...of course it's all politics. I don't want to excuse Fauci -- though there are many good arguments to excuse him based on his administrative role or the perception of a crisis. But however you cut it, the social crisis that the pandemic wrought was not induced by him, though he may have played a part in exacerbating it. The social crisis was induced by the media, by the media's audiences -- that's y'all -- and the zero-sum game of politics, particularly two-party politics, most particularly zero-sum two-party politics of US urban educated professional class elites vs the non-elite.
One should expect the director of a center for disease control, like a physician, to err on the side of caution, propagandizing in favor of trusting the government's efforts to control and avoid chaos. As a public figure, he's expected to act and advocate for action, not just stand there sucking his thumb. I'm not excusing him for his choices. After all, he could have acted as Sweden's State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell who rejected shutdowns and advocated voluntary individual responsibility (in other words, try to protect yourself if you're scared, otherwise act normally), and Sweden fared better than the US, though worse than the rest of the Nordics.
We should expect the news media to follow authority in a crisis -- to state what the government wants us to do and why, and what evidence there is that supports those actions and rationales. But should we accept news media to abandon investigative research?
And we should certainly expect that news will play up fears. But we should also expect voices of reason to "flatten the spike" of terror. If no such voices speak out we should expect that a terrorized public will become judgmental, intolerant, even hateful, as the history of plagues have shown only too well.
Which of these is most dangerous -- the CDC, the media or the media's audience? The head of the CDC has a measure of authority and a megaphone, but is not the final policy-maker. The media are capable of terrorizing the public. It has a responsibility to restrain its excesses and report fairly, so I place a lot of blame on the media. But most of all, it's the audience that chooses its preferred media Kool Aid. The media's audience lapped up the fear, digested it and expelled it as hate and mockery for the out-group. And it plays out in the zero sum game of two party politics. Prior to Covid, I thought that the vile beliefs of white nationalists were a cause for sane minds to rally against. But now I see no hope for a democracy populated by I'll intent and bias on all sides.
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So this attack on Fauci is mere politics. How do you know it's mere politics? Because the lab leak debunking conspiracy was the least concerning conspiracy that the public objected to.
Consider these: "there's no natural immunity" (during the delta spread, the vaccine breakthrough rate was three and a half times greater than the re-infection rate according to the NY State Dept. of Health, so if the infection rate is the determiner of immunity, the vaccine provided no immunity from infection, but the Democrats not only didn't tell that to the public, they encouraged and even implemented vaccine mandates; and during the omicron spread, everyone finally saw the emperor was naked, and yet Democrat partisans still insisted on vaccine mandates -- figuratevi un po);
Vaccine mandates can only be justified if the vaccine prevents contagion or if reducing sympotms "flatten the curve" to relieve overwhelmed hospitals. But it was well known that the vaccine didn't prevent infection or contagion, it ameliorated the symptoms significantly reducing mortality. I asked my fellow seniors who got the vaccine first, whether they got it to prevent contagion. They all said, no, the vaccine doesn't prevent infection or contagion, it just means you're less likely to die. (I was surprised by their candor on this.) Again during delta, the most complete data -- easily available online -- showed that hospitalizations exactly reflected the distribution of vaxed and unvaxed public -- in Iceland and in Israel where the vaccine rates were 86% and 80% respectively, their hospital patients were roughly 86% and 80% vaccinated breakthrough cases -- the unvaxed died at a higher rate, but the infection rate appeared the same as the vaxed infection rate. You might suppose that the vaxed public socialized more freely and that would explain the high breakthrough rate, but it's just as likely that the fear of contagion that drove them to get vaccinated made them more wary of socializing -- especially the aged were terrorized and terrified -- while the lack of fear that drove those who avoided the vaccine led them to socialize freely -- after I recovered in March of '20 I traveled four continents happily and unvaxed) yet it was after the curve had flattened that the Democrat partisans insisted on vaccine mandates. When I pointed these data to an academic listserve, these New York liberals cited not data or medical journals but The Atlantic Monthly and accused me of being Altright. Even Naomi Klein, whose Doppelganger is replete with citations of every imaginable novel about dopplegangers, but not a single scientific support for the mask mandates and vaccine mandates that she assumes are justified and which are central to the entire political project of her book. ! Not one. None of the Democrat partisans seems to have devoted even a moment of reflection or question. "If the NYTimes says so, it must be so." Anybody remember Gell-mann amnesia? Remember the role the NYTimes played in the Bush administration's weapons of mass destruction? The Church Committee finding that Sulzberger colluded with the CIA? No one remembers this? Or does no one care?
Ah, yes, politics is not about policy or ideology. It's about identity. The NYTimes tells us what we are to believe, and we believe it or else we don't belong and our friends will not trust or love us. Do as you're told and above all don't question. What's shocking is that even a Naomi Klein would fall into this intellectual pit. That academics fell in does not surprise me at all. I know my community all too well.
And mask mandates. Set aside that the Cochrane review concluding that even though KN95 when properly worn at all times (so no beards!) reduce contagion, mask mandates don't work because you can't herd cats to wear the mask properly, get everyone the right mask, ensure that the mask is worn at all times. No one needed a gold-standard review to grasp that mandates were not going to work. On my flight to Naples Italy, the flight attendant asked me to replace my comfortable loose-fitting cloth mask -- cleverly cut out of a friend's old underwear -- which I did with a surgical mask as per her request. Twenty minutes later dinner was served and everyone took their masks off to eat. (It was Air France and it was tasty, especially the savory mashed potatoes.) Well, game over, no? No. After eating all together like a rush hour cafeteria in Penn Station, we all were asked to put our masks on again. This is insanity. You cannot expect people to believe this.
Then on the flight back from Cairo, again a cabin packed like sardines, every fifteen minutes or so the main screen interrupting us to remind us to respect physical distance while walking to the restrooms. The aisle was about two feet wide, if that. What kind of comedy is this? Had the world gone topsy-turvy? Was this irrationality always lurking beneath the surface and Covid let it all out in the open?
When the news of Covid was coming, I remember the reports of 7% mortality rates in Iran, 5% in Italy that jump-started public terror. The day after the first New York State Covid case was diagnosed, I taught a class of upper-level undergrads, entering the room I learnt the face of panic -- a room full of young people all sitting quiet and glum like they all had the same stomach ache. I needed to speak to their news-media generated misery.
"You've heard the reports of five and seven percent mortality rates. Where do those rates come from? From a broad spectrum or random samples of the Italian and Iranian population? No. Look who's counting. The hospitals. The numbers come from hospitals treating patients. And who goes to the hospitals for treatment? Only the very sick. The mortality of those patients are not the mortality of the virus. It's the mortality of those who are about to die of the virus. You will see over time as more general data are gathered, those mortality rates will decline -- from 5 to 4 to 3 to 1 and probably even below 1." [And this bold prediction turned out true -- if anything, it wasn't bold enough.] "Journalists don't understand or care about statistics and analysis. They care about a story to sell, and nothing sells as well as fear. This virus is a danger to the aged. It's not a death sentence for you guys. Probably you will all get this virus" -- audible collective gasp from the class -- "many of you won't even know that you've had it, and some of you will get sick and you'll get over it and be fine. What you should do is call your grandma, tell her you love her and go back to normal life." A couple of weeks later, Angela Merkel told the German public much the same.
And whatayouknow, the morality rate declined below 1% and my students all survived. Meanwhile, friends were telling me not to touch my face, wash my groceries, and make a cloth mask to wear.
What happened during Covid was not so much the fault of the CDC, which has a mission to intervene in a pandemic. It was, above all, a convergence of media market dysfunction -- if it bleeds it ledes which in a pandemic means terrorizing the public daily -- a frightened, virtue-signaling, judgmental audience of Republican-haters and Trump-haters. I sympathize with the Trump-haters and Republican-despisers, btw. But to distort the facts of the virus is not necessary for justifying ones feelings about Trump or Republicans.
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