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MEDICINE AND HEALTH

Good riddance to Fauci and his calamitous, costly career By John Tierney

https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/good-riddance-to-fauci-and-his-calamitous-costly-career/

Whatever comes next in the pandemic, we all have cause to rejoice at the best news since the arrival of the COVID vaccine: Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, has announced his retirement. His long and singularly disastrous career ends in December.

Never in the history of the public-health profession has anyone been so richly rewarded for doing so much harm to the public’s health. Whether or not he actually helped start the COVID pandemic — by funding dangerous research in the Chinese lab that may have created the coronavirus — he promoted a series of policies in America and the rest of the world that did even more damage than the virus.

Except possibly for the Great Depression, the lockdowns were the costliest public-policy mistake ever made during peacetime in America.

Fauci got away with it by invoking the authority of science while violating its fundamental principles. Before COVID arrived, the world’s leading epidemiologists had warned that lockdowns would be futile and cause catastrophic collateral damage, but Fauci simply ignored that advice.

As evidence mounted of the policies’ failure, he persisted by deploying the skills honed during five decades in Washington: bureaucratic infighting, media manipulation and fearmongering.

Falling Life Expectancy Driven By Flailing, Failing Federal Health Baloney-aucracy Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/26/falling-life-expectancy-driven-by-flailing-failing-federal-health-baloney-aucracy/

“New NCHS report shows life expectancy declined in all 50 states and DC in 2020” – National Center for Health Statistics tweet

Life expectancy didn’t just “decline.” Per woke medical news site Medpage Today, it “plummet(ed).” By nearly two years, a gobsmacking statistic.

This commentator knows what you’re thinking. NBC News beat us to it: “The main reason for the decline, of course, was Covid-19.”

Of course.

Except … expectancy was already flat or down six times between 2012 and 2021. After steadily rising for generations.

Hmmm. Your correspondent is hardly the first to connect these dots, but guess what else changed in Health Care World in the early 2010s? Hint: starts with “O” and ends with “care.”

University of Colorado Boulder professor Ryan Masters, author of a previous life expectancy study (spoiler alert: lifespans dropped further in 2021) noted: “(H)igh rates of obesity and heart disease, along with inequities in access to health care, were already leading the U.S. to lose ground with respect to health and survival before the pandemic. ‘Those same factors made the U.S. more vulnerable … to the mortality consequences of COVID-19.’”

Death, Despair, And Lockdowns

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/26/death-despair-and-lockdowns/

The old saying that the cure is deadlier than the disease is a worn-out cliche. But that doesn’t mean it can’t make a point. The pandemic lockdowns are a perfect example of a banality being absolutely true.

Over about two-and-one-half years COVID-19 has killed a little more than 1 million Americans and another 5.5 million in the rest of the world. It’s a grim toll. At least its deadly effects will decrease as it becomes endemic.

The same can’t be said for the lockdowns. Their poison will be killing victims for years.

A recent article from the London Telegraph posted in Yahoo News tells the story of “​​experts” believing “decisions taken by the government in the earliest stages of the pandemic may now be coming back to bite.”

“Policies that kept people indoors, scared them away from hospitals and deprived them of treatment and primary care are finally taking their toll,” said the Telegraph.

For more than three months, excess deaths in England and Wales have averaged around 1,000 a week, and none are due to COVID.

It’s not as if the decision-makers weren’t warned. Robert Dingwall, a Nottingham Trent University professor and a government adviser during the pandemic, told the Telegraph that “the picture seems very consistent with what some of us were suggesting from the beginning.”

On our side of the Atlantic, “from April 2020 through at least the end of 2021, Americans died from non-COVID causes at an average annual rate 97,000 in excess of previous trends,” says a National Bureau of Economic Research paper.

It further contends that “excess mortality continues into calendar year 2022,” though it’s safe to say they will persist well past that date.

The authors, one from the University of Chicago Economics Department, the other a partner from a data and investment research firm, say “it should be no surprise that a widespread disruption to patient circumstances would degrade health and even elevate mortality from chronic conditions. Nevertheless, early in the pandemic some experts mocked this perspective as a ‘pet theory about the fatal dangers of quarantine.’” 

Twitter’s “Tricky” Timing Problem: Lawsuit Reveals Back Channel with CDC to Coordinate Censorship: Jonathan Turley

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/08/24/twitters-tricky-timing-problem-lawsuit-reveals-back-cdc-channel-to-coordinate-censorship/

“Tricky.” Over the course of 110 pages in a federal complaint, that one descriptive word seemed to stand out among the exchanges between social media executives and public health officials on censoring public viewpoints. The exchange reveals long-suspected coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system. Twitter just reportedly suspended another doctor who sought to raise concerns over Pfizer Covid records. Former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson is also suing Twitter over his suspension after raising dissenting views to the CDC. In the meantime, Twitter is rolling out new procedures to combat “misinformation” in the upcoming elections — a move that has some of us skeptical.The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media.  The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.”  It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship existed.
The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medical views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined by experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya objected this week to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents.Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination.  Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

Dr. Fauci’s Legacy Dr. Marty Makary on the public health risk of putting America’s fate in the hands of one doctor. Marty Makary M.D., M.P.H.

https://www.commonsense.news/p/dr-faucis-legacy?triedSigningIn=true

Anthony Fauci is ending his long and celebrated government career by being widely lauded for getting so much so very wrong on Covid-19.

Now 81 years old, Dr. Fauci has spent 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. He has been rightly honored for his many contributions over the decades, most notably during the fight against AIDS, for which he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. But to Covid-19 he brought a monomaniacal focus on vanquishing a single virus, whatever the cost—neglecting the damage that can follow when public health loses sight of the public’s health.

As the lead medical authority to two administrations on Covid-19, Dr. Fauci was unwavering in his advocacy for draconian policies. What were the impact of those policies on millions of Americans? And what would the country look like now had our public health experts taken a different approach? As Dr. Fauci is preparing to leave his post, those are a few of the questions worth asking as we consider his various Covid-19 legacies.

Dr. Fauci attends the National AIDS Update Conference in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 1989. (Deanne Fitzmaurice via Getty Images)

On Children:

Very early on in this pandemic, we knew that there was an extremely stratified risk from Covid. The elderly and those with co-morbidities were especially vulnerable, while children were extremely unlikely to get dangerously ill.

Through the lens of wokeness, Yale moves to abolish proven diagnostics tests By Olivia Murray

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/through_the_lens_of_wokeness_yale_moves_to_abolish_proven_diagnostics_tests.html

Angela Davis is a professed communist, with a focus on militant Black activism, who coined the phrase, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” This catchy but superficial slogan has been embraced throughout nearly every American institution, most notably academia. Unsurprisingly given Davis’ admitted political beliefs, the mantra is quintessential Marxist language. In the first four words, Davis discloses there is a deep-rooted and egregiously immoral societal issue (racism), so naturally this requires resolution, which of course could only be done through a radical cultural revolution. Then, we see the lure of a “social justice” cause, with its promise that participation will make the participant morally superior.

And now, Yale University’s Chief Clinical Officer, Thomas J. Balcezak, finally caved, allowing emotional wokism to permeate a discipline that ought to be beyond reproach —  the Marxian dogma articulated by Davis has completely supplanted documented medical experiences and observable data.

So what is going on? Well, here is the “short version” according to physicians at Do No Harm, “Yale is ditching a clinically proven kidney diagnostic tool on the grounds that it’s racist.”

Now, the oldest physical copy of a dictionary I happen to have on hand on the moment is a children’s dictionary from the year 2000, and it offers two definitions for racism:

Belief that certain races of people are by birth and nature superior to others
Discrimination or hatred based on race

Worth noting, is that the context of both of these definitions requires a thinking mind — inanimate objects cannot hold beliefs or hatreds, nor do they partake in biases. So how can a diagnostic test possibly be racist?

A Bumbling Biden Fails the Monkeypox Test Would he have handled Covid better than Trump? A different outbreak gives ample reason for doubt.By Allysia Finley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bumbling-biden-fails-the-monkeypox-test-covid-trump-vaccines-jynneos-stockpile-rct-doses-smallpox-medicine-public-health-treatment-11661108794?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Donald Trump was unlucky that a once-in-a-century pandemic struck in his re-election year. And Joe Biden is lucky that the current monkeypox outbreak is relatively mild. But his administration’s bumbling response belies Mr. Biden’s 2020 argument that he would have handled Covid better.

Monkeypox, first identified in lab animals in 1958, is a close relative of smallpox, though it is less lethal and contagious. Periodic outbreaks have occurred in Central and West Africa, where the virus is endemic and spreads among wild animals. Humans can catch it through direct contact with the skin lesions of an infected animal or person.

A small U.S. outbreak in 2003 was linked to rodents imported from Ghana by an exotic pet dealer. The virus infected 71 Americans but was quickly contained with the help of the smallpox vaccine. No one died.

The outbreak, coupled with growing concerns about bioterrorism, prompted Washington to seek a safer, more effective vaccine against smallpox and monkeypox. The federal government began to support the development of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine. In 2017 the Trump administration awarded Bavarian a 10-year contract for freeze-dried vaccines, giving the U.S. rights to an estimated 13 million doses. The Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine in 2019, and the Trump administration in 2020 ordered 1.4 million doses in case of emergency.

So when the first monkeypox cases popped up in mid-May, the U.S. had the benefit of scientific knowledge, experience and a ready-made vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 14,115 cases nationwide as of Aug. 18, probably an underestimate since the virus can look similar to other diseases. No deaths have been reported in the U.S. But Biden officials’ inept response has made the outbreak far worse than it might have been.

On May 22, four days after the first case was identified, Mr. Biden said monkeypox was “something that everybody should be concerned about,” although reports indicated that the virus was mainly spreading among gay men.

Officials then rushed to tamp down a brewing panic. “This is a virus we understand,” White House Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha said. “We have vaccines against it. We have treatments against it. It’s not as contagious as Covid. So I am confident we’re going be able to keep our arms around it.”

The CDC’s Big Fail On COVID-19: Where’s The Real Accountability?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/19/the-cdcs-big-fail-on-covid-19-wheres-the-real-accountability/

Americans, good natured as they are, often assume that government agencies deserve an implicit trust from the public that they’re sworn to serve, and that they will not violate that trust. When they do, there have to be consequences. That’s certainly the case after our two-and-a-half year COVID-19 nightmare.

It can no longer be denied that our government’s bureaucratic response to the dreaded Wuhan flu was inadequate at best, near-criminal at worst. And now the reckoning has begun.

That can be seen in the Centers for Disease Control’s new “guidance” on COVID, which is essentially an institutional mea culpa for mistakes that cost thousands of people their lives and sowed panic while doing little to halt the spread of the nasty virus.

“The new guidance, released Aug. 11, rescinds and alters a number of key recommendations, including treating unvaccinated and vaccinated people differently for many purposes, explicitly stating that people with previous infection have protection against severe illness, and removing 6-foot social distancing advice,” the Epoch Times reported in a summary the changes.

In short, it unwinds nearly all its previous COVID guidance.

Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response Lockdowns were oppressive and deadly. But U.S. and WHO officials plan worse for the next pandemic. By John Tierney

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-and-walensky-double-down-on-failure-covid-pandemic-evidence-data-lockdowns-mask-mandates-restrictions-public-health-experts-11660855180?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention belatedly admitted failure this week. “For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Director Rochelle Walensky said. She vowed to establish an “action-oriented culture.”

Lockdowns and mask mandates were the most radical experiment in the history of public health, but Dr. Walensky isn’t alone in thinking they failed because they didn’t go far enough. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, recently said there should have been “much, much more stringent restrictions” early in the pandemic. The World Health Organization is revising its official guidance to call for stricter lockdown measures in the next pandemic, and it is even seeking a new treaty that would compel nations to adopt them. The World Economic Forum hails the Covid lockdowns as the model for a “Great Reset” empowering technocrats to dictate policies world-wide.

Yet these oppressive measures were taken against the longstanding advice of public-health experts, who warned that they would lead to catastrophe and were proved right. For all the talk from officials like Dr. Fauci about following “the science,” these leaders ignored decades of research—as well as fresh data from the pandemic—when they set strict Covid regulations. The burden of proof was on them to justify their dangerous experiment, yet they failed to conduct rigorous analyses, preferring to tout badly flawed studies while refusing to confront obvious evidence of the policies’ failure.

U.S. states with more-restrictive policies fared no better, on average, than states with less-restrictive policies.

The Centers for Disease Politics The agency offers a mea minima culpa for its manifest Covid failures.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-centers-for-disease-politics-rochelle-walensky-center-for-disease-control-and-prevention-covid-vaccines-11660859044?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Regrets, Rochelle Walensky has a few, though apparently too few to specify. Amid bipartisan criticism over her agency’s bumbling virus response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director said Wednesday she’ll reshuffle the bureaucratic deck with an emphasis on “action” and “equity.” Her diagnosis and prescription are both wrong.

Not much of the U.S. government works well these days, but the CDC once had a reputation for excellence. Covid blew that up. Its bureaucracy, with 11,000 employees and some two dozen divisions, impeded a rapid and effective response to the virus.

One problem is that bureaucracies always seek to expand their power and reach, often at the expense of their core mission. The CDC is no exception as it has sought to address social and environmental issues that are better left to the states or other agencies. Meantime, it has failed in its core responsibility, which is to track diseases, collect data to inform decision-making, and deploy resources to support local public-health responses.

At the start of the pandemic when public officials were blind to the virus spread, CDC employees failed to follow standard lab operating procedures and contaminated Covid tests. Even after the agency realized its blunders, it refused to share virus samples with private commercial labs to help develop and deploy tests.