Dr. Tony Dervish
I have despised and distrusted Dr. Anthony Fauci from the very onset of the Covid crisis. I was aware of his dubious–to put it mildly–role in the AIDS issue in the ’80s. But my extremely negative priors were based more on the fact that he has been at the top of the bureaucratic food chain in DC for decades, which can only mean that he is a apparatchik who cultivates power and seeks rents, rather than a man who cultivates science and seeks truth.
I think I was very early to the game. When I tweeted something critical about him in March, a couple of friends chided me for dissing “Dr. Fauci.” They are now staunch Fauci foes.
If anything, events have shown that my priors were far to generous: my posteriors are unbounded from below.
The man has pirouetted on virtually every covid-related issue. Masks. Means of transmission. Vulnerability of children. Lockdowns. He has always taken the politically expedient position of the moment. Pre-November, moreover, his words and deeds were almost invariably calculated to damage Trump. And no wonder, given the mutual antipathy between Trump and the bureaucratic establishment in DC.
But Dr. Dervish’s most disgusting spin has been from heaping scorn on the Wuhan lab leak theory to his recent acknowledgement that gee, yeah, it’s a plausible hypothesis that needs to be investigated.
Who knew? Really? Well knock me down with a feather.
Like many of the government party and ruling class (e.g., Glenn Kessler of Pravda on the Potomac), Fauci (survivalist that he is) was forced into this spin by facts. But this is little excuse. The circumstantial case for the culpability of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was always quite strong. Strong enough that it should not have been dismissed out of hand–let alone characterized as conspiratorial (and racist) lunacy as a justification for not investigating. But some recent facts of the barking dog and non-barking dog variety have only strengthened it. The illness of 3 WIV employees immediately prior to the outbreak. The connection between WIV and a bat-infested cave 1000+ miles away where (a) several individuals had contracted covid-like symptoms, and (b) the WIV had dispatched researchers to collect samples. The failure to find any animal intermediaries between the bats and people (again–who were separated by 1000+ miles).
So like a cornered cockroach, Fauci has had no choice but to admit the obvious.
And Fauci comes to this with very dirty hands indeed. He has bobbed and weaved for weeks about his role in funding WIV. He almost certainly lied about it in Congressional testimony. When forced to tell the truth slowly, he acknowledged the funding but claimed it was impossible to know whether it had gone to “Bat Woman’s” “gain of function research.” His latest spin is that it would have been a “dereliction of duty” not to cooperate with WIV on coronavirus research–all the while expressing ignorance as to whether this institution was engaged in GOF research.
WELL WHY THE HELL DON’T YOU KNOW? This is your excuse, Sergeant Schultz? “I KNOW NUTHINK?” Really? For this you are the highest paid employee in the U.S. government?
Very few in Washington have been willing to challenge this superannuated elf. Only Rand Paul has had the stones to shirtfront Fauci time and again. Other Senate Republicans (and most in the House), you ask? Surely you jest. Worthless and craven governing uniparty POS almost without exception.
As a result, there is little doubt that, like Blattella germanica, this bureaucratic cockroach will survive, and even thrive. Rand Paul, on the other hand, should rightly fear assassination.
This is where we are.
After terminating a Pompeo-initiated effort to investigate the lab leak theory, whoever has his/her hand up the back of Joe Biden’s/Charlie McCarthy’s shirt has ordered the intelligence community to investigate.
Yeah, that inspires confidence, don’t it?
Can you say “whitewash” these days? If you can, I guarantee that’s what this “investigation” will be.
Oh, by the way, don’t call it Wuhan Flu, it’s racist/ sarcasm off. The corruption is very deep at the Versailles on the Potomac and anyone with his tenure is by definition, deep state.
Comment by The Pilot — May 27, 2021 @ 9:39 pm
Early in 2020, I read Inglesby, T.V., et al., “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, 2006. 4(4): p. 366-375 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/bsp.2006.4.366.
It discussed the hard-won collective wisdom gained from past pandemics, from the 1918 flu through to the 2003 SARS Cov-1 epidemic. Wisdom about masks (not known to be effective), lock-downs (ineffective), school closures (ineffective), mass quarantines (ineffective), border closures and restriction of travel (ineffective) stoking mass panic (to be avoided).
Here’s their last paragraph: “An overriding principle. Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”
It became immediately clear that Anthony Fauci was doing everything exactly wrong. It was as though he knew best practice, and decided to do the opposite; as though all that hard-won wisdom had been lost and forgotten.
And when it came out that hydroxychloroquine/zinc/azithromycin/Vitamin D3 was an effective treatment, medical authorities rushed to suppress it. Ensuring that needed medical care services were *not* provided.
And medical authorities tried to do the same with Ivermectin, until it became so obvious that it works against Covid-19 that they couldn’t suppress its use.
Anthony Fauci should be indicted for criminal negligence. He’s colluded in a crime against humanity. And so has every bloody prog-dominated government in the US and in the world.
Comment by Pat Frank — May 27, 2021 @ 11:38 pm
I don’t have a blog of my own but I do post comments on lots of them. And my song since early days has consistently been that the lab leak theory is plausible. That opinion was based not only on many years experience of serving on a laboratory safety committee, but on decades of accumulated knowledge of mankind. Anyone who said that the leak theory was false was simply a liar. There was no conclusive evidence that it was false, just as there is not (yet?) conclusive evidence that it is true.
Fauci had many allies in the retailing of lies. String ’em up.
Comment by dearieme — May 28, 2021 @ 6:02 am
All is not as it seems.
Trump picked Fauci for a reason.
Trump said “we caught all of em” and I believe Trump.
Comment by Joe Walker — May 28, 2021 @ 7:50 am
Are the people who told us that the lab-leak theory was absolutely false the same people who told us that the ballot-rigging theory was absolutely false?
Comment by dearieme — May 28, 2021 @ 9:33 am
@dearieme–Round up the usual suspects!
Comment by cpirrong — May 28, 2021 @ 12:48 pm
Ahh Dr Fauci, another academic with a high opinion of himself.
@Pat: Lo, you found a paper which like totally matched your preconceptions. Rejoice!
Comment by David Mercer — May 28, 2021 @ 12:55 pm
@David–Clueless as ever. Fauci is not an academic. He is an apparatchik. Those people typically choose that career because can’t make it as academics.
Comment by cpirrong — May 28, 2021 @ 3:06 pm
I think it saw a bit more than just ‘I don’t know what’s going on n my own department”.
here:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fauci-pathogen-experiments-outweigh-risk-pandemic
and here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484390/
Comment by Tatyana — May 28, 2021 @ 5:29 pm
@7 David Mercer — you’ve got the causality exactly backwards, David. My perceptions of Fauci’s actions were formed after reading that paper.
Politics is not all, David, despite your afflicted view to the contrary.
Postconceptions — a practice foreign to you.
Comment by Pat Frank — May 28, 2021 @ 6:14 pm
Are the people who told us that the lab-leak theory was absolutely false the same people who told us that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is absolutely true?
Are the people who told us that the lab-leak theory was absolutely false the same people who told us that the cholesterol theory of heart disease is absolutely true?
There must be something these buggers have said that has been true, if only by coincidence. But what?
Comment by dearieme — May 30, 2021 @ 8:40 am
Gain-of-function research?!? The name is enough to give one the creeps.
And who’s the presiding genius? Peter Daszak. President of EcoHealth Alliance, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be. And also, by an amusing coincidence, on the WTO ‘Investigation’ team in Wuhan
Get exercised over Fauci, if you will. Jump up and down yelling about the Wuhan Institute though I doubt it’ll get you anywhere. CPC Dictatorship means they won’t pay any attention. And if anyone tries to sue China for damages, well, where’s the definitive proof? Plausibility doesn’t really get you anywhere.
Personally, I’d be wanting to interrogate Daszak. The sooner gain-of-function research is prohibited, the safer we all will be. And that’s the entire species of homo sapiens.
Comment by Simple Simon — May 30, 2021 @ 10:00 am
Biological weapons are a terrible thing (and very likely to backfire) so of course they are banned and no one would dare to even think of using them — right up to the moment that someone somewhere is mad enough or desperate enough to think this time it might just work. And no one would research such things — except, well best to know what the enemy is capable of, just in case… (maybe ask them to do the research for you)
I don’t believe keeping ahead of the ‘designs’ of Nature is quite the game that is afoot here.
Comment by djc — May 31, 2021 @ 3:35 pm