January 11, 2024

RFK Jr.: "Now it becomes clear: 'trust the science' really means 'obey authority.'"

What exactly did Fauci say? The NY Post has this: "COVID ‘6-feet’ social distancing ‘sort of just appeared,’ likely lacked scientific basis, Fauci admits."

97 comments:

BUMBLE BEE said...

Masks, social distancing, school shutdown and lockdowns were all bullshit. "I don't" remember " is his response to questions related to the pandemic.
Trust The Science indeed.
Take the money and run is more like it.

Kevin said...

Wait until they get around to “trust the election results”.

You’re not going to believe what that really means.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Hard to remember all that scientific "protocol" stuff eh?

gilbar said...

hasn't OBEY AUTHORITY been the leftie slogan for our entire lives?
Who told us to: "tune in turn on drop out"? Oh, that's Right; DOCTOR Leary
Lefties DO as they are told

Todd said...

Now it becomes clear: “trust the science” really means “obey authority.”

Now?!? It was clear to many back then but all were told to shut up, for "reasons".

Welcome to the party pal!

Just alike all others in the elite club, very likely no price will be paid for the lives and livelihoods destroyed by these self important tyrants. Their media and social media lap dogs have already forgotten their parts in this and moved on. Every day is a fresh beginning for them.

I wonder why no detailed investigative reporting has been published on who made all of the money off of these experimental shots that were shoved at everyone, needed or not, effective or not and all of these "free" test kits that were sent to everyone.

CrankyProfessor said...

About the 6 foot rule: the EU authorities were demanding 1 meter. I know most Americans aren't comfortable with metric, but really now.

rehajm said...

So you've never seen the vapor cloud surrounding a crowd outside on a cold morning? A big hearty morning fuck you to all who threatened those of us with enough common sense to recognize it was always bullshit.

rehajm said...

A bullshit audit would be constructive. What else are they lying about Gell-Mann warriors?

Jersey Fled said...

A lot of people have figured out that they can game the system if they have the right credentials. My rule is “trust but verify”. Except I don’t do the “trust” part any more.

Temujin said...

This is not news. This was known BS that was not only stressed by the media and 'authorities', but was used as a mallet to whack people over the head with if they did not comply. It was an arbitrary distance to create a 'standard'. Whether it worked or not was immaterial. It manipulated people. And in that great moment, the manipulation of masses of populations was the great experiment going on. If multiple governments could mobilize the entire world to shut down, wear masks, and keep 6 feet apart, well...there's no limit to what Governments can get done. Once you get the people out of the way, the world is your oyster.

Dave Begley said...

And absolutely no penalty or accountability for the Left being totally wrong.

Now do CAGW.

lonejustice said...

Trump: "The vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind ... I came up with three vaccines, all are very good, came up with three of them in less than 9 months it was supposed to take 5 to 12 years."

Owens: "And yet more people have died under Covid this year under Joe Biden, than under you, and more people took the vaccine this year so some people are questioning..."

Trump: "Oh no the vaccines work but some people aren't taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones who don't take the vaccine. But it's still their choice. And if you take the vaccine you're protected. The results of the vaccine are very good and if you do get its a very minor form. People aren't dying if they take the vaccine."

December 21, 2021, from a Trump interview with Candace Owens.

Dave Begley said...

Fauci got a $5m book advance.

Who would buy his book?

Howard (not that Howard) said...

So very ironic that all their dicta and behaviors during covid will have the exact opposite effect long-term of their exhortations to "trust the science." Bullshit will out.

Ann Althouse said...

"Who would buy his book?"

I'm picturing a millennial woman saying, "I'm going to buy this for my mother — she just loves Anthony Fauci."

Mother won't read it, but daughter bought it as a gift, and mother will express delight, saying, "Oh, I just love this man."

n.n said...

The Chinese scientists advised 2 meters, backed by a dispersion study in a closed environment. The secular religions operate through authority of force in lieu of faith, in service to profit and control schemes.

iowan2 said...

Covid exposed the the government designed by Democrats. Bureaucrats push the leftists agenda, The top tier of the Agencies are infected with radical left wingnuts civil employees. No matter who the President is, extremists are running the government. Obama had a huge team working to get the extremist in power, and hire the like minded deeper into the agencies.


6 foot distance for a virus is just made up.

Totally believe White Nationalist are the number one threat to the United States. Thats not made up at all

Solar panels and windmills can Supply all the electricity we need

Every thing about Anthropogenic, Catastrophic, Global, Climate Change is a scientific certainty, despite every model failing. Ignore the fact the only solution requires a massive shift of wealth, from the lower and middle class to the elites.

It is 100% true that our SEC DEF was never out of communication during his "elective" prostatectomy. NO COMMUNICATION, with his number 2, Deputy SEC DEF, NOT the National Security Advisor, NOT the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NOT the President of the United States, NOT the Secretary of State.
I guess that leaves DoorDash and Uber. Nothing to see hear, move along

Yes believe what you are told. I'm from the Govt and I'm here to lie to you.

rehajm said...

The 'book deal' is an old fashioned way to transfer wealth to political actors. The publisher sends an advance, a hodgepodge of business and government actors contracts to 'buy' thousands of copies of the book, in multiple editions.

This used to be the privilege of the political elite but now for them there's the Netflix deal. The crumb grabbers are left with the book deal scam...

Ann Althouse said...

This is the trouble with people who buy "thoughtful" gifts. They pay attention to what you say and develop gift ideas and actually buy relevant crapola.

Esteban said...

All they had to do/say about most of this stuff is "We aren't really sure, but we suggest". With social distancing they simply could have said: "Being really close together indoors isn't great, so try to distance yourself, cover when you cough, etc. Try being about 6 feet apart as a guide." 6 feet is an approximation that people can somewhat visualize and if you say 6 feet, you'll probably get like 4 feet. If you said 4 feet you'd get 2 feet.

Enigma said...

Fauci did say "I am the science." So, he's at least consistently deluded about the scientific justification in his egotistic mental universe.

The COVID19 era was soooooooo much like literal German Nazism and Stalin's USSR and Mao's China. The establishment always gets fat, happy, lazy, and profoundly arrogant over time. When anything threatens the fun, they must destroy it. It's akin to swatting a fly or a mosquito. You wouldn't want any nuisance to disrupt a garden party, would you?

Let them eat cake.

ga6 said...

Six foot rule because Fauci has been obsessed with "six foot" since the month he stopped growing...

mezzrow said...

I'm picturing a millennial woman saying, "I'm going to buy this for my mother — she just loves Anthony Fauci."

Mother won't read it, but daughter bought it as a gift, and mother will express delight, saying, "Oh, I just love this man."


I know these people. I love these people. It hurts to see them manipulated in this way. Explaining to them what is happening here is worse than useless. When it all collapses, it will be solely Trump's fault, of course. Big sigh, so go fix breakfast...

mezzrow said...

This is the trouble with people who buy "thoughtful" gifts. They pay attention to what you say and develop gift ideas and actually buy relevant crapola.

You need friends/family with OCD who are so far into their own minds that they never hear what you're saying. This has a smokin' hot bass line and lyrics that illustrate this very point. The appeal is both intellectual and musical, my favorite combination.

Do Hot Girls Like Chords?

iowan2 said...

My cynicism is shaped over 5 decades.

Being in production agriculture by entire life, I have interacted with the Extension Service for decades. The terrible information that got fermented in that soup of academia and leftist dogma is just part of scenery. It just is.
So I have learned through personal experience how the Govt just gets it wrong for a variety reasons.

The free flow of information has shined a light on the rot. Like the home inspector with a flashlight and long screw driver shines the light on termites.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

Did we get six feet rather than one meter because our President at the time was a reputed germophobe?

narciso said...

It was based on a study of tuberculosis patients a 100 years ago

Bruce Hayden said...

“Trump: "Oh no the vaccines work but some people aren't taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones who don't take the vaccine. But it's still their choice. And if you take the vaccine you're protected. The results of the vaccine are very good and if you do get its a very minor form. People aren't dying if they take the vaccine."”

The vaccines may have kinda worked during the first half of 2021, until Delta pushed out the other variants in July. But they became effectively counterproductive at the end of the year, when Omicron pushed out Delta. It was quick and dirty, but fated to fail when the virus quickly mutated around the vaccines. The key weakness in the vaccines was that it caused the immune system to recognize the two spike proteins as antigens. The Omicron spike proteins were different enough, that most of the effectiveness of the vaccine was lost. Yet, throughout 2021 and 2022, then halfway through 2023, the persisted in vaccinating against the now long obsolete Wuhan variant spike proteins. This should have been predicted by any semi competent virologist or immunologist, esp since the SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA respiratory virus, with a straight forward infection path. Viruses like these (most notably the common flu) successfully easily mutate. And driving the mutation of the two spike proteins was the vaccines that over imprinted billions of immune systems, around the world on the two Wuhan variant spike proteins.

And that ignores that the ModRNA vaccines turned out to be dangerous. By now, they appear to have killed more people in this country than the virus, itself, ever did. Its ability to cause heart attacks, and massive coagulation problems, has been known for awhile. What is rapidly becoming more evident though is its ability to supercharge cancers. It’s not just that cancers long in remission return, but there are a rising number of cases where a cancer has gone from undetectable to Stage IV in a couple of weeks. (And techniques have been developed to detect the ModRNA and capsid, incriminating the vaccines) And many of these problems are a direct result of bypassing normal testing with EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) approval for the vaccines. The ModRNA (modified mRNA) vaccines would never have survived the normal drug or vaccine process. The FDA essentially just waived them through. And, yet, the authorities are pushing hard for an 8th vaccine shot…

rehajm said...

Blogger Left Bank of the Charles said...
Did we get six feet rather than one meter because our President at the time was a reputed germophobe?


If we'd tried three feet liberal men would all be standing 9 inches apart...

Gusty Winds said...

Never forget it was the DIE / female dominated education establishment that fell for all this "scientific" bullshit more than any other group.

In Elmhurst, IL where I grew up, grade school kids were eating lunch outside in the winter and were forced to social distance.

Everyone. Don't forget to get your booster!!!

mikee said...

Althouse, thoughtful gift givings are well and good. Alternately, and just as well and good, at least for me, is giving gifts that I enjoy, and would enjoy seeing the recipient have. Which is why all my nieces and nephews got kazoos and drums and electric musical toys as small children. It took several birthdays and Christmases before my sisters with kids caught on. My smartest sister let her child play with his noisy toy during baths until it stopped working. I admire her ingenuity.

Gusty Winds said...

COVID exposed the mentally ill and weak minded in America.

Wearing a mask on a boat outdoors on Lake Michigan...you're nuts.

Mask and plastic face shield driving alone in a car...you're insane.

Forcing young children to wear masks and socially distance all day in school...you're evil, selfish, and really fucking stupid.

typingtalker said...

Next made-up science to fall, kicking and screaming all the way down: Global Warming.

... as soon as "they" find or create another imminent disaster to replace it.

Jersey Fled said...

I seem to remember reading back then that Europe had adopted a 1 meter (three foot) rule, so the CDC decided to double it “out of an abundance of caution”.

Every time I hear that phrase I know I’m about to be scammed.

rwnutjob said...

I saw my first Kennedy 24 hat & phone case *eyeroll*

Gusty Winds said...

This six-foot rule is the chicken shit of what Fauci said yesterday.

He admitted the lab leak in not a conspiracy theory and the US Gov't funded gain of function research.

Now ask yourself, do you really think the lab "leak" was an accident????

n.n said...

The spike protein with adjuvants... "vaccine" is long-lived and migrates from its injection site to become viremic and pathogenic in some male teens, young adults, and women. How you get infected matters. Natural infection produces robust, durable immunity. Evaluate risk and proceed accordingly.

As for masks, we have known since the early eighties in a controlled study inside hospitals with trained staff, that they do not prevent transmission and infection. The modern proposal was directed by [scientific) faith, fear of liability, and the audacity of democracy (e.g. bullying).

Bob Boyd said...

There isn't six feet of distance between Fauci and the creation of this virus. That's what we should be talking about as we stand around the gallows waiting for them to lead Fauci up the steps.
They weren't supposed to be doing these experiments because they were too dangerous. When they decided to do them anyway, you'd think they would have also considered what they were going to do if the virus did get out. Nope. They had no idea what to do. But they had to make people believe they knew what to do so they just made shit up and bluffed it out and wound up making things worse.

Clyde said...

The same charlatans are telling us that we in the West must drastically downgrade our lifestyles (while China and India don’t) to “save the planet from Climate Change.” Nope.

Yancey Ward said...

Fauci and everyone else who funded and created that virus in the Chinese lab needs to be tried in The Hague and then hanged slowly with piano wire.

Kate said...

The Fauci devotional candles have disappeared from the kitsch shop. Only Frida remains.

Leland said...

A mistake made by RFK Jr. here is by stating "Now it becomes clear" because Fauci admitted it now, means RFK Jr. is still deferring to Fauci on what is or isn't factual.

Those in the comments above noting it was obvious BS from the beginning; they understood the science regardless of Fauci's claim then and now.

He admitted the lab leak in not a conspiracy theory and the US Gov't funded gain of function research.

If the latter, Fauci lied to Congress. Regardless, Fauci lied to all of us.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

The virus was released on purpose, as a test for the elites. How successful was it at killing the elderly and the sick and the elderly. Plus - they had to get Trump out of the way. His polices were creating too much freedom and prosperity.

MadisonMan said...

Re gifts: I tell my kids, observe what people give for gifts. It might just be what they want to receive. But I guess that fails for Althouse's hypothetical about the person giving the Fauci book, 'cause I can't believe millenial would actually want to read that.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Related

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Lone justice-

What is your point?

Every single democrat everywhere were pushing the vaccine.

CJinPA said...

Asked about a study in Massachusetts schools that found just three feet of distance between students resulted in “similar” COVID case rates...

So, it's agreed that some distancing helps, we're just debating the specific distance? My outrage meter is barely registering a reaction.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

All these pro-Vaccine leftists are whining about Trump being pro-vaccine?

LOL.

Anthony said...

It still saddens and angers me that the vast majority of epidemiologists and public health people knew this was all BS and went along with it anyway, most with a sense of glee (note: I'm in this population). It took me half a day to peruse PUBMED and determine that there wasn't any there there for masking. And based on the emails I get from my department and the university generally they still think they did a wonderful job and, if anything, just weren't authoritarian enough.

Night Owl said...

It's disturbing how easily people complied to nonsense.

At the height of stupidity during covid lockdown, they had arrows on the ground in the supermarket, showing the direction you were supposed to walk. I chose to ignore the arrows because they made no sense and were irritating. Initially, I noted some raised eyebrows on the dutifully masked faces of the concerned citizens, but no one said anything, and eventually others started ignoring the stupid arrows.

We can't let this ever happen again. And there must be accountability from those who lied to us.

MayBee said...

Nobody who did this to us will pay any price.

MayBee said...

My governor at the time, Gretchen WhItmer, used to say "Science tells us that if everyone could just stay 6 feet away from each other for 3 weeks, this virus would go away." And that's how she governed, as if she could make that happen. It was idiotic at the time, but people I respect bought it 100% because it was coming from a Democrat and they were Democrats.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

Shorter Bruce Hayden:
The vaccines did work for several months in 2021. Hospitals were full of people who were dying from the original strain of the virus. The majority of people who died from the virus in 2021 were unvaccinate, obese, or more likely both. The virus mutated, as every virologist in the world knew it would, and the vaccines transitioned from an effective medical intervention to a cash cow for Pfizer, et. al., and a means of virtue and power signaling.

The Silver Lining here is that the number of people who now recognize what has been done to our society by this and similar stunts is increasing. Maybe we are not a majority yet, but if there is a peaceful detour off of our road to civilizational suicide, this will be it.

Jamie said...

Whether it worked or not was immaterial. It manipulated people. And in that great moment, the manipulation of masses of populations was the great experiment going on.

I'm even willing to give them a bit of benefit of the doubt on this, in the first, say, three to six months.

There's a scene in the tv series Sherlock, the wedding episode if memory serves, in which Sherlock realizes that someone in the room is a killer and someone is about to be killed, but he hasn't yet put the pieces together of who and how. He's giving the best man's speech, and in his head, his brother Mycroft is telling him, "You have the room. Don't lose it!" - IOW, you may need to exert immediate control over everyone here for everyone's safety, so keep the control you have. Sherlock proceeds to make everyone in the room stand up, sit down, fight fight fight (as my mom used to describe Catholic mass in her droll moments, and yes, we were observant Catholics).

Anyway. I could envision The Authorities having worried meetings at which they'd discuss the fact that they didn't yet know exactly how deadly COVID would be, what would be necessary to contain it, or how to respond to communities where it was rampant - the Chinese, after all, were welding people into their apartments in those days. So - "We have the room - we can't lose it! Let's make everyone wear a mask. Let's make everyone stay six feet apart. These things won't hurt, and they keep everyone paying attention to what we say to do. What if we have to tell everyone to stay in their houses and await food drops? We can't just start from a standstill on something like that."

The problem was, we all quickly learned more: children were at almost zero risk. Almost all deaths were among people who would also have been at grave risk from the annual flu. Intubation was a terrible strategy. Masks didn't prevent transmission. Remote "learning" was a joke for most kids, no matter how many "Thank God for remote school for my Aspie child!" articles got published.

Yet they kept up with the controls. They lost me quickly after the facts of the disease started to emerge, and lost me utterly and finally once it was Omicron we were all dealing with and they still wanted me to wear a mask on a plane, where the air pressure is equivalent to being at the top of a 10,000-ft mountain - not a problem for me, but it's kept my asthmatic sister on the ground for three years.

MayBee said...

I'm in the LA area now, and there are still places were there are little dots on the sidewalk or in stores showing us how far apart we have to stand in line.

So much money was spent and wasted on pandemic rules. But, nobody will pay any price because everyone who is a Democrat has decided that the Democrats who enforced these rules were just trying their best, all the while ignoring the DeSantis in the room.

RNB said...

"La Science, c'est moi!"

Leland said...

Every single democrat everywhere were pushing the vaccine.

Certainly by December 2021, but not in December 2020 when it would have mattered. As for Trump's comments, they are pretty good (annotated by me):
Oh no the vaccines work but some people aren't taking it.
Depends on the definition of "work". Certainly some people were not taking them.
The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones who don't take the vaccine.
This was indeed the case at the time. The vaccine didn't seem to prevent catching the disease but did seem to be therapeutic in reducing the severities of the deadliest strands.
But it's still their choice.
The key point that distinguishes the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration. Trump's actions were freedom based.
And if you take the vaccine you're protected.
Depends on what you mean by protected...
The results of the vaccine are very good and if you do get its a very minor form.
There's a definition.
People aren't dying if they take the vaccine.
Taking literally and to the extreme, this is incorrect. But rhetorically, it was on par with what many others were saying at the time.

Oligonicella said...

Oh, look... I was right. And on the goddam day it was announced, I was right.

Same goes for the stupid masking, the stupid shut downs, the rushed and tainted "vaccines", etc, etc, etc.

Now imagine my world, where C19 infected (most of which were asymptomatic) weren't shuffled into old-folks homes, none of the idiot contentions about masks including mandated happened, none of the forced and career destroying "vaccine" mandates occurred, the fucking country wasn't shut down (except for things the 'elites' wanted) and kids weren't kept out of school for two years (and some morons want to reinstate that), Twitter wasn't instructed to suppress free speech with a sledge hammer... All for a virus that was 98% benign.

So compare and contrast my world with what happened at behest of the dictators in charge and pick which one you'd rather have lived through.

No, I will never forget those who instigated all that misery and destruction nor forgive.

s'opihjerdt said...

Faith is a fine invention
for gentlemen who see,
but microscopes are prudent
in an emergency.
E. D.

gilbar said...

Serious Questions:
of the people in the USA that died "of" Covid.. How many were vaccinated?
of the people that died "of" Covid and WEREN'T vaccinated, How many died BEFORE the Vax was even available?
Once the vaccines WERE available, how did fatality rates (vax/unvax) look THEN?

There'd be a good PhD thesis sitting in these numbers.. IF there was such a thing as "science"
These answers are hidden so well, that I think i know SOME of these answers

Yancey Ward said...

"The majority of people who died from the virus in 2021 were unvaccinate, obese, or more likely both."

This was only true in the first 3 months of 2021 during which almost no one had been vaccinated. After March 2021, the data about the vaccination status of the deceased thrown into the bucket called COVID was never publicly available in the US in a way that allows one to group death with vaccine status. It still isn't, 3 years later, even though the data does exist in a government database somewhere not at the bottom of the Potomac.

After Summer of 2021, it is absolutely clear that the vast majority of those who died of COVID were, in fact, vaccinated- this is literally impossible to not be true due to the government's own recorded uptake of the vaccine by those 60 and older. In fact, the death waves only decreased in intensity after the Fall/early Winter of 2022 when people, en masse, suddenly stopped complying with the booster recommendations. This was seen in North America and Europe. Indeed, many countries didn't see significant deaths from COVID until after almost all of their citizens had been vaccinated by the Summer of 2021. Sure, one might blame this on the fact that COVID mutated to a strain not caught by the vaccine, the fact still remains- that the vaccines were no better than placebo by mid 2021.

Oligonicella said...

mikee:
My smartest sister let her child play with his noisy toy during baths until it stopped working. I admire her ingenuity.

Someone gave my daughter one of those loathsome Tickle Me Elmo crappolas. I let her have it a few days then while she slept, opened it, clipped the speaker wire and sewed it back up.

Quaestor said...

Antony Fauci says, "...just sort of appeared."

Who can not understand and sympathize with lawmakers' anger and frustration with Mister Science? Congressional hearings are intended to help guide legislation, one of the key checks and balances the Framers established to circumvent the defects of democracy that toppled Athens and Rome. Congress demands and relies on straight and true answers they put to bureaucrats, yet Anthony Fauci has repeatedly obfuscated and lied under oath.

Now we get "just sort of appeared". Whether a stupid lie or just stupidity, it confirms the worst assumptions and accusations against the former Director. The next Trump Administration will likely indict him, then let Fauci see how far his I am Science! arrogance gets him in court.

n.n said...

The Chinese study may have advised a 3 meter dispersion pattern, not including fecal contamination. The science of masks and submicron viral particle spread was established around four decades ago in a controlled environment with a trained cohort of medical professionals and staff.

Quaestor said...

"[They] had to get Trump out of the way. His policies were creating too much freedom and prosperity."

The deluge of illegals is also about destroying Trump. Biden's only hope of staying in power and out of jail is a new plague, and open borders is the surest way to get one.

Oligonicella said...

West TX Intermediate Crude:
The majority of people who died from the virus in 2021 were unvaccinate, obese, or more likely both.

Wading through all the lies we have now affirmed, it's not reasonable to assume any of the reporting at the time was truthful. We know for fact that hospitals were misreporting. Recall that young NY man shot in his car and reported as a covid death?

It never seems to be mentioned that those who died of covid were on their last days anyway. You can't be old, obese, diabetic, have respiratory problems, etc, and expect a lengthy remainder to your life.

Even without those; consider the age of the average commenter here. Most of us won't be here in ten years, many in five. This includes me.

Life is tough but those fearful of dying want all of us to live with the fret as well.

No.

Rusty said...

"buy relevant crapola."
I'm using this, OK?

Michael said...

I often marvel at the ingenuity of the person who thought up and sold those red footprint stickers placed six feet apart in every grocery store. I hope he or she is on the beach now in Bali with enough money to last two lifetimes. Great country.

Big Mike said...

My take: COVID-19 created an environment where would-be tin pot dictators were able to yank people around for the sheer pleasure of yanking people around. And governors like Cuomo, Whitmer, DeWine, and Virginia’s Ralph Northam (among others) did just that. There was a great deal of junk science floating around, and the NIH (Collins and Fauci), CDC (Walensky), and FDA (Stephen Hahn) were as junky as anyplace else. If this disreputable period of American governance is ever truly investigated I suspect that we will discover not just decisions that should have been based on science based instead on politics and/or whimsy. That’s when they aren’t based on financial considerations, including outright bribery.

Gusty Winds said...

For all the bullshit about Trump and the vaccine:

Let's remember that Democrats did EVERYTHING possible to lie and vilify Hydroxychloroquine as an early, cost effective treatment. Then Ivermectin was vilified as horse de-wormer and liberals bought into that "science". They also contaminated nursing homes on purpose to bloat death numbers and clear their Medicare rolls.

Shit. Democrats even vilified Vitamin D and Zinc. The ONLY acceptable treatment was to put people of ventilators so they would die and hospitals got bonuses for each patient intubated.

Trump pushing the release of the original vaccine was a no other choice. Maybe it was good for the elderly. But it wasn't needed, or good for young people. Once the left got their hands on the vaccine they wanted it shoved up everyone's ass via coercion and mandate.

Trump has gone on record saying he does not support mandates. If you're over 65 and want to take it fine. But you don't kick soldiers out of the military, or make college kids take it to attend school.

Tachycineta said...

What an intellectually corrupt person Fauci is.

Saying that it "sort of just appeared". And likely lacked scientific basis?

It either had a scientific basis at that time or it did not. Likely is a weasel-word in the context he used.

I have a good friend in public health who believes that Fauci has set back the reputation of public health years. She said her office used to collectively groan when Fauci would show up on the TV. He "sort of just appeared", just like his ideas.

Regarding his book, I would buy if it was written closer to the time of his COVID-19 recommendations. I know it's odd, but I really like picking up older books and reading how someone thought this event or that event would play out - and then compare to how things actually went.

who-knew said...

With this: Now it becomes clear: “trust the science” really means “obey authority.” RFK Jr has put his finger on the essential truth of our times.

Prof. M. Drout said...

Trump stepped right into the trap of uncritically accepting what Fauci said for the exact same reason as all the other personnel-related disasters in his Presidency: his greatest weakness is that he believes in celebrities.
People in medicine and in academia in general know that the people at the top of the institutions--particularly very large institutions, and the government is the largest--are almost NEVER the best doctors or scientists. And as for the ones on TV...*
But Trump seems to truly believe that if someone is famous, it's because they're great at their job. And so he continually gets rolled by dishonest ones like Fauci and Mathis and makes absolutely bone-headed decisions like supporting Doctor Oz (wtf?).
You'd think he would have learned by now, but, unfortunately, I do not see Trump as having sufficient introspection to recognize this flaw and compensate for it.

*My dad did his internship and residency with someone who went on to be one of those "America's Favorite Doctors"--weekly column in big media and was always on TV. The other med students called him "Dizzy Izzy" and had a standing rule that in no circumstances should he do anything to a patient without it being checked by someone else.
But the guy knew his limitations, did other interns and residents labs for them, was generous with his time, and bought a lot of Chinese food for everybody, so they covered for him by making sure he didn't hurt anyone. He ended up with an immensely profitable practice on Park Avenue where he charmed his patients with his gentle manning before passing them along to his "young associates" who did all the real medicine. Nice guy. Everybody was happy. But Trump would have put him or someone like him in charge of actual medical decisions, with disastrous results.

Rich said...

@ Leland: Herman, Herman Cain is that you ?

Didn't FOX require its employees to be vaccinated against Covid in 2021? I wonder if that policy is still in effect?

n.n said...

Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study

Aerosol and Surface Distribution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Hospital Wards, Wuhan, China, 2020

Third, the SARS-CoV-2 aerosol distribution characteristics in the ICU indicate that the transmission distance of SARS-CoV-2 might be 4 m.

Jamie said...

No president is an expert on everything. Most are experts on nothing. I find it hard to fault Trump for listening to Fauci - Fauci had had a long career in the relevant field and, as far as lay people including myself were concerned, a creditable one. (NOTE: I remember when the game was on to convince everybody that AIDS was going to be everybody's problem, not almost exclusively the problem of gay men with multiple partners who liked it bareback; I thought that was vanishingly unlikely even at the time, but more or less shrugged and figured that using a condom if you're going to be promiscuous was a good idea anyway. Not until months and months into COVID did I discover that Fauci had been The Science on that too.)

And if we recall, Trump did try to end the nationwide lockdown pressure far earlier than Fauci was using his bully pulpit (that I must admit Trump allowed him to have) to promote. My high school kid here in Texas was back in in-person school in August 2020; my niece and nephew, in California, lost the entire 2020-21 school year - his junior year, when lots of rubber hits the road - to Democrat lockdown, of I remember correctly.

Can you imagine what Biden would have done in like circumstances?

Skeptical Voter said...

Loathsome lying weasel--on his best day.

n.n said...

With the precautionary principle that gave us CAGW/CACC, 8 meters social distancing, double perhaps quadruple masking, and 3 weeks to viability.

gadfly said...

From the NYT on 9/12/23:

In an online meeting with anti-vaccine activists on June 27, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat running for president, falsely said there was good evidence that vaccine research had caused millions of deaths during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. He also claimed that such research could have created Covid-19, H.I.V. and other deadly viruses.

But in an appearance before Congress on July 20, Mr. Kennedy made none of those assertions. When lawmakers asked him about vaccines, he said: “I have never been anti-vax. I have never told the public to avoid vaccination.”

Sebastian said...

"It never seems to be mentioned that those who died of covid were on their last days anyway. You can't be old, obese, diabetic, have respiratory problems, etc, and expect a lengthy remainder to your life"

Well, it was mentioned, way back, on this very blog, repeatedly, to the consternation of alarmist Covidians. It was obvious. Even the CDC sorta kinda conceded the point. Hence the need to weigh the benefits of intervention, if any, in QALYs against all likely costs. Instead, panic paid.

pacwest said...

I knew for sure the distancing was bs when they forced us into clusters in Walmart and a few select other stores. It made no sense.

Mike said...

Ok, but why quote that lying crackpot RFK, Jr on this? There's people with far more credibility on this. Like a dead amoeba.

Oligonicella said...

Sebastian:
Well, it was mentioned, way back, on this very blog, repeatedly, to the consternation of alarmist Covidians.

My litany of things I'd said that turned out true should have made that clear. I wasn't talking about shouting on a street corner.

Yes, it was a bit hyperbolic as I amongst others mentioned it here and caught flack. Generally, that message was stomped on by the fretful, not just with denial but threats as well.

The Godfather said...

I fear that social media are creating us as a nation of zombies.

Sure, it's good to see some recognition that the "Powers That Be" pushed unscientific useless practices like masks and distancing and closing schools, etc., etc., etc., and shut up dissenters from that orthodoxy. But what bothers me is that We The People joined enthusiastically in their efforts. If you declined masking, if you declined the vaccine, if you congregated, if you met together to worship, or recreate, or for any purpose other than to riot, then your "friends and neighbors" condemned you and criticized you and "outed" you on social media. So most of us went along, and if we didn't go along, we kept quiet about it.

phantommut said...

Straight Outta Rectum -- a documentary of the FDA, CDC, Covid-19, and Fauci.

GingerBeer said...

First Fetterman and now RFK. Whatever is in the water these two are drinking we've got to get more Ds to swallow. Of course, they'll both return to form in due time

RMc said...

And that ignores that the ModRNA vaccines turned out to be dangerous. By now, they appear to have killed more people in this country than the virus, itself, ever did.

[citation needed]

Jim at said...

I'm mystified by leftists thinking some Republicans did the same things as every, single Democrat is some sort of gotcha. It isn't. Especially when you spent the entire time beating the shit out of Republicans who didn't go along with your dwarf god.

Wrong is wrong. Why can't you admit that?

Joe Smith said...

The cocksucking gnome should be in prison...

n.n said...

Masks on, don't breathe.

gadfly said...

Sebastian said...
"It never seems to be mentioned that those who died of covid were on their last days anyway. You can't be old, obese, diabetic, have respiratory problems, etc, and expect a lengthy remainder to your life"

Hmm, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. I'm old, even older than Biden, obese, and diabetic but got stuck 3 times and lived through the pandemic to tell about it. So I hope you don't mind if I thank the Pfizer folks, who saved millions of lives.

Rich said...

Could have done nothing and had 2x the deaths, 2x the hospitalizations. Time to move on. Social media continues to pound this destructive drum. Once vaccinated the risk of death from Covid dropped by factor of 10. Our World in Data has the graphs. Social media including this comment section distorts reality. Manipulation is powerful and common here.

Howard (not that Howard) said...

Gadfly said...

Hmm, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. I'm old, even older than Biden, obese, and diabetic but got stuck 3 times and lived through the pandemic to tell about it. So I hope you don't mind if I thank the Pfizer folks, who saved millions of lives.


Magical thinking. Even with these comorbidities, the death rate was around 10%. Might as well chalk your survival up to wearing the same clothes every day.

Bruce Hayden said...

“And that ignores that the ModRNA vaccines turned out to be dangerous. By now, they appear to have killed more people in this country than the virus, itself, ever did.”

“[citation needed]”

Sorry. You can do your own work here (I know you won’t, and this was aimed as a gotcha). I have linked and published hundreds of articles by now, in various fora, on the subject. As Yancey pointed out, the public health agencies in this country have engaged in deliberate obfuscation here, by refusing to publish the data that they have on the vaccines and their safety and efficacy. They quit publishing or releasing the data, once a significant proportion of the country was initially vaccinated, and the data started showing worrying signals about safety of the vaccines. One of the statistics to watch is Excess Deaths. There has, for example, been a big jump in heart attack deaths in late adolescent and young adult males, increasing starting with the introduction of the vaccines, and increasing through 2022 and 2023. This is a demographic that flat out was just not dying from the virus. Cancer deaths have also jumped, esp in demographics that in the past just didn’t get cancer, and many of those involved “turbo” cancers that moved from Stage I to Stage IV in weeks.

Early on, that’s all we had, but more recently, additional ways have been developed to detect vaccine injury - for example dyes that fluoresce in the presence of Wuhan variant spike proteins (only produced by the ModRNA vaccines after Omicron pushed out Delta). Some of the heart attacks in normally almost exempt demographics show major heart damage and large quantities of those Wuhan spike proteins nearby. Ditto with the massive blood clots sometimes found in the vaccinated. Esp tragic was the baby who died from one. Remember, one of the reasons that Pfizer stated that they used ModRNA (with Uridines replaced with N1 Methylpseudouridines) instead of mRNA, was to get the vaccines out of the injection site and into the lymphatic system, which is cleared out by the circulatory system, and from there, the ModRNA is transported throughout the body, often being pumped through the heart, veins, and arteries continuously until lodging somewhere.

The mechanism here is fairly well understood. The first injection of a ModRNA vaccine imprints the immune system with the knowledge of the Wuhan spike proteins as antigens. Then with subsequent injections, cells that take in the ModRNA start producing the spike proteins. When the spike proteins are detected in the cells, they are destroyed by the immune system. Destroy too many heart muscle cells this way, and you get myocarditis. Etc. Normally, immune systems finding mRNA outside cells, destroy it as a matter of course. But the replacement of Uridines with N1 Methylpseudouridines effectively hides the ModRNA from the immune system, while greatly stabilizing the ModRNA over mRNA (naturally, converting Uridines to Thymines is done to created DNA, which is much more stable than RNA). Something recently identified is that the N1 Pseudouridine in ModRNA appears to result in occasional frame skipping, during transcription, possibly related to folding issues. This does result in mistranscribed proteins, but no evidence yet that it is that harmful, and is probably preferable to the wobble bonding issues when regular Pseudouridine replaces Uridine. We shall see. Moreover the cause of the turbo cancers is also not well known yet. It could be the folding, or something to do with the DNA residue in the capsid in the very dirty Process 2 mass production vaccines. We do know that those turbo cancers often fluoresce brightly with that dye, showing high concentrations of vaccine generated spike proteins.

Some people to follow to get a sense of the volume of information out there are Drs Robert Malone and Peter McCullough. Malone right now is in ill repute right now due to his being one of the original inventors of mRNA vaccines. Still, I have found his explanations of often very complex aspects of these vaccines quite helpful.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Magical thinking. Even with these comorbidities, the death rate was around 10%. Might as well chalk your survival up to wearing the same clothes every day.”

Very much agree. Though with Gadfly’s comorbidities, I don’t begrudge him taking the vaccine. What I think was wrong was approving, then pushing, even mandating, these very dangerous ModRNA vaccines on demographics that have a 1/100,000 or even 1/1,000,000 fatality rate from the virus. Those pushing, and esp those mandating, those vaccines are the ones who should be strung up. They have no excuse. If they didn’t understand the issue, they shouldn’t have acted as they did. By summer of 2021 it was clear that the vaccines didn’t prevent breakthrough infections, and there was no reason to flatten the curve (which had originally been posited on a shortage of ventilators, which turned out to be one of the worst things that you could do to those fighting the virus, just above Dem governors throwing those with the virus into rest homes with the, before then, uninfected). Now we know that most of those who have repeatedly had the virus, as well as those with Long Covid, have been repeatedly vaccinated. No surprise - Original Antigenic Sin strongly suggests that overimprinting on the Wuhan variant Spike proteins will reduce the immune system’s ability to imprint on other, related, antigens. And since 12/21, when Omicron pushed out Delta in this country, the Wuhan spike producing vaccines have been obsolete, wasting precious resources fighting the vaccines, instead of the virus.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

meanwhile:
The Democrat-supported lab in Wuhan china - is experimenting with a new deadly virus.

Taken from Pangoiuns and delivered to mice. Result? Dead mice - infected their brains and killed them dead, fast.

why would this be necessary unless it's a weapon of mass destruction?

See here.

Yancey Ward said...

"Once vaccinated the risk of death from Covid dropped by factor of 10."

This happened to people who didn't get the vaccine, too, Rich, which is actually a majority of the world, still.