’s why officials are urging that those who have been vaccinated continue to wear masks and practice social distancing.
In the meantime, it’s needlessly divisive to use pressure, shame or mandates to get people vaccinated. Officials could instead look at their glass half full. Sixty percent of people are willing — and until recently, 60 percent was the herd immunity goal.
(Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged he had adjusted his estimate upward based on what he felt the public was ready to hear, saying, “We really don’t know what the real number is.” The danger in such paternalism is that it can undermine the very thing people need to make good decisions: unbiased information.)
Perhaps a more helpful way to think about restoring public life is to think of Covid as a storm. Most people will ride it out just fine. But the storm poses a real threat to a minority of people, who, because of age or medical conditions or workplace exposure, are particularly vulnerable to its winds. These people are far more likely to have severe complications of Covid-19 that lead to hospitalizations, overwhelmed ICUs and deaths. And these individuals stand to gain the most by the shelter a vaccine hopefully provides. Let’s make sure all of them have easy access to one before attacking those who aren’t sure they want one.
There’s another reason health leaders should resist the hard sell: The vaccines are not risk free. Most side effects appear to be mild and short lived, but not all. For example, with the Moderna vaccine, the frequency of grade 3 adverse events — those severe enough to prevent daily activity, including fatigue and muscle pain— is higher than it is for mostvaccines: 17.4 percent, or nearly one in five 18-to-64-year-olds who received the vaccine in the company’s trial. (Grade 3 adverse events appear to occur less frequently with the Pfizer vaccine, but a direct comparison is not possible.) And there have been some serious allergic reactions. It’s reasonable for people to weigh all of this in making their decisions.
For those unlikely to become seriously ill with Covid, the vaccines’ risk-benefit analysis is not clear cut. Nor is it obvious for groups that were excluded from the trials, such as pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals. Then there are the millions of people who have already been infected and acquired immunity.
There is also a legitimate lack of trust between the medical establishment and women and Black and brown communities. This is finally being acknowledged by public health leaders, but the assumption is that once historical trauma is overcome, mass acceptance should follow. This can further alienate marginalized groups by denying their agency in making an informed decision, whichever way it lands.
It doesn’t help that more and more, all these people are being labeled anti-vaxxers. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently suggestedthat the “right wing disinformation machine” — the same one that challenged the presidential election results — could undermine confidence in the vaccine, leaving us with “a real problem on our hands.”
But considering a vaccine’s risk-benefit ratio is not the work of conspiracy theorists. Many people who are hesitant now may turn out to be later adopters.
We must be alert to misinformation, but we also need to resist magical thinking on vaccines: “Safe” is a term of advocacy, not science or journalism.
We all want the storm to pass, but we have to keep clear heads: Help the people at risk of drowning into lifeboats, then see about life jackets for the people already on board.
by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT Italy
Versione originale in Italiano
UPDATE ON JANUARY 17
The massacre of Lanuvio becomes more and more mysterious as anticipated yesterday by Gospa News. Too many pieces are missing to explain a terrible as well as banal massacre due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
The tragedy occurred in a Nursing Home near Rome after the discovery of a Covid-10 outbreak but according to the first investigations it would not have been the virus that caused the deaths but the gas. It is a pity that the source of the exhalations which are presumed to have been accidental and not malicious is not found.
The Prosecutor of Velletri after five elderly people died of asphyxiation by carbon monoxide and seven others, intoxicated by the same gas, were hospitalized in serious condition in hospital, opened a file for multiple manslaughter but until yesterday the Fire Brigade did not they had managed to isolate the causes that led a villa of about 400 square meters to be filled with monoxide.
Mayor Luigi Galieti proclaimed city mourning today: “It is a sad day for the whole community, says Galieti, let the investigators do their job to clarify the causes and if there are responsibilities. However, I would like to clarify that the structure is in possession of the requisites established by law in terms of urban planning and any other as far as municipal competence is concerned “.
Yesterday, the first inspections by the fire brigade who entered the Villa noting a copious presence of carbon monoxide did not ascertain where the lethal gas came from. The Prosecutor of Velletri has seized the area while in the next few days further appraisals should clarify the cause and dynamics.
ARTICLE POSTED ON JANUARY 16
Unfortunately, a massacre in a nursing home is not sensational news in times of pandemic. But it becomes so when anomalous circumstances occur that make it mysterious. In a small community for the elderly in Lanuvio, a town of 13,000 inhabitants near Velletri, on the outskirts of Rome, 5 guests were found dead, another 5 were hospitalized in very serious conditions together with two health workers: all with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Identification details have not yet been disclosed, but it is known that they are between 77 and 100 years old.
The alarm was given by an employee of the facility who, arriving this morning, Saturday 16 January, to start his shift in Villa dei Diamanti (House of Diamonds), via Di Monte Giove Nuovo 3, found himself faced with a tragedy. On which various mysteries hover.
Carabinieri, Police and Fire Brigade intervened on the site of the tragedy
The 12 allegedly intoxicated, in fact, should have been transferred precisely this morning to the Covid-19 Centers because both 9 guests (out of 10) of the nursing home and three operators had tested positive for the SARS-Cov-2 virus of the pandemic. This took place ten days after the start of the vaccination plan in the area’s Nursing Homes, which began on 4 January as advertised on Facebook by the Mayor of Lanuvio, Luigi Galieti, who is also a general practitioner and allergist in the community.
Being Saturday, it has not yet been possible to find either the Health Autority or the doctor and therefore know if the victims, the hospitalized or the operators had already been vaccinated and could therefore have contracted Covid-19 after the administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech serum as happened massively to Israel. Just in recent days in Norway there have been 23 deaths of vaccinated: for 13 of them the health authorities of Oslo have confirmed a connection between death and adverse reactions specifying that even mild side effects can be fatal to elderly and frail people with other pathologies.
But a further yellow concerns the hypothesis of accidental gas exhalation in the small structure as it was inaugurated only in March 2017 and therefore should have had all the systems perfectly up to standard. The couple of owners of the house, two 40-year-olds from Lanuvio, are desperate for what happened, traces of carbon monoxide were found inside the rooms.
Ambulances from Ares 118 immediately arrived on the spot and found the death of 5 elderly people, which probably occurred during night sleep due to lack of oxygen without allowing anyone to notice what was happening, and they urgently transported another 5 in desperate conditions due to suspected intoxication at the Castelli hospital. While two health workers, also with a very serious clinical picture, were hospitalized in Tor Vergata.
«The victims died in their beds from fumes perhaps coming from the heating system. But other hypotheses are not ruled out at the moment. Firefighters intervened on the spot with special equipment for the detection of toxic substances» wrote Italian newspaper Corriere from the Rome editorial office.
To shed light on the mysterious massacre, the Carabinieri of the Lanuvio Station also arrived together with those of the Velletri Company, the scientific police and the commander of the Local Police together with the mayor Gallieti and the magistrate of the Velletri Prosecutor’s Office. In front of the retirement home there were also moments of tension between the relatives of the guests, who arrived after hearing about the tragedy on TV as reported in a Fanpage video.
“You can’t know these things from the news – a woman originally from Ariccia vented -. I was in my mother’s womb for 9 months and we spent another 60 together. Communications with relatives are the first things”. “What are they guarding the fallen?” another furious added.
The police had in fact delimited the area with the white-red ribbon also for reasons of health emergency as a result of the outbreak of Covid-19 which led the Fire Brigade to enter only with protective suits.
The Lanuvio facility, Villa Diamanti is not a Covid Center or a health facility, but it is a retirement home for the elderly on which epidemiological investigations were underway by the prevention department of the ASL Roma 6 for a case of positivity found on January 13 on a social assistance operator of the structure. Operators and guests had all been swabbed the following day (January 14) and last night there was a response from 3 operators and 9 guests who tested positive. This morning, according to what was learned from the health director of the ASL Roma 6, the ASL was expected to be taken over for transfers to the Covid departments “, the Covid crisis unit of the Lazio Region said.
As emerged from previous Gospa News inquiries, the Lazio Region of Governor Nicola Zingaretti was among the most active in Italy in the promotion and research on vaccines, also through various collaborations with GlaxoSmithKline, the multinational of vaccines controlled in various ways by Bill Gates. (read more).
AUTHOR DETAILS Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio
Director , Gospa News
Fabio is Director and Editor of Gospa News; a Christian Information Journal. Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio, born on 24/2/1967 in Borgosesia, started working as a reporter since he was only 19 years old in the alpine area of Valsesia, Piedmont, his birth region in Italy. After studying literature and history at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, he became deputy director of a local newspaper and specialized in judicial reporting. For about 15 years he is a correspondent from Northern Italy for the Italian newspapers Libero and Il Giornale, also writing important revelations on the Ustica massacre, a report on Freemasonry and organized crime. With independent investigations he collaborates with Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza in important investigations that conclude with the arrest of Camorra entrepreneurs or corrupt politicians. In July 2018 he found the counter-information webmedia Gospa News focused on geopolitics, terrorism, Middle East and military intelligence. He is a correspondent from Italy for the French news site Reseau International. He worked since many years for the magazine Art & Wine as art critic and curator http://www.art-wine.eu/
https://www.gospanews.net/
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By Children’s Health Defense Team
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Pfizer/BioNTech and Modernapermission to distribute their experimental mRNA coronavirus vaccines to Americans on an “emergency use” basis in December, it opened the floodgates for other countries to quickly follow suit.
By Jan. 11, counting China and Russia, 43 countries had administered at least 26 million doses of vaccine — especially Pfizer’s — with far more ambitious plans for the coming year. The companies’ global delivery targets for 2021 include two billionPfizer/BioNTech doses and at least 600 million Moderna shots.
Drawing on the tried-and-true marketing technique of drumming up the “illusion of scarcity” to “accelerate demand,” U.S. officials have been attempting to direct the public’s attention to the concocted drama of vaccine supply shortages and a slower-than-expected rollout.
However, as the early warning signs already apparent during clinical trials begin to translate into serious adverse reactions on a wider scale, officials now face a new public relations challenge — that of “managing expectations” to ensure population willingness to take the vaccine.
As more people hear about adverse events, and more adverse events occur — ranging from life-threatening anaphylaxis and emergency room visits to brain inflammationand death — “selling” the experimental injections may become an increasingly uphill battle.
Deaths … so far
In the U.S., the primary mechanism for reporting adverse reactions is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a flawed passive surveillance system that relies on the willingness and ability of parents and professionals to submit reports voluntarily.
As Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote on Dec. 18, 2020 to the co-chair of the new COVID-19 Advisory Board, VAERS has been an abject failure, with fewer than 1% of adverse events ever reported, according to a 2010 federal study.
Given the abysmal track record of VAERS in capturing serious adverse events, it is noteworthy that 13 deaths — a subset of 3,916 total adverse events reported following COVID-19 vaccination — had already been recorded by the system by the end of December (as per the MedAlerts search engine).
Nine of the deaths followed the Pfizer vaccine and four followed the Moderna shot (see table below). Nearly all of the deceased were institutionalized (primarily in nursing homes), although one 63-year-old male received the injection at work.
Five (and possibly six) of the deaths occurred on the same day as vaccination, all in women and sometimes within 60 to 90 minutes of the injection — and without any “immediate adverse reaction” having been observed.
The reports describe outcomes ranging from “foaming at the mouth” to “massive heart attacks.” Three of the deceased were in their early to mid-60s.
The write-ups that accompany VAERS reports furnish details about these sad fatalities, including the astonishing fact that some of the deceased had actually experienced and recovered from COVID-19 (raising questions about why they were vaccinated).
The write-ups also illustrate the subtle pressure to attribute the cause of death to something other than COVID-19 vaccination. For example, a grandchild who submitted a report wrote, “My grandmother [age 85] died a few hours after receiving the moderna covid vaccine booster 1. While I don’t expect that the events are related, the treating hospital did not acknowledge this and I wanted to be sure a report was made.”
A nursing home submitting a report on behalf of an 89-year-old who died five days after receiving the Moderna injection likewise wrote, “Due to proximity of vaccination we felt we should report the death, even though it is not believed to be related.”
And when a 78-year-old died two days after the Pfizer shot, the report simply stated, “no adverse events and no issues yesterday; Death today … (unknown if related – Administrator marked as natural causes).”
The 13 deaths communicated to VAERS do not include any deaths in the state of New York. However, a disturbing news report from Syracuse.com suggests that COVID-19 vaccines could be linked to a shocking number of additional deaths in the elderly in that state.
According to the news account, a single nursing home in upstate New York vaccinated 193 residents beginning on Dec. 22 and subsequently reported 24 deaths within the span of a couple of weeks. Although the facility has attributed the deaths to a COVID-19 “outbreak,” there had been no COVID-19deaths in any nursing homes in the entire county “until the first three deaths … were reported Dec. 29.”
Pointing out that 24 deaths among 193 vaccinated residents equates to a 12.4% mortality rate, one observer notes that this reflects a “124-fold increase in mortality over and above the COVID-19 death rate for the population at large.”
Another compelling source of data about deaths following receipt of the experimental Pfizer/BioNTech shot comes from a growing number of incidents being reported from Israel and Europe:
Finally, in early January, news outlets, including The Defender, also described the tragic U.S. case involving Miami obstetrician-gynecologist Gregory Michael, who at age 56 died within two weeks of receiving the Pfizer vaccine — with the cause of death attributed to a “highly unusual clinical case of severe [immune] thrombocytopenia” (ITP).
ITP is considered a Type II “hypersensitivity reaction” (“immune responses that are exaggerated or inappropriate against an antigen or allergen”). Because Michael did not start experiencing symptoms until three days post-vaccination, his case was not captured in a Jan. 6 Centers for Disease and Control (CDC) report on serious allergic reactions following COVID-19 vaccination that limited the analysis to reactions occurring within the first 24 hours.
Serious allergic reactions
Critics familiar with VAERS’ shortcomings — and the ways in which officials can manipulate its data — bluntly condemn VAERS as “nothing more than window dressing, and a part of U.S. authorities’ systematic effort to reassure/deceive us about vaccine safety.”
As an example of the “effort to reassure,” one need look no further than the Jan. 6 CDC news release about post-vaccination anaphylaxis and non-anaphylaxis allergic reactions. In this report, the CDC’s tally of the hundreds of VAERS reports received per day during the first 10 days of the Pfizer vaccine rollout totaled 4,393 adverse events from December 14 to 23 — including 175 incidents flagged by CDC “for further review as possible cases of severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, based on descriptions of signs and symptoms.”
Following its review, the CDC chose to include only 21 cases, excluding 154 cases either because they did not meet narrow criteria defined by the Brighton Collaboration (a global group that publishes “standardized case definitions” for countable adverse events); or because symptom onset occurred “later than the day after vaccination”; or because CDC judged the events to be “nonallergic” despite signs and symptoms to the contrary.
Based on the 21 cases, the public health agency then produced an estimate of 11.1 cases of anaphylaxis per million vaccine doses, whereas including all 175 events reported as severe allergic reactions would have yielded a rate of 92.4 cases per million doses.
Even so, the CDC’s conservative estimate of the anaphylaxis rate for experimental COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is roughly 10 times greater than for flu shots, including in individuals with no prior history of allergic reactions.
News reports have added to the frightening picture of post-COVID-19 allergic reactions that is emerging. These include the “hundreds” of Israelis describing “severe anaphylactic shock,” other allergic symptoms such as tongue and throat swelling, tingling sensations, dizziness and weakness; the two health workers in the UK who suffered “anaphylactoid reactions” on the first day of the Pfizer vaccine rollout; the two hospital workers in Alaska who experienced allergic symptoms — a serious anaphylactic reaction in one case and “eye puffiness, light headedness and scratchy throat” in the second case — within 10 minutes of getting the Pfizer jab; and the “mild to moderate” side effects from the Pfizer injection, including pain and dizziness, reported by four Bulgarians.
Reactions have not been confined to allergic symptoms, however. Additional descriptions of adverse events include:
Adverse mRNA vaccine reactions — no picnic
Setting the stage to “manage expectations,” The Atlantic told readers in mid-December that while COVID-19 injections have “a kick” and involve “more than the usual unpleasantness of getting a shot,” they are still “nowhere near as bad as COVID-19 itself.”
Some of the individuals described above and others submitting reports to VAERS might beg to differ.
For example, in a write-up accompanying one VAERS report (available through MedAlerts), a 36-year-old female who received the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 17 was described as experiencing “disabling” light-headedness and dizziness 15 to 20 minutes post-vaccination, followed by an elevated heart rate and “really high” blood pressure.
After several hours in a monitoring station, where health workers gave her Benadryl and “lots of water” along with measuring her blood pressure “every five minutes,” she spent another four hours undergoing “continual monitoring” in the emergency room, followed by “a few more hours” in the ER the following day and a recommendation to start taking blood pressure medication. By Dec. 20, her blood pressure still had not normalized, and she had developed a bad headache. The health provider who submitted the report to VAERS on the woman’s behalf concluded that a causal association between Pfizer’s vaccine and the event could not be ruled out “based on a compatible temporal relation.”
Among Pfizer vaccine recipients with reactions categorized in VAERS as “life-threatening,” there are many other disquieting write-ups, often concerning young women in their 30s:
What’s next?
An objective analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout necessarily raises serious questions about product safety and the assessment of risks versus benefits.
The VAERS reports submitted through December indicate that over half (53%) of those affected by mRNA vaccine reactions are 17-44 year-olds in the prime of life.
More than one in five (n=877) adverse events resulted in an emergency visit, 140 were rated “serious,” 100 led to hospitalization, 41 were “life-threatening” and 5 produced permanent disability.
Supplementing VAERS, the CDC has been encouraging COVID-19 vaccine recipients to use a smartphone app called v-safe to “quickly tell CDC” about mRNA vaccine side effects. On Dec. 19, v-safe tallies for the first five days of COVID-19 vaccination showed that among 215,362 vaccine recipients registered with v-safe, 5,052 individuals self-reported serious “health impact events” following their first dose of vaccine — events requiring care from a fellow health professional and rendering the person unable to work or perform normal daily activities. This, too, is concerning, translating into a one-in-43 injury rate (2.3%) for the v-safe group.
In the new year, many states are planning to aggressively scale up distribution of both the Pfizer vaccine and the even more reactogenic Moderna vaccine, including at drugstores, supermarkets, big-box stores, dental offices and temporary sites like stadiums and even Disneyland.
This has prompted concerns among allergists, in particular, who question whether drive-thru sites and under-trained personnel will be able to recognize and handle the sudden adverse reactions that the two mRNA vaccines seem capable of eliciting — especially since both contain the notorious allergenic ingredient polyethylene glycol (PEG).
In the U.S., some allergists are recommending that consumers with known allergies be “proactive” and ask prospective vaccination venues “pointed questions” about their emergency training, equipment and ability “to respond swiftly if something goes wrong.”
A growing number of healthcare experts are going even further, with one Wyoming public health official describing the injections as “biological weapons of mass destruction,” and many others urging the public to “just say no” to experimental injections that health officials and the vaccine makers admit aren’t proven to prevent COVID or stop transmissibility, but could do long-lasting harm.
by Ilya Feoktistov Source: The Federalist
In 2003, terrorism was a more immediate national danger than infectious diseases. Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had just redirected $117 million from infectious diseases to fund a new anthrax vaccine effort in response to the anthrax attacks that happened a week after 9/11.
The millions were just a small part of the $1.8 billion Fauci had poured into defense from bioterrorist attacks over the preceding two years. More than half of those funds were devoted to anthrax and smallpox alone. In 2004, Fauci launched the $5.6 billion “Project Bioshield,” the National Institutes of Health’s biggest outlay for a single research issue until then.
Some microbiology researchers at the time, however, according to the journal Nature, were concerned that Fauci’s actions would ultimately “distort priorities in infectious-disease research, sucking money away from work to understand and counter natural disease outbreaks that ultimately pose a greater threat to public health.” The 2003 Nature article cited a Stanford University microbiologist saying “that diseases such as influenza and other respiratory-tract infections routinely kill far more people than would die in a bioterrorist attack, and therefore deserve a greater share of the NIAID budget.”
The criticism turned out to be warranted. In 2007, after spending billions under the opposite premise, Fauci admitted that “at the end of the day, you’re not going to kill as many people [with an anthrax attack] as you would if you blasted off a couple of car bombs in Times Square.” His anthrax vaccine effort had failed, having been “sunk by lobbying.”
The anthrax vaccine failure followed on the heels of Fauci’s controversial leadership of the nation’s AIDS response in the 1980s and ‘90s. According to “Good Intentions,” a 1990 book by investigative author and innovation expert Bruce Nussbaum, Fauci started his career as “a lackluster scientist,” who “found his true vocation—empire building” when he took the reins at NIAID in 1984.
To ensure that AIDS would be his exclusive demesne within the federal government, Fauci “started the most important bureaucratic battle in the history of the fight against AIDS,” squeezing out more scientifically competent, but less conniving administrators. According to Nussbaum, if Fauci had not won the battle, “many people who died might have lived.”
Having won his monopoly over AIDS within the federal government, Fauci, by training an immunologist who focuses on how the body fights infections itself, favored a vaccine approach in the fight against the then-terminal illness. This understandable professional bias came at the expense of research into the anti-retroviral drugs that ultimately reduced AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic disease in remission. As Nussbaum wrote in 1990:
Tony Fauci’s managerial incompetence had exacted a staggering cost. By 1987, more than a million Americans were infected by the AlDS virus. Not a single drug treatment had come out of the government’s enormous biomedical research system. In the end, Fauci barely survived by handing over control of the government’s only AIDS drug trial program [to a pharmaceutical company].
As a result, a single drug, AZT, was the only AIDS treatment that came out of Fauci’s government research system, and only after help from the private sector. In 1988, the playwright and prominent AIDS activist Larry Kramer published an “Open Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci” in the Village Voice, writing, in part:
You admitted that you are an incompetent idiot. Over the past four years, $374 million has been allocated for AIDS treatment research. You were in charge of spending much of that money. . . . Yet after three years you have established only a system of waste, chaos, and uselessness.
According to “Good Intentions,” in “an attempt to salvage his reputation, if not his career,” Fauci coopted Kramer, becoming the well-connected activist’s top ally within the federal government’s public health apparatus. Kramer, in turn, was Fauci’s “vector” into elitist American society, perfectly positioning the technocrat for his favorite role as “a hit-the-front-page-every-day kind of guy,” according to an unnamed health official Nussbaum quotes.
With the AIDS treatment research strategy continuing to face setbacks, Fauci focused on developing an HIV vaccine. This quest, however, offered less and less glory as the 1990s progressed. Starting in 1995, private industry began developing effective drug therapies that would drastically reduce AIDS mortality in the developed world by the turn of the millennium, making the HIV vaccine much less of a potential game-changer. While the bioterrorism threat restored Fauci’s prominence in national politics, neither the bioterrorism threat nor the anthrax vaccine ever materialized.
Things got even worse for Fauci before they became better. On Feb. 3, 2020, the journal Science reported that, after almost four decades, Fauci’s “failure-ridden search for a vaccine that can stop the AIDS virus has delivered yet another frustrating defeat.” According to the scientist heading the study in South Africa, “[t]here’s absolutely no evidence of efficacy” from the $104 million study. “Years of work went into this. It’s a huge disappointment.”
Fauci admitted to Science that all those years and millions were spent on an effort that he knew was very unlikely to succeed: “We were struggling for years and years, and so we grabbed onto the slightest positive effect, a potential correlate of immunity, and it looked interesting.” Fauci, however, had had just become unfireable, with the first U.S. COVID-19 patient diagnosed only a week prior.
“I was always saying [a respiratory illness like COVID-19] would be my worst nightmare,” he claimed in June. Yet, only a few months earlier, Fauci was telling Americans that, far from being his biggest fear, the danger from the Wuhan virus was “just minuscule,” so “there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask.” The media buried long-standing scientific concerns that Fauci had been “sucking money away from work to understand and counter natural disease outbreaks.”
A March 2020 hagiography published in the Washington Post’s Style section noted how the dapper doctor is, once again these days, a hit-the-front-page-every-day kind of guy, who “seems to transcend time and space, appearing in all media at all times.” The newspaper quoted House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer lamenting: “It’s a shame that at the first hint of this we didn’t just say to Tony Fauci, ‘You’re in charge, you have all the power you need, tell us what needs to be done.’”
The first COVID-19 vaccine granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was developed by scientists at Pfizer, which took no funding from Fauci’s NIAID. “All the investment for R&D and manufacturing has been made by Pfizer at risk,” says the company.
Thirty years ago, Nussbaum correctly diagnosed the primary cause of Fauci’s many setbacks:
[T]he best scientists do not become administrators. The best scientists do not become coordinators of programs for other scientists in medical schools around the country. The best scientists stay in the labs, they don’t push paper.
Fauci is an excellent politician who survived four decades and five presidents— two Democrats, and three Republicans. Considering the mental acuity of the country’s incoming president, and the ongoing anxiety among its citizens, it appears the politically skilled but scientifically inept Fauci administration is not going anywhere soon.