Here's what Rockefeller University has to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci M.D.
"Through seven presidential administrations, Dr. Fauci has provided guidance on public health and medical issues to the U.S. population and its presidents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, NIAID investigators made critical contributions to development of the safe and effective vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Dr. Fauci earned the nation’s trust by providing clear, compassionate advice rooted in the available facts through the rapidly evolving pandemic. He is revered for his insistence on the pursuit of truth, and the distinction between what is known and what is not, serving with unwavering dedication despite an extremely challenging political environment."
A brief list of Dr. Fauci's accomplishments as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the COVID pandemic include (copied from Google AI):
mRNA
Research:
Supported decades of prior National Institutes of Health (NIH)
research that built the foundation for safe, fast mRNA vaccine
development.
Trial
Partnerships:
Directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
to collaborate directly with private companies on vaccine design and
clinical testing.
Financial
Risk Strategy:
Backed the bold federal strategy to fund large-scale manufacturing
concurrent with early clinical trials to save months of pandemic
response time.
Safety
Validation:
Championed independent data boards and FDA authorization steps to
protect scientific integrity.
Public
Advocacy:
Publicly credited government-private framework investments for the
ultimate success of the accelerated vaccine timeline.
However, for reasons I don't entirely understand, last week Dr. Fauci was forced to appear before a Senate hearing led by Senator Rand Paul. Here are the attacks Republicans directed to Dr. Fauci during and after the hearing:
Myth: Under Fauci's leadership, NIAID made a grant to a Chinese lab that ultimately aided that lab in developing and subsequently leaking the 2020 COVID pandemic virus. Dr. Fauci's private diary reveals that he knew that the COVID virus originated from a lab and not from a public "wet market". (This claim is most of the basis for Senator Rand Paul's hearing this week.)
Fact: NIAID did give money to the the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to look into possible coronaviruses from bats. However, the scientific evidence regarding COVID supports a natural spillover from an infected animal to humans rather than a leak from a lab.
In last week's hearing, Senator Paul focused on a Jan. 26, 2020, diary entry in which Fauci stated that "the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. … Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier." Factcheck.org notes, "This is not the "gotcha" that Paul makes it out to be. Citing this one passage removes critical context for Fauci’s statements and falsely implies that if the pandemic didn’t originate in the one market (the Huanan seafood market), that it couldn’t have had a natural origin." "There’s overwhelming scientific evidence that COVID emerged from an animal market in Wuhan, which was miles away from a virology lab," Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, told us for a previous story."
Myth: Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said that week regarding Dr. Fauci, "We’re going to go after the guy with everything we’ve got because the guy killed, or had something to do with killing, 9 million people," because, Fauci was, "in on the gain-of-function". Fact: "Gain-of-function" is an attempt to enable an organism to develop new abilities. This can happen in nature, or it can be achieved in a lab, when scientists modify the genetic code or place organisms in different environments, to change them in some way. From the BBC: "For example, (gain-of-function research) might involve scientists trying to create drought-resistant plants or modify disease vectors in mosquitoes to make them less likely to pass on infections. With viruses that could pose a risk to human health, it means developing viruses that are potentially more transmissible and dangerous."
The claim here is that the research described in Myth #1 above included gain-of-function and that the research went awry, releasing the deadly COVID virus. From the BBC article linked above, "Dr Fauci told the Senate hearing the research in question "has been evaluated multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain-of-function definition". He also said it was "molecularly impossible" for these viruses to have resulted in the coronavirus." "The NIH and EcoHealth Alliance have also rejected suggestions they supported or funded "gain-of-function" research in China."
Myth: "Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, proposed that the pulmonary infarction Fauci experienced in 2021—the details of which were revealed in the pages from Fauci’s private diary that Paul released last weekend—may have resulted from COVID vaccination and booster shots. More than 39,000 deaths had resulted from COVID-19 vaccination, he said, and although Facebook had censored his supporters when they tried to share that fact, "this wasn’t disinformation, this was the truth." - The Atlantic
Fact: (Also from The Atlantic) "Fauci only sat there with his fingers clasped. He did not point out that this was not the truth at all, and that Johnson’s data—derived from unvetted, user-submitted information in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System—are likely to overestimate the real total by about 1,000 times."
In terms of the COVID vaccine causing deaths, a comprehensive scientific literature review published by the National Library of Medicine identified only 38 to 55 deaths globally among the more than 8 billion doses administered by 2022.
Myth: Peter Navarro, who was the Trump White House defense policy coordinator during the pandemic said last week: "I had a million doses of hydroxychloroquine in warehouses as the defense policy coordinator for the DPA that I was trying to distribute to hospitals, and he got the FDA to stop me from doing that. Thousands of people could be here in this country right now alive if I had been able to distribute that, take that to the bank. That's what the science says."
Fact: The scientific community has, with no uncertain terms, rejected hydroxychloroquine as a valid COVID-19 treatment. After reviewing dozens of trials involving more than 10,000 patients, the World Health Organization concluded that hydroxychloroquine:
*Does not reduce deaths.
*Does not reduce the need for mechanical ventilation.
*Does not provide meaningful clinical benefit for treating COVID-19.
*Carries risks, including heart rhythm abnormalities in some patients.
The NIH likewise concluded that it did not improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.
Myth: Prior to last week's hearing, Senator Paul suggested that natural immunity gained from contracting COVID is more effective in protecting a person's health that getting vaccinated, writing, "Remember: Anthony Fauci was all about 'following the science,' until it came to vaccines. He was all about forcing you into compliance, even though we all knew infection was the best protection."
Fact: A 2021 CDC study, "found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection."
Note: There is strong evidence that Senator Rand Paul has been vaccinated against COVID.
In conclusion, Dr. Fauci offered no testimony during the Senate hearing, other than to offer a brief initial statement, in which he referred to Chairman Rand Paul’s "unhinged obsession" with slandering his reputation and putting him in prison. I think that sums up this entire witch hunt quite well.
No comments:
Post a Comment