What If I Trust Science and Don’t Trust Dr. Fauci? By Stacey Lennox
https://pjmedia.com/columns/stacey-lennox/2020/06/20/what-if-i-trust-science-and-dont-trust-dr-fauci-n551584
I wanted to trust Dr. Anthony Fauci. I really did. Early in the pandemic, I took the advice of Dr. Drew Pinsky and listened to what he said. Maybe I listened too closely. Lockdowns leave a person a lot of free time, and a Google machine and keyboard are an excellent way to pass the time.
This week on a Department of Health and Human Services podcast, Dr. Fauci made the following comment:
“One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are … inconceivable and not understandable, they just don’t believe science, and they don’t believe authority,”
My head almost exploded. He made this comment in the same week he admitted the nation’s Health Experts™ lied to Americans about the effectiveness of masks. They decided to tell us masks didn’t work rather than tells us they were effective in preventing the spread, but please refrain from buying them until we have an adequate supply for healthcare workers.
Having worked as a Registered Nurse, I was pretty confident that was what they were trying to do at the time. However, that is not why I have lost confidence in the nation’s Health Experts™. Instead, the findings of the research I did on my own during the initial months of the outbreak have me questioning their honesty, effectiveness, and rejecting their authority.
The Models and Lockdowns
Do I need to say anything more? We crashed the economy based on a model from the Imperial College. All other models were ignored, even when the modeling had predicted the experience in other countries. Voices not calling for extreme response measures were silenced.
Even at that point, it was clear that large swaths of the population would likely weather the illness with few if any, effects. People under 65 and without chronic diseases should never have been forced to stay home. This pandemic is the first time we have quarantined the healthy. It was an insane premise to start with. The real kicker was finding out a high school science project informed the lockdown policies.
As the lockdown progressed in other countries, there was little to no correlation between the nature of the lockdown and the experience with the virus. Maybe because they eventually had to admit that surface transmission was not a thing. And asymptomatic transition might be, but they aren’t sure.
Hydroxychloroquine
The debate over this generic drug that has been in use for decades is one of the most puzzling and ridiculous things about the entire pandemic. The medicine was politicized and became controversial. After researching it myself and listening to practicing physicians who were using it, I expected Dr. Fauci to step up and clarify why there was a reason to believe it may work in conjunction with the mineral zinc. He never did.
I found this odd since the drug’s older cousin, chloroquine had been demonstrated to inhibit the SARS virus, which has a 90% overlap with COVID-19. The NIH did this study in 2005, where Dr. Fauci is a director.
We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.
Any doctor that was recommending the treatment recommended it be given with zinc. The properties of zinc on RNA viruses, which COVID-19 is, are also well known. Again a study from the NIH in 2010 shows that with a companion ionophore, or drug that allows more zinc to enter the cell, the mineral interferes with the replication of the virus. Both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are zinc ionophores.
Additionally, the doctors using the treatment were using it outpatient when a patient demonstrated shortness of breath. Not in end-stage illness when a patient was severely ill on a ventilator. Dr. Fauci could have explained the scientific rationale for outpatient use to the morons in the White House Press Corps who were politicizing its use. He didn’t, and that made me very suspicious.
I became even more suspicious when the NIH announced a trial. The trial did not include zinc. The exclusion of the mineral made no rational sense, given the clinical information. It was also not clear at what point in the illness the hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin would be given.
Dr. Fauci’s lack of candor about the science behind the drug trials and resistance to clinical testimony from doctors treating patients made me lose confidence. I do not know if the reason is incompetent knowledge management in the NIH or something else. However, I find it inexcusable.
Cytokine Storms
When the virus hit our shores, we were preparing the health system to deal with a severe respiratory infection that caused Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). Ventilators were all the rage and occupied the national response. Within days of the first patients hitting the ICU in New York City, doctors were questioning this assumption.
Ventilators did not seem to be working, and the patients were presenting with severe hypoxia, or low blood oxygen, and other symptoms that were not indicative of ARDS. This was not well-reported and all but ignored by the corporate media. Our Health Experts™ never mentioned it.
Then some clinicians started talking about cytokine storms or an overreaction of the immune system that can cause damage to several body systems. It is a complex illness and often requires immunosuppressive drugs. These specific drugs were contraindicated on the national health guidelines for treating COVID-19 until very recently.
This is all very frustrating because the NIH knew in 2005 that SARS caused this reaction in the body. Further, it was reported in New Scientist in 2003 that this was the case. The article also stated that any virus passed from an animal to a human could have the ability to cause this immune reaction.
SARS, a coronavirus that came from nowhere to kill around 1 in 6 of its victims, has added an urgent impetus to the research. There’s reason to believe that any new infectious disease that crosses from animals to humans could trigger this reaction. “A lot of people are clued into this as a very important way of understanding viruses,” says virologist Wendy Barclay at the University of Reading, UK. “It’s an up-and-coming subject.”
So the Health Experts™ were clued in in 2003 but not in 2020?
Some smart clinical doctors started to figure it out. The corporate media and Dr. Fauci never clued in the public. A group of U.K. researchers has now demonstrated the effectiveness of dexamethasone, an inexpensive and widely available steroid, on treating severe COVID-19. This is fantastic news, of course.
However, if anyone had listened to Dr. Thomas Yadegar of Providence Cedars-Sinai back in April, these treatment advances would have been made in the United States. He and his team had already developed a protocol for treatment and testing using these types of medications based on the patient’s lab work.
Dr. Fauci has not mentioned this finding or the fact that effective treatment is available for many patients as he sits and contemplates widespread testing and tracing as well as the possibility of local lockdown is infuriating. It has been published in the Wall Street Journal and a few other publications. But Dr. Fauci has the biggest megaphone and could calm down the public.
There is no need for clinical trials here. Cytokine storms are known phenomena with available treatments. Doctors are not treating the virus in these severe cases. They are managing the immune system overreaction.
Health Experts™ Have No Authority
I believe in science. And if this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that science is never really settled. In the management of public health, the president should get the opinion of Health Experts™. Lots of them with different points of view.
Because in a new disease, they will most assuredly be wrong on any number of counts early in the process. The president then needs to balance the public health will all the other considerations, economic, national security, and many others. The idea that Dr. Fauci, or anyone in the NIH or CDC, was an authority on COVID-19 in March is absurd.
Medicine is the art of applying science to a set of symptoms and complaints. As it turns out, doctors treating patients did a much better job figuring out the science that our Health Experts™ did. So, quite frankly, Dr. Fauci and his peers should never wield the amount of authority over all aspects of citizens’ lives as they have for the past several months.
I trust science and read a lot of it during the pandemic. I don’t believe Health Experts™.
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