Dr. Makary gives an excellent summary of the egomaniacal depravity of Anthony Fauci, but I would like to put a finer, and admittedly less eloquent, point on it.
Dr. Fauci is one of the most fundamentally evil human beings to walk the earth in the last century. If a dictator did the things he did- suppress fundamental human rights, drive children to levels of despair and suicidality unknown before in the western world, create cult like behavior among his followers, and seek to destroy the careers and lives of his critics, we would call them a maniac. Why is this descriptor inappropriate for Fauci? The short answer is, it isn’t.
I don’t know that the destruction he has wrought (both tangible and intangible) will be fully understood for some time, but one thing is for certain...faith in medical institutions in the US will be lost for a generation at least. Nobody who lived through Covid will forget, nor should they.
I pray that Rand Paul and Republicans in Congress grow a spine for once and do not give Fauci another peaceful day for the rest of his time on earth. His name should be turned to mud to such a degree that anyone who shares his last name, whether related or not, wants to change it because there has been such a pall cast over it.
Faith in the medical institutions has been lost among those of us old enough to have experience. What I observe among our Millennial family members is that, not only do they accept proclamations uncritically, but, they do not recognize the impact of loss of freedom. Many grew up in a safety-ist, hovering environment and they like being tightly swaddled.
It is the lack of critical thinking skills which is the most disturbing thing about those (of any age) who accepted the advice of Fauci. I still see people wearing masks while driving alone or while outside. Fauci should have been fired the moment he claimed that perfectly safe HCQ was dangerous. It was a danger only to the potential profits of the drug companies selling the rushed experimental vaccine - which is worse than useless as it doesn’t prevent people from getting Covid but does weaken immunity.
I used to get angry at people wearing masks alone in cars or walking alone on a country path but now I have empathy for their ignorance. I think they are generally deeply confused by the message and they believe COVID is everywhere like dirt is around the Pigpen character in Peanuts. If you believe this, you will never unmask. Ignorance is not bliss, it is terrifying.
People do all kinds of weird things. Which is to say, people are weird. I don't know why some older men wear obvious toupees that make them look like a clown, or why people get Botox injections to the point that they look permanently startled.
Perhaps they are wearing it because they are scared, or perhaps they became so used to it, that it is like a security blanket? Or, possibly, they just want anyone who sees them to know they are not a republican.
People yelled at me when I was not wearing a mask. In the park. One woman screamed: “mask up” and gesticulated wildly when I walked on another side of the street. I live in a mostly Democratic city, as you probably figured. I think we will tell these stories for years to come.
I had that happen once at a Costco somewhere in all that. A lot of frustration turned into intolerance and hatred of people they are told are the problem. If only that guy got shots and/or wore a mask, this would all be over next week. That sort of crap.
I think government accumulated enough trust credits before to make millennials trustful. Now the trust is gone or at least questionable. Regrettable position because we are facing very challenging times, which may require quite meaningful sacrifices
I have posted this same position on many occasions. And if you go back to the 80s, you'll see many people stating the same during the early days of AIDs. An awful, despicable man.
He was only 'one of the kindest, most charming human beings you will ever meet' until he was cornered, then his real personality came out.
I dont know about that. More and more people are starting to see the harm he caused. Hopefully the scapegoating and rage will be turned from the "uvaxxed deplorables" to him and this group of permanent bureaucrats
Most of the issues with Fauci are articulated in this thread. He may not have been intentionally evil, but his narcissism led him to disregard any opposing views, and resulted in untold, and very avoidable collateral damage.
I suspect he was also financially motivated due to his ties with Pharma/China/WHO, but Ill let the next session of Congress determine that.
He’s actually not a jerk at all. He’s personally a gracious generous person. He’s a fearless political gadfly in the best spirit of american journalism. He mocks and derides and criticizes. Good for him!
Read some HL mencken . Some samuel clemens, PJ orourke .
The enemy of lying pomposity smugness and groupthink . Whats not to like?
He and his ilk have brought us closer to apocalyptic results, at least for our culture, than anything else in my lifetime. This house of cards could really collapse.
Somebody who waits until the age of 81 to retire from a very public position, who never admits he is wrong, even when it affect an entire country, seems to actually enjoy the cult built around him, who claims to be “Science” itself… obviously a high grade narcissist who should have not have had power in his hands. The sinister part is that while half of the country sanctified him, much of the other thinks he’s nothing less than the evilest man in earth - a lot of competition there. I wish they were just as severe with another famous narcissist who wants to retire in his ‘80s from top power positions (president), never admits he’s wrong or his endless lies, enjoys having turned a political party largely into a cult of his personality, delivered to Senate to the Dems in 2020, puts a much needed Republican victory in 2022 at risk and is ready to set the country on fire, the latter three just to satisfy his maniacal ego, bruised by a lost election. I wish America’s rejection of pathological narcissists would be more methodical.
Some narcissist use it to their advantage to do good. I know no one who could have withstood what DJT put up with as president. He didn’t have to take that job ( free of charge) as a wealthy man.
I see, Trump decided to be president not to improve his “brand” but because he wanted to SERVE his country. The altruistic narcissist ! That’s a really good one ! If you would have actually listened to what Trump has always said very loudly, for people who wanted to help others or to serve their country, “Bone Spur Trump” always had two words: SUCKERS and LOOSERS. He is actually very proud of that.
Totally agree on Fauci. Agree with most of Trump’s policies as president, although it difficult to tell how many were actually coming from the people around him. However, what Trump did to this country after the 2020 election is a disaster and we’ll be paying for it long after he’s gone.
Trump should have accepted the advice he was given that once the EC Electors were picked there was nothing that could be done to prevent Biden from completing the steal. But your overwrought and clueless allegation against Trump is a vicious calumny.
What steal??? You’ve got people like Barr, who have put everything on the line to help Trump when nobody wanted to be around him, clearly saying there was no election-changing irregularity, plus endless other local Republican officials saying the same, and we keep seeing again and again this insanity with “the steal”? This has become the exact mirror image of the left’s “Climate emergency” - a cultist absurdity repeated like some kind of prayer. We all either come back to common sense or we all burn together, left cultists embracing right cultists.
Fascinating how the same people who now realize how untrustworthy our public health agencies have become, how captured our federal agencies have become, how corrupt our media, big tech, academic institutions are remain unshakably certain that our elections, run by partisans in 50 different ways, and where rules are changed at whim based on who has control in a state are of the highest integrity. SMH
The thing about federalism is there's really no way to rig the elections of 50 different states simultaneously, because each state runs their own show and has very different people in charge.
Trump’s people have filed many lawsuits, all thrown out including by Republican judges, because they could not prove any significant fraud. According to your weird theory, since the country is polarized, no doubt there was fraud, even if nobody can prove it in any way. But why do we need proof when we believe in Trump Out Savior? Oh, but I forget, it’s a huge left-wing conspiracy, all local Republicans office holders were in it, Republican judges were in it, even those appointed by Trump, Barr was in it, only the faithful Trump cultist didn’t get bought.
Actually, the 2020 election was a disaster. I personally saw people going door to door at apt complexes paying people to sign ballot envelopes with no ballots yet inside. I reported it to local officials who hung up on me. Trump did the entire country a service in illustrating how corrupt our elections have become.
And we'll have to respectfully disagree on the importance of Jan 6 as well. I think we'll see an entirely different side of the event after the House changes hands next term.
Optics will certainly change. The disgusting evil nature of a looser politician unleashing his hordes to stop certifying his rival’s win will never change. You can have the best political intentions in the world and your rival might be a sleaze just waiting to break his promises (Biden), still two wrongs don’t make a right. Never. Ignoring this puts us all into deeper and deeper hole. Nothing will really change until we understand this.
“ I wish they were just as severe with another famous narcissist who wants to retire in his ‘80s from top power positions (president), never admits he’s wrong or his endless lies”
I agree completely although large crowds chanting “let’s go Brandon” is a pretty good start.
Could have been talking about Obama, Bush the II or Biden too - same personality traits. (I’m old enough to remember people literally swooning at Obama’s rallies, chanting his name, depicting him as Christ, saying he was going to heal the earth - or was that him saying that himself). Only difference with Trump is that - publicly - he can’t afford to admit he’s wrong. The media would pounce (another pack of lying narcissists). What was Obama et al’s excuse? BTW - so tired of this “endless lies” trope. Name one serious lie that wasn’t clear braggadocio for effect. Remember- a lie means you know something to be factually untrue and claim it anyway. Like “inflation is at 0%.”
nope/... criminal malfeasance, if there is justice he would die in prison. coercing people to take experimental drgs they dont want and dont need is a crime against humanity and violates the nuremberg code and warrants long prison sentences and even the death penalty
Dr Fauci, like virtually everyone in Washington DC, is a net detriment to society and he will be receiving a pension of $350,000 annually. The equivalent of having $10 million in assets passively invested.
If you ever wonder why these teething rodents lash out when someone recommends actually reducing the size of the federal government, that is why.
None of them ever have to worry about money ever again for the rest of their lives. In most cases it’s not as lavish as Dr. Fauci’s sinecure, but it is, nonetheless, the complete elimination of concern over money permanently. An unbelievable luxury if you can imagine it. That’s why they are willing to kill you.
Unfortunately "Republican" and "spine" are mutually exclusive concepts. The Democrat party hasn't so much seized power as simply leached their way into a vacuum of leadership.
If ever there were a time when America desperately needed a viable third party, this is such a time. But we all know that will never be allowed to happen.
I fully agree with every syllable you posted about Dr. Fascist/Dr. Fausti, but you forgot that he'll probably get a Nobel Prize to go along with his Medal of Freedom.
With the exception of Dr./Senator Paul, and maybe Senator Kennedy, I'm not confident the Republicans will do much other than grandstand, bluster and bloviate for the cameras. I so want to be wrong. As Michael Corleone said at the beginning of GF2 (one of the sources of universal truth) they're "both part of the same hypocrisy".
Suggestion. Read a few history books. That wil give you some perspective, perhaps change a few of your many extremist views, and allow you a good night's sleep.
I think if YOU read the history you seem to be so fond of, you'll find that Fauci does, in fact, have a lot in common with other authoritarian, collectivist monsters throughout the 20th Century. The most American of those is Progressive Movement spawn Woodrow Wilson.
It's not a difference in kind, but of degree, and all the more remarkable that it happened in one of the most free nations in human history.
Sorry if I did, I spend 6 years studying American history in college and grad school before getting a professional degree. History is extremely helpful but you don't need to know much to disregard (and be surprised by) the comments saying Fauci is the worst/most evil etc. in history.
Your degree was a waste. We already know millions of people around the world were thrown back into abject poverty beginning in 2020 because, primarily, of 2 people: Fauci and the head of the WHO (who takes his marching orders from Fauci and Gates). Millions of children will be stunted. How many millions died from COVID who were denied safe early treatment and/or put on death drugs like remdesiver. How many millions will die from injections Fauci profited from. I could go on. And that’s just in 2.5 years. If you really knew anything about history, you would know it’s not a snapshot in time. It unfolds over years, decades, sometimes millenia and it’s backward looking. We have yet to know whether Fauci will be the most evil man of all time (which I’m willing to say he is not) or just in the top 10 (which is where my $ is).
If you study history as well as you say you do, then you should know that discovery of the damage done by miscreants enthralled by their own power is often not known until they are themselves history.
We simply do not know comprehensively what damage has been done, unwittingly or not, by Drs Fauci and Collins and their willing accomplices in institutions and media, but history if written honestly will tell us.
Not sure why you’re not seeing that, being an historian and all, and reserving judgment as history instructs us to do.
This! Downplaying the long-term effects of the response to Covid is irresponsible, because minimizing the death toll makes it all too easy for the proponents of that response to excuse doing many of the same things again in the future.
Ok then, my two "best schools" against your two. I agree on the poor standards of universities to day, but come on, reading around 80-100 books on history is useless? As for your calculations, who knows (well, you and I surely don't)but your perspective on "engineered global catastrophes" and comparisons to Mao, Stalin and Hitler seem a tad off -- and I'm trying to be polite here.
Is this a private fight or can anyone get into it?
The ping-pong game continues. The MSM, Big Tech, corrupt finance and our compromised political leadership once again butchered our national dialogue and exploited a literal life and death crisis to leverage personal power, position and gain while driving the wedge of dissent, fear and distrust ever deeper into the American heart. 2008 was of the same life and death magnitude. Criminal finance killed people, destroyed lives, homes and families across our entire world. Covid, like the 2008 crisis was mishandled because we're ill. One of the first things a man should learn is that evil is real, it always enters the home undetected and it takes the entire village STANDING TOGETHER to overcome it. The first recognition being, that it has poisoned US.
We (that's US or U.S.) live from crisis to manufactured crisis for the exact purpose of preventing the reality based national dialogue necessary to put rational and practical solutions on the table for the creation of a brighter American future. Obfuscation and the "bitch slap" is our daily bread. How, stretched to the limits of survival, tongue tied by lies and spoon-fed hysteria twenty four hours a day, would we maintain a connection to healthy human reality at all?
Someone once said that if a man doesn't know his history he doesn't know who he is. I believe that history is a living breathing presence that informs the fact of our lived and shared reality. If I lose my connection to mythos and history I fall out of time into ANOMIE. As a general observation I'd say there are forces at play in our lives working to sever our connection to American mythos and history with a chainsaw. Got Constitution?
Mao, Hitler and Stalin are entirely relevant to our discussion but not because of Dr. Faust er, Fauci. All three manipulated pathological ideological utopianism and the mass projection of evil ,by a confused and desperate populace, to suspend human dignity and install the murderous totalitarianism that defined the 20th Century, and took the lives of millions. We stand on the threshold of a new age. The brutalization of the American psyche by a nefarious and venal force is underway. It intends to steal our future. Call it anything you want, but it's there. That's why we're here. GET CLEAN. GET STRONG. GET CLEAR.
As an English friend of ours, who at this moment is spinning in his grave at the arrest of his fellow citizens for thought crimes, once said:
"...Here come old flat top he come grooving' up slowly....he say I know you and you know me..one thing I can tell you is you've got to be free...come together...right now..."
“Reading around 80-100 books on history is useless?” Yes. Btw - I’ve read 800,000 books on history. See, we all can lie on the internet because your lack of understanding of the pedagogy of history makes me disbelieve your claims.
I have no worthless paper hanging on the wall as proof that it was understood , you go with what you believe , Fauci screwed the pooch on aids and covid you keep on praying to the cult of faici
By all means dear professor suggest three or four. Visceral disdain of Fauci on opinion boards is what America is about. Perhaps you should read up on the founders.
All true and know this: he did not do it alone. It took an army to carry out his orders. The American victims are too many to count and we are forever broken.
Fauci's reputation at this point is very much like what Adolf Hitler's would have been if the Nazis won WWII. Revered by his camp and reviled by the rest, but with his camp in control.
So sad that this hate-filled, ignorant screed is the most popular comment on Bari Weiss's publication. I guess that's the kind of audience she attracts.
Fauci is highly regarded among his colleagues. Right-wing media has demonized him because he dared to contradict Dear Leader. And you fell for their propaganda.
I look at a wide variety of media and check everything against other sources. When you take the mainstream media together as a whole, over time you get much closer to the truth than anything in right-wing media.
Not really, because NYT, CNN, WaPo, NPR, MSNBC, AP, etc. all have pretty much identical biases.
So your "wide variety of media" is really just interchangeable talking points with different brand names.
To actually have a "wide variety" you have to include at least some of those dreaded "right-wing media" sources, no matter how much they may trigger you by failing to reinforce your preferred echo chamber.
The problem arises when people do the opposite of what you do, and *only* get their news from a "wide variety" of right wing sources, i.e. using a mix of Fox, Daily Wire, Breitbart, etc. in order to meet their "variety" quota.
When it comes to covering politics, I agree with you. It's unfortunate that the pandemic became political. It shouldn't have, but it did. I blame both sides of the media for this. Politicians and social media jumped on board. I also blame the CDC for not being transparent.
I would say he's more of a Patrik Stefan, if Stefan insisted he totally didn't miss that open net and anyone who thinks he did is a deplorable with a faulty memory.
Right-wing media has been peddling the false claim that Ivermectin cures covid. They've done several major studies and it has been shown to do nothing.
I have no such illusions. however Ivermectin is an important human drug used world wide.. especially in poverty stricken areas.. The left called it "horse wormer". which it is. but only one of a myriad of uses for humans. However even the NIH says this."Clinical Trials
Several clinical trials evaluating the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 are currently underway or in development. Please see ClinicalTrials.gov for the latest information." so while the current recommendation is the Ivermectin is not a "cure" for covid it seems that science is always changing. .. there is no "the science" and certainly Fauci is not the arbitor of what is "science'..
"Egomaniacal depravity?" You should have been talking about Trump, who did everything he could to downplay the dangers of the virus and sell people on ludicrous quack cures. Keven Stitt, the governor of my state, who's rural residents were ravaged by the misinformation they received from Trump and Fox News and often died from eating Ivermectin, blew a million and a half of taxpayers money on hydroxochlorine.
I just laughed so hard I spit out my coffee. You really should put a warning at the top of a post like this. "Do not consume food or beverage while reading the following".
I had seen on MSNBC (or was it Vox?) how they ran out of grave sites in the red states trying to bury all those deplorable Trump supporters who died from consuming horse paste as they were instructed. And you forgot to mention the bleach injections. What was the mortality rate on that again?
Makary seems all too kind. One does not have to dig very deep into Fauci to find the ugly. Gain of function research. Horrifying experiments on dogs. And I don't see many people having anything kind to say about his approach to AIDS.
I find his attempts to avoid any blame for the harmful Covid responses based on his advice disgusting at best and near-criminal at worst. People in government did things because HE told them to. And when his assertions were questioned (which is the way science is done), he made sure the questioners were silenced.
I've met (mercifully few) medical doctors with a "God complex," but the insistence that he was "The Science" really takes the cake.
I was also going to bring up Fauci's AIDS response. It is far from anything that deserves praise.
Fauci was one of the drivers behind the 'anybody can get AIDS' campaign that is now being rerun with monkeypox. While technically true, it was well established early on that anal sex and IV drug use were major risk factors for AIDS transmission. The CDC and others bowed to political pressure and wasted resources on general warnings while refusing to take specific actions to limit AIDS transmission.
In a foreshadowing of what happened during COVID, Facui championed the concept that an AIDS vaccine should be developed, and spent years attempting to discredit treatments such as AZT and various drug cocktails in favor of funding vaccine research that ultimately failed.
Seriously, he was Mengele bad. No person in my lifetime has caused more international economic and human destruction as this man. He sold his soul to the WHO/Chinese/Pharma, and forever damaged a generation of young people. It will be 10-20 years before we can accurately gauge what the emotional impacts on our children were during two years of hysterics and learning loss.
If you have not read "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts, please do. It's an excellent book about the poor governmental response to AIDS in the 80's, and speaks of Dr Fauci (I pronounce it Falsy). Tragically, Randy died of AIDS in 1994.
I lived through that era, although it did not affect me personally. Which is probably why the name Fauci didn't mean much to me until Covid. But I remember thinking that the approach the health authorities were using was pretty messed up.
I got married in 1985 (37 years ago today). I don't recall needing any blood test. But, that was a long time ago. I do recall there was a concentrated effort to lecture heterosexual people that had just as good of chance of getting AIDS as homosexual males. I think only lesbians were off the hook? Anyway, there was some truth to it w/r to blood transfusions, and shared needles. Then there was Magic Johnson. Wuh Woa. Skip a few decades later, and its Charlie Sheen.
You are correct. His ego is unrivaled. I am grateful for the med school recommendation letter he signed for me, however. I actually liked him and even trusted him for a few weeks at the beginning of this. He’s delusional regarding his own impact. Now, I just feel sorry for him. God will have the final word.
Narcissists are disarmingly charming when they choose to be.
I had a professor in grad school who always seemed very nice, and oddly less aggressively Woke than most. But one day I arrived slightly early for class and, as I stood just outside the door, heard him berating a student almost violently--particularly considering his usual demeanor--over something that seemed fairly trivial.
A couple of years later, he was suspected of murdering his ex-wife in an extremely brutal fashion: the medical examiner could not be sure exactly how many stab wounds there were because there were so many on top of each other. Due to that day outside the classroom, when I asked myself if I thought it was possible he had done it, I had to admit that it was.
He was ultimately convicted on a mountain of mostly circumstantial evidence. The most damning of which was that he had answers for all of the cops' questions *before they asked them.* He genuinely believed he was smart enough to talk and talk and talk to the cops and get away with it.
Yeah, it was extremely disturbing to realize that I personally knew someone who had committed murder.
One of the few people in my program who I was still in contact with told me about it via email--evidently he had explained his bandaged hands to the class that day as a gardening injury (which was not what he told police).
There is evidence to suggest that he may have had an accomplice, but outing the accomplice would involve admitting that he committed the murder, and it seems highly unlikely he will ever do that.
Not talked about much are the “simulations” that were performed by research institutions about pandemic response. It doesn’t take much reading to see that Fauci got his approach (vaccine focus instead of therapeutics, lockdowns instead of protecting the vulnerable, etc.. ) to Covid from these simulations.
The sadistic, horrifying experiments on beagles was just heartbreaking, and I'm sure it was just the tip of that iceberg.
What people seem to forget is that when Obama said no to gain-of-function in US labs, Fauci circumvented that order by off-shoring the gain-of-function experimentation to the bat lady at the Wuhan Lab via Eco Health Alliance/Peter Daszak. He lied about that while he simultaneously set himself up to profit extensively off the "vaccines". How convenient to profit from both the poison AND the (supposed) cure.
Follow the money. Fauci and his Big Pharma buddies made obscene profits from Covid. It's astounding to me that people refuse to connect the dots and continue to fawn over him.
To me, it seemed that Fauci did what he did because the administration wanted him to (so many flip flops), especially with regard to vaccine mandates in order to reach its preposterous jab percentages, the only metric they cared about (and that led to the denial of treatment). And now he’s slinking away just in time to avoid losing his pension when the hearings finally start—after the midterms. The civility of this piece is wholly unwarranted.
I'm so happy you bring up his horrendous abuses during the AIDS epidemic. He and Gallo were fiends. When I saw Fauci appear that first night of the briefings, I gasped. I knew that nothing good would come from his involvement and as his power grew, more and more of our rights were taken away.
There's an entire Matthew McConaughey movie "Dallas Buyers Club", the true story of taking into their own hands access to drugs to combat AIDS because Fauci insisted on clinical trials here in the US while men/women were dying. Fauci is a despicable man!
I would really like to hear more about his approach to the AIDS crisis. I know there is some controversy there, but I don't understand it well enough to have an opinion.
This link can get you started. The author was one of the most intense of intense AIDS activists (a founder of ACT UP, I believe), but his complaints in this “open letter” greatly echo criticisms I and others have had with the one-size fits all approach to COVID: “The vaccine! The vaccine!” ( https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111 )
Also, the plot to the movie Dallas Buyers Club (after which the gorgeous Matthew McConaughey has never again looked healthy) derives from an underground drug buying club to procure experimental meds for AIDS patients, who weren’t receiving treatment for symptoms or for preventing lethal infections.
This guy is pretty spry and resilient for 81, I’ll give him that. But, you are so right about his legacy. Some, those who opted to keep themselves ignorant throughout the pandemic, would still sing his praises. Yet, like the CDC and the FDA, he blatantly showed his willingness to obfuscate, lie, ignore useful data, distain the use a balanced epidemiological approach, hide data, and rewriting the narrative (e.g., “no one EVER said that the vaccines would prevent infection”). Despicable him and them.
I am one of the physicians who signed the Great Barrington Declaration and one who used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to successfully treat adult patients, although admittedly a very small cohort. I am glad that Science is retiring, although that begs the question as to why the vast majority of doctors abdicated their responsibilities to evaluate and honestly report on treatments that appeared to show promise - political pressure from The Swamp notwithstanding. Their job, and their sworn duty, per that dead white guy Hippocrates, is to take care of their patients; why didn't they do that?
Now I see that some medical schools are lowering their standards in the name of "equity." When I was a medical student I had the same conversation with the Associate Dean, Dr. David Z. Morgan, may he rest in peace. When I asked him if the school would lower its standards to accommodate calls for "diversity," his comment was that if forced by politicians to lower standards, he and the dean had agreed they would publicly shut down the school. Where are men such as these?
I had to witness the struggle my naturally immune physician husband had to endure for being under the imposition of a vaccine mandate. He eventually relented (me: make them terminate you!) and got one JNJ but it was not without a fight.
This wasn't the first round. About two years before I retired, the Evil Empire for whom I worked decided that everybody in the hospital must have "flu shots." Having watched a local optometrist with flu-vaccine-induced Guillain-Barré struggle to recover, I said no. They said, "it's mandatory." I said no. They said, "You have to wear a mask, then." "No."
They said, "We'll fire you." My response? "I've always wanted to own a small hospital, ditto a small house to use for vacations. Your hospital and your house will do nicely, and I will guarantee you that my attorney, who is so mean he scares ME, will have the suit papers in your office and at your front door tomorrow morning."
We were at an impasse until the neurosurgeons, who brought in millions in revenue, refused as well, and the admin retired from the field of honor suitably chastised.
My husband has seen a lot of changes in his almost 30 years practicing medicine. It's only become "corporate" recently and he's been able to sidestep much of the corporate BS. He has about 20 more months until he goes part time.
never took that shot, made no sense from a risk /benefit standpoint. less than 0.15 percent change of severe illness or death to me. No reason to take experimental drug. got natural covid in aug 21. Noone would rec superior nat immunity. Was enraging. the medical communitu around me was and still is delusional cowardly ignorant.
Agreed. I took the vaccine because, having worked in an mRNA research lab at Johns Hopkins between college and med school, I am pro vaccine for myself. I doubted the vaccine would be highly effective, or remain so, due to the highly mutable nature of corona viruses. The mandates and neglect of natural immunity, however, were repugnant to me. The declaration by an individual that he “is science” should be disgusting to every scientist. I read and discussed real science with my patients regarding mRNA viruses, vaccines, natural immunity, efficacy of masking, and any topics they wished, without regard to Fauci’s dogma. Fortunately for me, I live in Florida, and our governor yielded to political pressure for a much shorter time than most.
You might comment on the below: my reading suggests that the Wuhan virus, as are all viruses, was relatively simple in structure, and that it displayed five proteins available for attack, one of which was the "spike protein." As I understand it, the "vaccines" by attacking only the spike protein, promoted immunity pretty much limited to a single viral variant, with no significant cross-immunity to others, whereas natural immunity stimulated activity against all five proteins, meaning at least some immunity against multiple variants.
Also, initial viral replication in the nose stimulates production of "secretory IgA," which takes place primarily in the lungs, hence when the virus eventually makes its way down to the lungs, they already have a defense in place. Of course, the vaccines bypass that, which may explain the very high prevalence of severe disease in jabbed individuals.
My overall understanding is that this particular virus' threat was very little different and no more virulent than dozens of other flu variants that we have dealt with since time began. Old people were at quite high risk, as were the infirm. Everybody else dealt with it just fine. I'm certainly open to better data.
That’s exactly right. This mechanism of IGA mucosal immunity is the reason why vaccines given a shot for respiratory viruses have not been very successful. The natural infection is always in everywhere better than vaccine immunity.
The COVID-19 virus is simply not any more dangerous to most healthy adults than a regular flu
This whole episode was a giant fiasco. They were powerful forces in the permanent bureaucracy in the United States government didn’t want Donald Trump reelected and they used Covid and weaponized the entire public health bureacracy And used it against Trump to defeat him
There was a theory awhile back that masks helped make the already infected even sicker as the mask concentrated and confined the virus to the nasal sinuses by greatly reducing air flow. Haven't heard much about it for while but it would seem to make sense (at least to a lay person).
Then there were the ventilators which where initially the go-to treatment for the hospitalized, from which many could never be taken off of without killing them. "The operation was a success, however the patient has died."
We've certainly learned a lot over the past 2 1/2 years, not least of which is whom to trust and whom to not.
if you have EVER trusted the CDC or NIH you are a fool. Governments in general should never be believed or trusted at all for any reason. Everything gov says in a lie or is perverted through a political and ideological lens. The US gov is no different. The founders of the US knew this . this same thing has been happening for thousands of years. The romans had a republic and it degnerated into an empire and the emperor WAS TRUTH! no jesus not science the EMPEROR.
if a group of politicians and bureaucracts tell you to think a certain way or believe something DONT!
if they tell you they are going to do somthing to help you : grab your children and hide your wallet and RUN!
If they tell you to take a drug you dont want and dont need: DONT DO IT.
Everything gov touches it destroys. everything gov does it ruins.
Every problem gov tries to solve it makes worse.
Here we had a new flu virus slightly worse than the usually seasonal influenza for most. And it turns out the the virus itself might hav ebeen a product of a gov lab and everything they did in the name of "solving" covid turned into a global hysteria and resulted in the deaths of millions of people for lack of early outpatient treatment and a dangerous vax.
We went from 2 weeks to slow the spread to MASS DEATH.
Never trust anything gov agencies or officers have to say. This was the whole point of the United states.
Very much agree. The issue with mRNA viruses, and corona viruses in particular, is multifactorial (isn't everything). The fragility of mRNA limiting vaccine distribution due to storage issues was evident. Your point about lack of stimulation of secretory IgA is very important (witness Jill Biden's second bout in as many weeks). Corona viruses are particularly mutable, so vaccines have very short durations of efficacy. As I've told many people, the mortality of COVID-19 in over 65s is somewhat less than acute hip fracture mortality, and no one is outlawing throw rugs and small dogs.
yes and many people who read the original pfizer study documents knew that the vax was unlikley to stop infection , spread and transmission b/c it was not shown to be a sterliizing agent. It was specificaly developed to reduce the chance of severe illness and death and hosptitaization , which it did do for some for a short time but then the vax itself produced escape variants and people became tolerant of it. If there had been a simultaneous effort to roll the vax out to the most vulnerable as well as intensely focus on early outpatient treatment then far fewer people would have ended up in the hosp and dead. this is what happens when you mix politics and medicine
Well said. The shot was available for anybody who wanted it. It was too bad that it wasn’t more effective and safer than it turned out to be. But it wasn’t entirely unexpected because it was a new experimental product. There hasn’t been a good track record with these types of products against respiratory viruses in the past. So whoever wanted to get the shot could get it. It did not protect other people just the person receiving it. The level of coercion and propaganda Floyd to coerce people was disgusting
Alas, those men are of the past. When decisive people do things—like change scheduling for new CT scanners so they can erase 6 week backlogs—everyone hates them. For about three days. Most “leaders”of today can’t think 3 days ahead. They only think of the current news cycle.
After this horror show I have gotten new doctors. Any doctor pushing the AMA narrative is a doctor I don’t need. Makes my job a little harder, but at least I have more confidence in the information I’m receiving. I don’t trust anyone now.
I think I've mentioned it before, but when people ask me what I do in retirement, I only half-jokingly tell them that I protect my friends and family from my colleagues.
Thank you for your high ethical standards and courage. Only a few doctors raised to the occasion like you did. And thank you for verbalizing what we all have been wondering about for the last two years: why did doctors abandon their Hippocrates oath? Out of fear? Cynicism? What kind of doctors our medical schools produce? Robots? Political hacks? I come from a family of two generations of doctors. My elderly mom keeps repeating in shock: how could these doctors send people from the hospital to die at home if they were not candidates for a ventilator instead of helping them with any medication available? Millions of lives could be saved. It was a crime of unprecedented proportion. And we may fully realize it only when we look at it from a distance.
Perhaps you treated only a small cohort with that cocktail, but I, and plenty of people I know directly and through hearsay, used it and went from symptomatic (hardcore muscles aches for me) to 90% better within 24 hours. It is sick and criminal that these drugs were not the first line of care. Everything I've read from the like-minded has said that if they were, over half the deaths from covid would have been avoided. Based on my first hand experience, I believe it.
One of the people I treated was terribly sick and getting more so by the hour. Her husband is a pilot and had a pulse oximeter handy; her oxygen saturation was in the 'eighties - that's really low - very short of breath, and near panic. The results with ivermectin were nothing short of remarkable; she has told me several times since then that the treatment "saved my life."
Thank God for you and all of the Great Barrington docs! Sanity in an insane world. The effort put forth by Fauci and others to discredit, dismiss and denigrate you and Bhattacharya and all of the others told us exactly what we already knew. You were onto them.
Jim, I do not know any doctors socially, and I would like to know something. How do treatment decisions in cases like this actually work? Is there a standards-book that tells prescribes your actions to essentially any disease? Are your choices confined by CDC? By FDA? By your insurance? For example, did your carrier raise any objections to your use of "unsanctioned" treatments? Would they have if they'd known? I'm just trying to understand how the system works, with a goal of figuring out how to improve it. I'd love to hear your ideas for the top 3 things that could be done to improve it. Thanks.
I'm not a good example. I'm retired and have no malpractice insurance, since I'm not actively practicing, so I don't answer to THEM, but they always had conceded to a physician's training and experience anyway. They figure that with over a decade of training, you probably have a good idea of what you are doing.
The people I have treated have all been relatives or close friends; it was a bit serendipitous, actually. In March, two years ago, I had seen the congressional testimony of several doctors who had been actually treating CCP-virus patients, and they were compelling. They were working 80-90 hours per week with no letup - remember this was in the thick of the pandemic. You could see they were exhausted. But they had considerable experience - I think the three of them working together had over 200 papers published - and their experience and frustration with the "protocols" had led them to try other treatments that, again, in their many years and thousands of hours of experience and training, might offer better results.
It was amazing to watch them testify. I didn't realize at the time the extent that this whole lockdown and treatment propaganda was being used to test Americans' willingness to knuckle under to the government, and I watched the video with the usual curiosity of a lifelong academic.
So, purely by chance, I suppose, the next week I received a call from my relative-the-pilot, living in another state, telling me that he, his wife, and twenty-something year-old daughter had tested positive and were getting really sick really fast. The were terrified at the prospects of hospitalization, well aware of what happened there: people were essentially imprisoned, put on ventilators, and died.
I remembered the protocol I'd seen on the congressional testimony, although I was a little puzzled that I couldn't find it on YouTube, still not realizing that with all the politics going on, and of course Google (who owns YouTube) in the thick of it, it had been taken down.
I called in prescriptions for him, his wife, and daughter in the early afternoon. Checking in that evening, they were "a little better." Next morning, "much better." Two days later, "cured."
So, as I say, it was serendipity to some degree. I did not realize at the time I was afoul some federal political fatwa, though it wouldn't have made a difference.
Thanks to both of you. I was trying to figure out if this level of oversight (the total freakout about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for example) was typical or something really unusual. It sounds like it was EXTREMELY unusual. Thanks.
I am familiar with off-label freakouts. About 6 years ago, the FDA pulled lidocaine ear drops from the market. As you both know, in low concentrations, lidocaine is about the safest product in the world, and mothers had been using lidocaine ear drops for infant ear aches literally for 50 years. Suddenly, FDA determined such drops were illegal because they hadn't been proven "safe and effective". Ever since then, I stock up on medications whenever I can.
All this is ironic when marijuana is legal in so many states. A mind altering, potential gateway drug that's stronger than ever and the FDA regulation and oversight is, shall we say, nebulous.
You want to live virtuously, we'll come down on like a ton of bricks. Virtue implies objective standards, and objective standards would interfere with people's pleasure, thus you can not be allowed to believe in virtue. But we'll defend your right to consequence free drugs and sex to the hilt.
Also, to chime in, physicians have always used certain medication off label -- meaning that other non-intended uses with good outcomes have been discovered, often by accident, for many drugs. Then there is a process to get the FDA approval for use in a different capacity other than the one for which the drug was invented. Take Botox as an example. A migraine headache pain relief injection discovered to relax wrinkles. Dermatologists used Botox in this way for years before it was approved by the FDA cosmetically. With Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine a physician's discretion to prescribe and use these (long prescribed, safe, on the market forever) drugs off label was challenged. Most pharmacies would not honor the prescription. One had to go on line and through various sites and other resources to get them from pharmacies willing to dispense or from India (where they are OTC). There seemed to be federal dictates prohibiting doctors from prescribing these medications. Insulting and irrational.
Jim, you say: “…begs the question as to why the vast majority of doctors abdicated their responsibilities to evaluate and honestly report on treatments that appeared to show promise….” You seem to be unaware that the doctors were being responsible; unlike you, it’s time for you to offer a mea culpa!
“A phase 3 randomized, controlled trial published today in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that three drugs repurposed for the treatment of COVID-19—metformin, ivermectin, and fluvoxamine—didn't prevent hypoxemia, an emergency department (ED) visit, hospitalization, or infection-related death, although a secondary analysis finds that metformin may hold some promise.”
Not unaware at all. I read that article the morning it came out. The flaws in it are legion and have been pointed out multiple times, probably one of the worst being the administration of these drugs late in the course of the disease, where they have always been known to be ineffective.
The Wuhan-virus syndrome typically follows a three-phase pattern: First three or so days, in which viral replication takes place. The second phase is several days thereafter, during which the body's own "cytokine storm" does the majority of damage. Not everybody gets that. The third stage is what I call the "clotting" phase, during which coagulation defects predominate. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are relatively ineffective after the first (viral replication) phase.
Do a little research vis à vis federal laboratory funding, and you will see that these physicians are very, very far from having no dog in the hunt. Not that that would possibly affect perfect independence, objectivity or cause skewed reporting ....
"Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are relatively ineffective after the first (viral replication) phase."
That first phase is also largely asymptomatic; the symptoms show up in the 2nd phase. So you're describing a treatment that only works if administered BEFORE the patient starts showing symptoms. That's not a very practical treatment, because by the time you know the drugs are needed it's too late for them to do much of anything.
Jim, that dog won’t hunt; you can use all kinds of word salad, you can tell me, up is down, and down is up, it’s all bull patties in the pasture; you need to ante up some proof!
Out of curiosity, just me, what proof would be acceptable to you that did not come from the very "Science, Inc" people that have universally opposed such treatments.
It's a little like global warming. "If you think global warming isn't real, go do a study and prove it! Of course, we control the money for climatology and only give grants to studies that attempt to prove it is real. But why haven't you produced the proof yet!?" When one side is outspent by the other to a ratio of 1000:1, it makes it hard to determine the veracity of any claim in that field.
Brian, are you proposing that ivermectin is like Galileo's heretical belief that the earth was Heliocentric, not geocentric? Do you believe the new England journal of medicine is a: ecclesiastical tribunal?
When the entire institutional Science apparatus has been captured by a single point of view, getting at the truth becomes very hard, because science (as in actual experiments intended to find truth) are essentially impossible since the grant money requires experiments to be skewed to find only "acceptable" outcome.
I used the example of global warming above, but a similar dynamic can be seen in the debate over transgenderism, which has also fully captured institutional Science. And just like with COVID, dissenting voices must be crushed.
COVID captured institutional Science with a vengeance and speed I have never seen before. In 2020, you couldn't get a major journal article published critically examining ivermectin, lab vs bio origins, mask usage, lockdowns, or anything else re: COVID. (Interestingly, grants for these sorts of projects were Fauci's precise responsibility.) That makes me highly suspicious. I'm not saying that ivermectin et al are effective. I honestly have no idea. But I have enough familiarity with the process to be highly skeptical of "scientific" results published in fields that have been institutionally captured by single points of view.
Fauci is another in a long line of public officials and politicians for whom there is no accountability. It's the result of politics as cult of personality and the public's constant yearning to feel they have it all figured out, and national media that is more that happy to indulge that delusion. If you decide that a figure like Obama or Fauci is right about a serious social issue such as health care or responding to a pandemic then every criticism must be born of ignorance - the Fox News syndrome. Pretty soon, to admit any fault would mean the whole house of cards collapses, which is why we are all now being treated to national news stories about Fauci as the tireless public servant.
If Fauci knew that Covid-19 was being studied at the Wuhan lab, then why did he actively deny and push back against even the mere possibility of a lab leak origin in the initial months of the pandemic? This is a simple question that most anyone who still trusts Fauci has never been asked, or at least never seriously considered.
Fox News was literally the only major news organization pushing back against Fauci and the rest of the public health establishment. Trump was the only leader calling for reopening the schools.
Ah, I see your point now. Sorry for the misunderstanding, and yes there's definitely a kind of anti-Fox skew among the liberal elites. I have found several of the Fox reporters to be excellent: Tucker, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham, Greg Gutfeld, plus a few lesser known hard working young reporters. The top management at Fox is crummy, just like CNN & MSNBC, but the reporting is still good.
“If you decide that a figure like Obama or Fauci is right about a serious social issue such as health care or responding to a pandemic then every criticism must be born of ignorance”
That’s the real problem, isn’t it? Given the facts, most ordinary people will make the right decision. Unfortunately, we are constantly bombarded with selective reporting, obfuscation and outright lies from self-serving politicians, bureaucrats, and the pseudoscientists they employ as propagandists. Fauci worship is only one example. The “global warming” scam and the left’s assault on our fossil fuel industry has the potential to be far worse. Just look at the self-induced food crisis currently ravaging Sri Lanka because the government followed the “experts” and banned the use of petroleum derived fertilizer. Look at the impending heating crisis that will hit Europe this winter because the idiots running “green energy” countries like Germany anointed a snot nosed, Asperger’s afflicted teenager named Greta Thunberg as their oracle and bet their future on windmills and solar panels.
Meanwhile, China which is the world’s leading CO2 emitter is building a new coal fired, CO2 spewing power plant every week to manufacture the solar panels, batteries, and windmills that Joe Biden’s Orwellian coined “inflation reduction act” demands we pay for. Lest there be any opposition, the act also funds 87,000 new gun carrying IRS agents willing to use deadly force to insure we do.
Wish you were President Timothy! This bullshit we have endured for the last 3 years beggars belief. The very worrying thing going forward is where to from here?
This is the logical result of a bloated federal government which cannot be effectively admnistered. All it can do is tax, tax, tax and seriously mismanage the spending of those taxes, creating the need for additional taxes.
Large companies constantly manage their departments and employees and adjust to the conditions of the market. They hire, they fire, they shut down departments that no longer make sense and start new ones that do. I know government is not the same thing, but forever growing without review or change as needed is not working. We need term limits so that there are people in Congress that are willing to go through the federal government and start to streamline it and make it work for us again. Right now it's only function seems to be to keep existing.
Large companies have a bottom line. The federal government is adrift rudderless. And to be fair it predates both the current and former presidents.
When a government body takes control over something (prisons, education, healthcare) and thenprivitizes it we should all take notice and demand transparency and accountability.
I'm not talking about privatizing. I'm saying, for example, they founded the Department of Education. I'd argue it has made things worse, and should be scrapped. There is never a review. Government is ever growing. I'm unaware of a time when they said, hey, the department of transportation is bloated. It needs to be streamlined. When in the history of the Federal government, after WW2, has there been less employees than the year before?
Some of my response is my anger at Republicans calling for smaller government since the 1980's and never coming close to doing anything about it whenever they have been in power. It's the reason I stopped calling myself a Republican.
If the government wanted anyone to have confidence in the Mar-A-Lago raid, Hunter Biden should have been arrested first! Then investigate Joey! All this Trump stuff is a distraction from the real problems this country faces thanks to Fauci, Joey, Mayorkas, Wray….the list is sooo long.
The DOJ should have explained their purpose and motivation more clearly. Instead, they went into a defensive posture which makes them look even more guilty.
They are guilty of manipulating a narrative to fit their unstated purpose which is to eliminate T forever. I’m convinced DTS and future fear of Trump is why covid was blown up and why the Jan 6 riot was cast as an “insurrection” and why Mar a Lago was raided. My question is what comes next? This country has been compromised and weakened. What insanity comes next?
They will arrest Trump - I am certain of that. They will try to keep him in prison saying he is a flight risk. They will stretch out legal proceedings for years, hoping Trump dies in prison - a process I'm sure they will "encourage" with really bad conditions.
This post doesn’t sound to far fetched but I think before they can arrest President Trump, there will be a civil war in America. The deep state has done literally everything other than the arrest of Pres 45 and still for all that, President Trump remains remarkably well any person with a lesser personality would have crumbled already
The November elections are what comes next, and it will likely be pretty insane! Twitter has already announced plans to manipulate opinion and the other tech cos. are doing similar. I suspect the House will barely flip to GOP, Senate will remain 50-50, or even gain one or two Dem seats thanks to mediocre GOP candidates... and we'll have a couple more years of chaos and disastrous policy.
Then, finally, the vast, dimly aware voters will demand a change, and there will be an opportunity for moderate Dems and Repubs to sweep in, though likely it will just continue to be mostly Dem control until the country undergoes significant demographic changes.
It won’t be a demographic change it will be a totalitarian change, it will be the end of America the big three corporations will be controlling us our supply chain our meat supply our food source and our medicines I don’t think it will matter if it’s GOP or the Democrooks the manipulation and control will be complete Facebook will be running the country and Instagram
Right!!!! I feel the same. Just when I think things can’t get worse, they do! I am guessing but thinking either war with China, Biden falls off his bicycle again and we get Kamala, or Aliens land here!!! Any one of the three would shift the world. Aliens might be a good thing!!! 😉
You lost me when you described him as kind and gentle. Perhaps he seems that way to a colleague he esteems. He is a well known narcissist and bully. Anyone who ever worked on the 7th floor in building 31 knows this. I watched him bring my boss at the Office of Policy analysis to tears. He’s many things, but kind and gentle ain’t it.
"Any physician who has met Dr. Fauci will agree that he is one of the kindest, most charming human beings you will ever meet."
I thought this comment was incredibly naive. Narcissists are typically charming and can present themselves as "kind" to those they want to impress. The ugliness comes out when they are opposed or behind the scenes.
My best friend's ex-husband is a textbook narcissist. His gentle demeanor fooled me for many years into thinking his sometimes irrational behavior was merely quirky. Once the mask slipped, his true viciousness was plain to see.
I worked for another textbook narcissist at a "reform school" for rich kids. It was the only job I've ever been fired from: I asked too many questions about things that did not seem right. A few years later, the school was shut down, and my former boss currently sits in prison for abusing students--particularly his sexual behavior toward girls who were imprisoned there. I know many people who, to this day, believe he was a great guy and couldn't possibly have done what he was convicted of.
Narcissists are all charm--frightening so--until they know you are no longer fooled.
or they become cornered, then become the rat they are. There's no shortage of interviews that show that side of him, and Rand Paul was very good at exposing it during House hearings.
Our whole system now is set up to attract and reward narcissists. We offer more and more power to anyone who is charming enough to win a popular vote. We practically invite narcissistic psychopaths to rule over us. Then some will claim that their grand plans were “hijacked”. Guaranteed to happen every time the plan is for benevolent experts to have control.
Sadly true. Part of the point of having Senators appointed by state legislatures was to put a cushion between the "popular vote" and what was *meant* to be an office filled by the wisest men each state could produce. Now there is no political office in our country that does not depend on wooing the fickle mob. Which makes narcissism an easy substitute for genuine leadership.
But the desire to be ruled over by "experts" has been part of the Progressive mentality since the first iteration of Progressivism. Woodrow Wilson--who inspired the fascists of Europe--was a college professor before he was a politician. The eugenics favored by those early Progressives was all about the desire to rid our society of low-IQ "deplorables" so it could rise to new heights under the leadership of intellectuals.
So it's no accident that modern Progressives worship experts--they just have to be experts who believe the "correct" things.
For my best friend, it all came crashing down when she found out he was cheating on her. He made a huge, huge show to everyone who would listen of "repenting," but I recall one conversation with him where he let it slip that it was control over his daughters that was really motivating him to try to save their marriage.
Over the next five years, everything *appeared* to be fine...except that my best friend was horribly unhappy and slipping toward utter despair. It was only then that she revealed to me what she had been hiding, in her own good-faith effort to give him a chance to fix things:
All those weekly "dates" they were supposedly going on to bolster their relationship, the kids were always brought along, even though babysitting was not an issue. He constantly used their daughters as an emotional buffer between them.
Worse still was that he used her trauma over his affair as a bludgeon to attack her. Anything she struggled with was "proof" that she hadn't forgiven him (as was her moral obligation), which made her a horrible and evil person.
And, as always, his wishes came first and hers were nowhere. He had always made a good show of treating her like a princess, but in reality, there was only ever money for the things HE wanted to buy. His musical ambitions were paramount, but her literature-writing talent (which was exceptional) meant nothing. Like many cheaters, he had accused her of cheating because HE was.
When she reached a point where she was trying to decide if their marriage was salvageable for her, she came to hang out with me for a month. He harassed her with phone calls all day if she was not online where he could harangue her. He made a huge, huge show to anyone who would listen of being "traumatized" by the possibility that she would leave him permanently. I warned him that NOT giving her space to think was the surest way to lose her, but no, he had to control her.
When she finally made the decision that their marriage was over, he went instantly from loving her so much he couldn't bear to leave her to considering her the most evil woman who had ever lived. He literally went around to all the people she knew--even people who were not friends with him--and tried to convince them that they shouldn't associate with her anymore. He even tried the "she's no longer worthy of your friendship" schtick on ME, who had been her best friend for years before he ever appeared on the scene.
His determination to control the kids came out immediately. He threatened to tell all manner of lies to the family court judge if she tried to gain custody. And with his smooth and winning manner, he would have been utterly convincing. Whereas my best friend--who had already been squashed down by an abusive mother--found it very difficult to speak up and convincingly defend herself.
As we found out years later, after the girls grew up, he was constantly telling them that their mother had left because she didn't love them. He told them (and anyone who would listen) that she was a whore who slept with dozens of men. The girls, of course, knew that none of this was true, because they could see for themselves when they stayed with her that it was not. In fact, they did not know the truth about the divorce until they were young adults. Their father was finally about to marry the woman whom he'd cheated with, and my best friend told him that either he could tell them the truth and put his own spin on it, or she would. He (of course) refused. It was during THAT conversation that the girls revealed the emotional abuse he'd inflicted on them.
I don't know if that helps with your situation, but that's my experience.
Ok, Celia M. …..I always scan the sites that I subscribe to. There are some that I stop immediately and read (my favorites have developed for me over time). Then I go back and read everybody. But, my God, have you written a book or essays of your life? I mean a lot of what you say, I’m sure could help many, many people.
If I’m being too personal, I apologize. Thank you.
I write a lot on Quora. Maybe sometime I should gather my most interesting answers into a collection. Still trying to figure out the fiddly bits of self-publishing my cookbook to give to my kids for Christmas.
Thanks Celia. That does help a lot. I'm dealing with similar things, but on a much smaller scale, from my sister. The hardest thing is to believe yourself, because the narcissist is always right and very good at convincing other people. We're not in contact anymore (thanks god) and even though I have a few family members who also know the truth, I still question myself sometimes. Was it me? Did I make it all up?
The gaslighting from narcissists is terrible. And they will actively recruit people in their target's circle to support their lies (in the parlance, these are known as "flying monkeys").
When it comes to narcissists, they will literally tell you not to believe your lying eyes. When you point out actions they have taken or things that they have said, their modus is DenyDenyDeny.
Often the only way they are caught is because they are so convinced by their own lies that they get careless. My "reform school" employer *knew* he was under investigation, but he still took a group of girls to Victoria's Secret. If a caseworker had not spotted him there, I think the trial might have gone very differently. But he was so certain that he would get away with it, he didn't alter his behavior in the slightest.
I am grateful for Dr. Makary. His voice was one I listened to during this ordeal. It will be years before we truly understand the harm caused by the draconian measures prescribed by Dr. Fauci. IMO the damage this one man has done is incalculable. I was 60 when this started. I don’t have any health issues, not overweight, no high blood pressure, not even high cholesterol, just some arthritis. I decided to wait before getting the vaccine. I was fearful of the rush to embrace it despite all the assurances. All I wanted was time to see how everything played out before I signed up for, what appeared to me to be, mass hysteria. I hadn’t anticipated the demonizing of anyone who thinks outside the box….a quality valued once upon a time. Our boob President Biden, with the assistance of big tech and MSM, painted a white strip down the backs of all of those who did. Just like Fauci and Collins did to the Great Barrington Declaration. If you read the Declaration you will understand how much sense it made. The price I paid, while not as high as losing my job or educational learning, was among family, friends, colleagues, and associations. I was banned from everything and whispered about because I was “one of those”. Many well intentioned people took me aside and “for my own good” lectured me on my choice and then scorned me, others just scorned me. I will not forget! I will never ever consider what comes out of the CDC or any of our other politicized institutions, which means just about all of them, to be anything I should put stock in. As for my friends and family who followed all this garbage, well, let’s say they’re on the bottom of my Christmas card list.
i hear you. Total dedication to the Covid shot narrative has fractured my relationship with my father, possibly forever. I didn't care if you want to take the shot. I just wanted to wait to see the side effects because I knew my survival from Covid, according to actual SCIENCE from Stanford, not Fauci, is 99.98%. But as the data rolled out, the horrifying anecdotes came rolling in, and I knew 5 people younger than 50 who all died of either heart attacks or strokes, I knew it wasn't for me (or anyone honestly). My CNN NYT loving father has called me a racist, conspiracy theorist, an anti-scientist (I'm a trained scientist in the earth sciences so that's laughable), all because his GODS (aka Fauci, Biden, and friends) have told him again and again that I'm evil because I didn't take the shot. I had covid a month ago. My 6 week old had covid too. I took IVM and was fine after 48 hours. My daughter, taking nothing but breastmilk, fine after 12 hours. My father still asked me if I was now going to take the shot now since Novavax was finally FDA approved!! Madness.
So sad about your relationship with your father. Sadder that he still thinks the vax is a good idea. All this demonization of people just trying to do the right thing for themselves, and all the dramatic judgement, is the unfortunate product of a government determined to keep the masses asses. To the egomaniacal elites we are just a bunch of hamsters on wheels. I will never bend the knee.
Wow - just wow. Fauci & Co., especially Twitter, Facebook and other social media created one of the weirdest, frenetic & hyperbolic moments in my six plus decades. It was odd and distressing and seemingly much of it unnecessary. Another thing not mentioned in this overview is that 78% of deaths occurred in obese people but there was never a campaign to educate the public about this. Instead, we get left leaning magazines like Vogue (and it’s crazed editor Anna Wintour) and Sports Illustrated flaunting super fat women on the covers. This was pervasive in most media. Given that obesity was an obvious co-morbidity, this move by the liberal media was weird & Dystopian. Shame on Fauci and them all.
There was a time when there were public service announcements about the 'horrors of smoking' - but in our Woke Age you can't warn people because they say you'd be 'fat shaming' them; Clearly, the wokestors/progressives would rather die. Darwin speaks loudly.
We have a friend who's an admitting physician in a NYC hospital - He says that he often treats black women who have enormous girths. He asks them if they'd like diet counseling and they spit back at him, "It's our culture - mind your own business". And to boot, taxpayers eventually pay directly or indirectly for these bad habits/behavior making these women obese.
The whole purpose of PC, besides tyrannical control, is to couch your terms in such a manner as no not offend anyone which is BS because no matter how you say it someone is going to be pissed off.
My children will never trust the medical establishment and their lofty pronouncements ever again, due in large part to this man. They learned that the world can loose its mind, that common sense and reason can leave the room, and that whole systems (school districts, universities, rec departments, corporations and nonprofits, etc.) can adhere to rules and mandates that fly in the face of logic and tradition. They learned that prominence and popularity and titles and credentials don’t create wisdom or justify authority. I’m grateful that these lessons were learned and proud of how my kids have come out the other side. I hope they learn too that people like Dr. Fauci are held accountable and forced to face the consequences of their poor and demonstrably damaging “guidance”. I fear instead that they will learn instead that all of these actors, and those in the future as well, will never be held to account for the destruction they caused.
I view the deterioration of trust in "public health" as a huge unexpected positive that arose from the covid debacle. "Public health" is just another way of saying "computer model" which is just another way of saying "total guess". There is nothing even remotely scientific about "public health". It's yet another in an alphabet soup of ideological, opaque, unaccountable agencies that attempt daily to run our lives.
"public health" should be no more trusted on cloth masks than they are on vaping products. they make no sense, and are driven by personal enrichment, like all other humans everywhere. give them no trust, and give them NO POWER
the entirely of the federal government complex should be defunded and dispersed.
“They learned that the world can lose its mind, that common sense and reason can leave the room, and that whole systems (school districts, universities, rec departments, corporations and nonprofits, etc.) can adhere to rules and mandates that fly in the face of logic and tradition.”
I feel like we all learned it, and not just from the pandemic response. I can hardly believe how many widely held beliefs make no sense at all, and I worry about our collective ability to solve problems when we cannot even agree on what reality is.
Another victim of the closures were mainstream churches. The more conservative, larger churches thrived because they remained open. Our church lost many members who have found it is just easier not to attend and I honestly think it was a dereliction of duty to restrict access to our houses of worship. (I want to make it clear, that this was a policy of the national/state church who followed CDC guideance- not state imposed.) People didn't HAVE to attend if they were nervous, but basically locking us out was never a good idea, especially during a time of international crisis. But I absolutely agree that the school closures were the worst idea with the most far reaching terrible effects.
I am one such person. My large (small town)traditional United Methodist church was shut down for months in a state where there were no lockdowns or mask mandates. Even at the time of the craziest crazy I kept thinking that surely the church should be open. We needed church. But mine was closed. I have never gone back. If I’m left on my own to worship when times are rough I figure I can handle it when they’re better too.
I had the unpleasant experience of visiting my home town in Maryland in May 2021 and applying to the church where my parents’ ashes are interred in an outside columbarium. I had been fully vaxxed since February, asked to visit on a weekday when no one was there, swore to wear a (pointless) mask, so I could walk across the lobby and go back outside in a little courtyard where the ashes are interred. My request was DENIED. I quoted literature to the pastor, made reasoned arguments, and was denied again. I finally told them I felt that the church had clearly abdicated their responsibility to their congregation and mankind through cowardice, and that I, as a surgeon, taking many more risks that they could ever imagine, never failed to show up for work through COVID. Or for that matter, HIV back in the 90s when I did residency in an inner city state hospital and if you got it you died, no exception. They requested I not come to their church. True Christian charity and bravery.
I think I'll respect their wishes to remain where they are and wait for a new (more intelligent and courageous) pastor. Whatever happened to the Christians who would go amongst the lepers to offer comfort, right?
This is a terrible story, truly not followers of Christ. I am so sorry to hear that, and because our dictates came from the diocese, there was no one to whom we could appeal. I am so sorry.
My request put no one at risk, so why deny me? On a sleepy, off season Wednesday, unlock the front door and go back in the church office. Let me walk across the lobby wearing a mask, and go into the outdoor courtyard to see my parents. Knock on the door to tell me it is time to leave, and I would walk, masked, back across the deserted church lobby and leave. Throughout, I would have touched 5 surfaces - door handles at the entry and the door to the courtyard, and the plaque over my parents' remains, all easily sanitized with a wipe. It still mystifies and saddens me. I have not been back, and that hurts. The diocese was wrong, but the pastors were more wrong to comply. Christians should have courage.
Dr. Makary has been a beacon of reason and sense since the start of the pandemic.
I think Anthony Fauci - and many, many, many like him, all over the world - are fundamentally emotional and flawed human beings. What they did was allow their own primal fears of COVID-19 to overtake their rational thinking and completely overrun their obligations to the public they serve
It is for this reason that Fauci sacrificed children and ignored obvious science around natural immunity and so on. His entire decision making was driven by fear; his own. Hundreds of public health officials around the globe were the same - abject cowards above all else
The words of Jordan Peterson ring very true here: "if you thought tough men are dangerous wait until you see what weak men are capable of"
I respectfully disagree with you that it was primal fear driving the decision making--it was purely financial. You simply can not ignore the hundreds of billions of dollars that changed hands as a result of the decisions made by Fauci, the CDC, etc. If there were no profits to be had, maybe you could argue that it was fear.
I've read that 75% of the GLOBAL pharmaceutical profits come from the US. No country's response to and policies regarding covid did more to help big Pharma profit than the US. As highlighted by Dr. Makary above, further knowledge was never sought but further drug development was. As new data became available, the policy (vaccine first) never changed. It wasn't until the profits from vaccines had started to fizzle out that we saw a softening of the "vaccines are the only way forward" policy.
Sadly our government has become a giant system that specialized in the transfer of wealth to a select few. That's what Covid was. That's what the next pandemic will be and Fauci's replacement will be responsible for ensuring that occurs.
Totally agree. This was big business and political power, but remember we are also talking about a man who said that we may never shake hands again. When he said that, my jaw dropped not because I believed him, but because I couldn’t believe his germ phobia was so firmly entrenched that he felt comfortable expressing it to the world.
No doubt. In private the elites were not afraid of covid. They only wanted the people to be. Like the governor of California sitting shoulder to shoulder with all the medical experts at the French Laundry. No masks or distancing
Dr. Vinay Prasad just put out something this morning on his substack that's along the same lines. Basically children, who were/are the least susceptible to serious illness/death from covid suffered the harshest restrictions. Even fairly recently, young kids in some states were wearing masks while adults were out partying at bars. Hell, one school called the cops on a 4-year old that wasn't wearing a mask. The consensus is that kids can't vote and voting is the only thing we have left (sort of) to express dissatisfaction.
Now with climate change, we're all expected to do "our part." Except corporations can continue to decimate the environment in the process of earning profits and wealthy people can fly all over the world on their private airplanes. But again, it's the average Joe that must sacrifice the most. I've seen a comparison of carbon footprints for a wealthy person flying on a private jet versus the average adult. It's a joke. You can't drive your car enough in a year to have half the impact one private aircraft flight.
I agree with you. The working class will ultimately pay the most for climate change policies despite being the least responsible for what is happening to the earth.
I think, as Ben Shapiro often says, two things can be true at one. It was fear and the money. I know that the drumbeat of fear still affects people. There is a truly hideous booster ad where a young man, who is perfectly healthy, runs away from someone who hasn't had a booster. The CDC is still feeding the fear...
His fear of the virus was a cynical pretense, IMO. I think he feared the threat the virus posed to his authority and power were the truth of its origins--and his own role in it--allowed to gain traction into a good faith, official inquiry. Also, he had the same data everyone else did about the clear stratified risk and comorbidity profile, but he needed to keep public fear high to promote Pharma solutions and profits. I hope he isn’t allowed to get away with his dereliction of duty and corruption. But given the state of accountability in our current culture, I won’t hold my breath.
Exactly, he had a blatant conflict of interest and was protecting himself by getting the public to look in another direction. And if his big pharma cronies got rich in the process, even better for them (not so much for us).
The reference to George Washington is timely. For some time now I’ve made same point, not just in reference to dictators like Putin and Xi, but especially toward Angela Merkel, who spearheaded the denuclearization of, and thus the dependence on Russian gas, of Germany. Germany’s industrial heartland is now shutting down. Any human in power for a long time starts thinking of their own legacy and place in history. Grandiosity. Surround themselves with toadies who echo back Amens. They believe their own BS. They get comfortable arrogantly wielding power. Fauci is no different.
Merkel’s worst offense by far was opening the borders to all, resulting in a flood of 3rd World migrants, opportunists, thugs, rapists, and jihadists into the country, fundamentally transforming Germany. Biden’s open door policy is wreaking similar effects on the U.S.
The main difference between the two leaders is that Merkel is a highly educated, brilliant idiot. Whereas, Biden is merely an idiot.
Correction - whoever is actually running the country (Obama?) is an idiot. Biden is spending less and less time in Washington, hidden from the public on all his “vacations” and he is more feeble and incoherent at each public appearance. I suspect his dementia is breaking through the drugs they’re using to prop him up.
He has always been in idiot. The law school he went to used crayons and to get an A on a paper all you had to do was draw within the lines and of course color choice was important.
Would that she had stuck to quantum chemistry. Who knows with her drive and grit what amazing things she might have catalyzed doing such fundamental research? I wonder if she wonders as well.
Sorry, but anyone believing a country whose economy relies on manufacturing could abandon nuclear power, let alone fossil fuels for windmills and solar panels is an idiot
Environmentalists are also fighting hydroelectric plants now, on the basis that they are an unnatural alteration of waterways. So 6.3% of the U.S.'s power generation is at risk of being shut down, along with gas + coal which are about 60%. Nuclear also likely to go, despite its "green" credentials.
Pretty soon, we won't be able to make anything. Actually, we are gradually moving back toward the stone age.
Luckily, China burns coal, and is building new mini-nuke plants, to make all those consumer products for us. They'll soon be making all our cars, planes, and anything else we need, though the Greenies want to toss those out, too.
A while back a German commenter noted that she grew up in East Germany and was a full-on socialist, regardless of her later political career. Imaginary thinking.
As I entered my 50’s, I started to realize that many, seemingly irrational occurrences couldn’t be happening in a vacuum. I’ve had long discussions with an old friend (retired high ranking military officer) who feels the same way. While there are definitely unintended consequences of every action, no one can tell me that an open border with Mexico makes sense while closing the border with Canada during the Covid hysteria. Another example is allowing BLM riots and protests while shutting down schools and businesses. Both Fauci and Birx need to be held accountable.
Of course, if the goal was to foster chaos and create a breakdown of society through disintegration of its institutions, the casual observer can see tremendous success. The question is: who would choose that goal, and to what end?
Good question - why would Soros put millions into electing Attorney Generals that allow our cities to descend into chaos? Why wouldn’t the FBI infiltrate and shut down the BLM riots, but have 12 confidential informants instigate 6 rednecks in a “plot” to kidnap Whitmer? Why would Europe (Germany) and the USA open borders to allow millions of uneducated, poor and unvetted migrants to overwhelm the country? In the case of Sweden, they went from one of the safest countries in the world to a place where women can’t walk alone at night. I could keep going for a while, but the gist of it is that there appears to be some people that are working towards that goal.
If you listen to what the most Woke actually say--the full-on Marxists--they want to burn this country to the ground and build their utopia on its ashes.
I cannot prove but absolutely believe that Russia and China are conducting active psy-ops via America social media and the comment sections of popular web sites to amplify political divisions and to promote destructive beliefs, and it is working. Those countries have the capability and they have the most to gain. The effects are blindingly obvious to anyone who hasn’t been intellectually captured. Or, I’m insane. I haven’t figured out which one it is, but I’m pretty sure I’m not insane.
Ever consider how many who proclaim their belief in science do not believe in the scientific method? In a free society, questioning and challenging should be part of everyone's DNA. Those who quash dissent make clear where they stand when it comes to freedom. Note that freedom and democracy are not the same tjing especially today when you hear the phrase "majority rule."
Should we bring up that 99.9% of 'scientists' agree that climate change is the result of human behavior. and that it's now been incorporated into our federal institutions?
Anytime you see the word 'denier' added to anything, it's a big red flag.
At least once a week I stop and think about the fact that in 2022, it's the party that supposedly represents liberal thinkers that also believes in the most censorship. It feels like the 2 sides have swapped roles.
I saw a good quote the other day: "you can't be pro-censorship and anti-fascisim at the same time..." I feel like that sums up half of our country right now.
Even the phrase 'believe in science' makes me want to chew glass. Using religious language like 'believer' and 'denier' when applied to science bespeaks a profound ignorance of the scientific method. Science doesn't care what you believe, go ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Another thing that makes me want to chew glass is when people look at scientific phenomena and scream "That's not fair!" or "That's racist!" As if science cares about your feelings.
When people insist on doing things that are figuratively like jumping off a cliff, I have very little sympathy when they complain that the consequences (knowable in advance) are "not fair." My go-to saying is "Gravity is not your friend." It doesn't matter how much you want to bend the rules of the universe to your will, if you go up against science with that attitude, you will always lose.
I can barely read this article without wanting to spit nails. Where were you two years ago when those who chose to be unvaccinated were reviled and excluded. When pharmacists refused your doctor’s prescription for Ivermectin or Hydroxychloriquin? When the VAERS numbers just kept climbing and no main stream media would touch it? When people pointed fingers at their neighbors for not wearing a worthless mask? When anyone thinking that early intervention was a conspiracy theorist.
If Robert Kennedy is right, Fauci’s “monomaniacal focus on vanquishing a single virus” is is ONLY play from AIDS to COVID and science is not the basis. Some kind of monomaniacal power play is.
The man should be stripped of his pension if not tried for crimes against humanity!
Sorry, my frustration is not with Dr. Markary. He has been a tireless voice of concern and reason throughout the pandemic. But news media has lost credibility along with public health.
Johns Hopkins was one of a handful of outlets publishing work that went against the narrative. Makary has been a dissenting voice from the beginning, along with Robert Malone and others. The mainstream press went hard after dissenters with any credibility. Twitter censored articles from Johns Hopkins, the British Medical Journal, the American Heart Association, and even the CDC itself, when people were drawing conclusions from the data they didn't like. Blame the midwit apparatchicks in the press and on social media, not the dissenters.
I don’t claim to know what Fauci thinks, but I’ve found that it’s generally useful to look at peoples’ actions and reason backward from them. Fauci and Collins both leapt into the spotlights by claiming to represent “science.” Their recommendations caused mandates that imposed draconian restrictions on society, presumably for its own good.
What kind of people do that? What motivates them? Money and power are usual incentives. My guess is that Fauci and Collins expected Nobel Prizes—or at least nominations. No Prize for work on AIDS, which must have been a bitter pill for Fauci to swallow. This time, by not “letting a crisis go to waste,” would be his time.
And I’d be surprised if significant money didn’t also find its way to them. I hasten to point out that I know none of this—it’s merely guesswork. But they’re guesses entirely consistent with the actions we’ve seen.
Actual science involves proposing and then verifying hypotheses. Or failing to verify them. It’s been said that nothing is quite as ugly as watching a beautiful, magnificent theory being beaten to death by a gang of unruly facts. When theory and data come into conflict, data must prevail: data = facts. What Fauci and Collins did was prevent people from getting usable data. Which means that what they did was about as far from real science as Tarot cards and astrology. Damage done to credibility in real science is immense and likely to have negative impacts for years.
You don’t have to suspect - Fauci fought to keep his financial disclosures secret, but when revealed, he had millions of dollars of payments and royalties from companies that needed his approvals. I believe it was north of 10 million. Many of the researchers at the CDC and FDA did also.
Tech companies definitely fell victim to thinking that they were geniuses who can make the world better, when in fact they were all young, inexperienced idealists without a grasp of history or human nature. But, let’s not forget that originally social media platforms all wanted to be content neutral, and were forced into moderating content by people using the platforms for pornography, pedophilia, drug dealing, social unrest, and whatever other baser instincts are accessible to the most disturbed among us. Let’s also not forget that after that happened, Congress repeatedly threatened their businesses with stifling regulations and breakups if those companies didn’t toe the line. So, the tech companies have behaved poorly, but it isn’t like they all just woke up one day and decided to censor the internet. They were pushed quite hard in that direction by human nature and by our government.
Dr. Makary gives an excellent summary of the egomaniacal depravity of Anthony Fauci, but I would like to put a finer, and admittedly less eloquent, point on it.
Dr. Fauci is one of the most fundamentally evil human beings to walk the earth in the last century. If a dictator did the things he did- suppress fundamental human rights, drive children to levels of despair and suicidality unknown before in the western world, create cult like behavior among his followers, and seek to destroy the careers and lives of his critics, we would call them a maniac. Why is this descriptor inappropriate for Fauci? The short answer is, it isn’t.
I don’t know that the destruction he has wrought (both tangible and intangible) will be fully understood for some time, but one thing is for certain...faith in medical institutions in the US will be lost for a generation at least. Nobody who lived through Covid will forget, nor should they.
I pray that Rand Paul and Republicans in Congress grow a spine for once and do not give Fauci another peaceful day for the rest of his time on earth. His name should be turned to mud to such a degree that anyone who shares his last name, whether related or not, wants to change it because there has been such a pall cast over it.
Goodbye and good riddance...
Faith in the medical institutions has been lost among those of us old enough to have experience. What I observe among our Millennial family members is that, not only do they accept proclamations uncritically, but, they do not recognize the impact of loss of freedom. Many grew up in a safety-ist, hovering environment and they like being tightly swaddled.
Great point on the millennials. It seems like most have no fighting spirit or any bit of healthy rebelliousness. It’s disheartening
My inlaws treat public health like a religion. Their is no age group immune from this cult.
It is the lack of critical thinking skills which is the most disturbing thing about those (of any age) who accepted the advice of Fauci. I still see people wearing masks while driving alone or while outside. Fauci should have been fired the moment he claimed that perfectly safe HCQ was dangerous. It was a danger only to the potential profits of the drug companies selling the rushed experimental vaccine - which is worse than useless as it doesn’t prevent people from getting Covid but does weaken immunity.
I used to get angry at people wearing masks alone in cars or walking alone on a country path but now I have empathy for their ignorance. I think they are generally deeply confused by the message and they believe COVID is everywhere like dirt is around the Pigpen character in Peanuts. If you believe this, you will never unmask. Ignorance is not bliss, it is terrifying.
"I used to get angry at people wearing masks alone in cars"
No reason to get angry. It turns out, NPR sounds better when you have a mask on.
Is that what it takes to listen to NPR these days?
I feel bad for them. It must be hard to live in fear like that 24 hours a day.
People do all kinds of weird things. Which is to say, people are weird. I don't know why some older men wear obvious toupees that make them look like a clown, or why people get Botox injections to the point that they look permanently startled.
Perhaps they are wearing it because they are scared, or perhaps they became so used to it, that it is like a security blanket? Or, possibly, they just want anyone who sees them to know they are not a republican.
People yelled at me when I was not wearing a mask. In the park. One woman screamed: “mask up” and gesticulated wildly when I walked on another side of the street. I live in a mostly Democratic city, as you probably figured. I think we will tell these stories for years to come.
I had that happen once at a Costco somewhere in all that. A lot of frustration turned into intolerance and hatred of people they are told are the problem. If only that guy got shots and/or wore a mask, this would all be over next week. That sort of crap.
also lacking critical thinking skills
What a strange position to take on a Millennial’s Substack bringing you this information.
Must have missed the word "most."
People like Bari are the exception that proves the rule.
proves the 'rule' wrong :)
What did we expect with the Everyone Gets A Trophy generation?
You don't know my 16 year old daughter. She's a fighter when she feels she was wronged.
I think government accumulated enough trust credits before to make millennials trustful. Now the trust is gone or at least questionable. Regrettable position because we are facing very challenging times, which may require quite meaningful sacrifices
And handed participation trophies just for showing up.
I didn’t show up. But I thought about showing up. Where is my trophy?
Yip that’s 💯 correct
Fauci has done more harm to this country than any other individual in American history.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/how-fauci-wrecked-the-pandemic-response
I have posted this same position on many occasions. And if you go back to the 80s, you'll see many people stating the same during the early days of AIDs. An awful, despicable man.
He was only 'one of the kindest, most charming human beings you will ever meet' until he was cornered, then his real personality came out.
Sociopaths and narcissists often present as overly kind and generous.
Exactly.
Were I the editor of this piece I would have written: Author, this statement sounds like you’re hedging; delete?
If there is justice Fauci will go down in history as one of humanity’s greatest villains
And half the country, led by our media, thinks him a saint.
I dont know about that. More and more people are starting to see the harm he caused. Hopefully the scapegoating and rage will be turned from the "uvaxxed deplorables" to him and this group of permanent bureaucrats
Well then, I guess there is no justice. Can't you argue the issues you have with him instead of resorting to apocalyptic views ?
Most of the issues with Fauci are articulated in this thread. He may not have been intentionally evil, but his narcissism led him to disregard any opposing views, and resulted in untold, and very avoidable collateral damage.
I suspect he was also financially motivated due to his ties with Pharma/China/WHO, but Ill let the next session of Congress determine that.
Great point.
on tucker carlson last night Scott Atlas appeared and really nailed down the failures we have seen
Tucker is such a jerk - and- he is right about 20% of the time. Very, very right.
He’s actually not a jerk at all. He’s personally a gracious generous person. He’s a fearless political gadfly in the best spirit of american journalism. He mocks and derides and criticizes. Good for him!
Read some HL mencken . Some samuel clemens, PJ orourke .
The enemy of lying pomposity smugness and groupthink . Whats not to like?
Oh poor Anna. You're probably still running around with a mask on.
He and his ilk have brought us closer to apocalyptic results, at least for our culture, than anything else in my lifetime. This house of cards could really collapse.
Amen!
Somebody who waits until the age of 81 to retire from a very public position, who never admits he is wrong, even when it affect an entire country, seems to actually enjoy the cult built around him, who claims to be “Science” itself… obviously a high grade narcissist who should have not have had power in his hands. The sinister part is that while half of the country sanctified him, much of the other thinks he’s nothing less than the evilest man in earth - a lot of competition there. I wish they were just as severe with another famous narcissist who wants to retire in his ‘80s from top power positions (president), never admits he’s wrong or his endless lies, enjoys having turned a political party largely into a cult of his personality, delivered to Senate to the Dems in 2020, puts a much needed Republican victory in 2022 at risk and is ready to set the country on fire, the latter three just to satisfy his maniacal ego, bruised by a lost election. I wish America’s rejection of pathological narcissists would be more methodical.
I liked your comment but respectfully disagree. While Trump was a narcisist, he's proud of it.
He was highly effective in his policies, whereas Fauci fucked the world.
But, that's just MHO
Some narcissist use it to their advantage to do good. I know no one who could have withstood what DJT put up with as president. He didn’t have to take that job ( free of charge) as a wealthy man.
I see, Trump decided to be president not to improve his “brand” but because he wanted to SERVE his country. The altruistic narcissist ! That’s a really good one ! If you would have actually listened to what Trump has always said very loudly, for people who wanted to help others or to serve their country, “Bone Spur Trump” always had two words: SUCKERS and LOOSERS. He is actually very proud of that.
Yep! 4 years. Bone spurs, suckers and losers sums it up. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Thank you!!
Totally agree on Fauci. Agree with most of Trump’s policies as president, although it difficult to tell how many were actually coming from the people around him. However, what Trump did to this country after the 2020 election is a disaster and we’ll be paying for it long after he’s gone.
Andy
Trump should have accepted the advice he was given that once the EC Electors were picked there was nothing that could be done to prevent Biden from completing the steal. But your overwrought and clueless allegation against Trump is a vicious calumny.
What steal??? You’ve got people like Barr, who have put everything on the line to help Trump when nobody wanted to be around him, clearly saying there was no election-changing irregularity, plus endless other local Republican officials saying the same, and we keep seeing again and again this insanity with “the steal”? This has become the exact mirror image of the left’s “Climate emergency” - a cultist absurdity repeated like some kind of prayer. We all either come back to common sense or we all burn together, left cultists embracing right cultists.
Fascinating how the same people who now realize how untrustworthy our public health agencies have become, how captured our federal agencies have become, how corrupt our media, big tech, academic institutions are remain unshakably certain that our elections, run by partisans in 50 different ways, and where rules are changed at whim based on who has control in a state are of the highest integrity. SMH
The thing about federalism is there's really no way to rig the elections of 50 different states simultaneously, because each state runs their own show and has very different people in charge.
Trump’s people have filed many lawsuits, all thrown out including by Republican judges, because they could not prove any significant fraud. According to your weird theory, since the country is polarized, no doubt there was fraud, even if nobody can prove it in any way. But why do we need proof when we believe in Trump Out Savior? Oh, but I forget, it’s a huge left-wing conspiracy, all local Republicans office holders were in it, Republican judges were in it, even those appointed by Trump, Barr was in it, only the faithful Trump cultist didn’t get bought.
Actually, the 2020 election was a disaster. I personally saw people going door to door at apt complexes paying people to sign ballot envelopes with no ballots yet inside. I reported it to local officials who hung up on me. Trump did the entire country a service in illustrating how corrupt our elections have become.
And we'll have to respectfully disagree on the importance of Jan 6 as well. I think we'll see an entirely different side of the event after the House changes hands next term.
Optics will certainly change. The disgusting evil nature of a looser politician unleashing his hordes to stop certifying his rival’s win will never change. You can have the best political intentions in the world and your rival might be a sleaze just waiting to break his promises (Biden), still two wrongs don’t make a right. Never. Ignoring this puts us all into deeper and deeper hole. Nothing will really change until we understand this.
“ I wish they were just as severe with another famous narcissist who wants to retire in his ‘80s from top power positions (president), never admits he’s wrong or his endless lies”
I agree completely although large crowds chanting “let’s go Brandon” is a pretty good start.
There are people who can't resist making everything about Trump. It's so boring. This is the best response ever.
He really tossed you a softball, and you hit a home run
Also, by your own standard - why is Biden still around? And still around destroying all of our lives?
Could have been talking about Obama, Bush the II or Biden too - same personality traits. (I’m old enough to remember people literally swooning at Obama’s rallies, chanting his name, depicting him as Christ, saying he was going to heal the earth - or was that him saying that himself). Only difference with Trump is that - publicly - he can’t afford to admit he’s wrong. The media would pounce (another pack of lying narcissists). What was Obama et al’s excuse? BTW - so tired of this “endless lies” trope. Name one serious lie that wasn’t clear braggadocio for effect. Remember- a lie means you know something to be factually untrue and claim it anyway. Like “inflation is at 0%.”
The border is secure
Nobody making less than $400K will get a tax hike
Nobody making less than $400K will get audited
I make all of my own decisions
I've never been involved in any of my son's or brother's affairs
The left has lost the right to ever accuse Trump of lying again.
+ 1000
I abhor Fauci for how he handled the Covid epidemic but this is really a far-fetched claim.
nope/... criminal malfeasance, if there is justice he would die in prison. coercing people to take experimental drgs they dont want and dont need is a crime against humanity and violates the nuremberg code and warrants long prison sentences and even the death penalty
No. Biden is number one. He is bringing in 6 million illegal immigrants per year and is exorbitantly increasing the public debt.
Oh. Golly. I studied history for 6 years and didn't know that. My bad.
Don't beat yourself up. Nobody's perfect :)
Dr Fauci, like virtually everyone in Washington DC, is a net detriment to society and he will be receiving a pension of $350,000 annually. The equivalent of having $10 million in assets passively invested.
If you ever wonder why these teething rodents lash out when someone recommends actually reducing the size of the federal government, that is why.
None of them ever have to worry about money ever again for the rest of their lives. In most cases it’s not as lavish as Dr. Fauci’s sinecure, but it is, nonetheless, the complete elimination of concern over money permanently. An unbelievable luxury if you can imagine it. That’s why they are willing to kill you.
Parasites.
Unfortunately, he and his minions couldn't have done it without our consent. I wonder if we aren't somehow partially complicit?
Unfortunately "Republican" and "spine" are mutually exclusive concepts. The Democrat party hasn't so much seized power as simply leached their way into a vacuum of leadership.
If ever there were a time when America desperately needed a viable third party, this is such a time. But we all know that will never be allowed to happen.
After being a democrat for years, I am now a registered Independent.
I fully agree with every syllable you posted about Dr. Fascist/Dr. Fausti, but you forgot that he'll probably get a Nobel Prize to go along with his Medal of Freedom.
With the exception of Dr./Senator Paul, and maybe Senator Kennedy, I'm not confident the Republicans will do much other than grandstand, bluster and bloviate for the cameras. I so want to be wrong. As Michael Corleone said at the beginning of GF2 (one of the sources of universal truth) they're "both part of the same hypocrisy".
Suggestion. Read a few history books. That wil give you some perspective, perhaps change a few of your many extremist views, and allow you a good night's sleep.
I think if YOU read the history you seem to be so fond of, you'll find that Fauci does, in fact, have a lot in common with other authoritarian, collectivist monsters throughout the 20th Century. The most American of those is Progressive Movement spawn Woodrow Wilson.
It's not a difference in kind, but of degree, and all the more remarkable that it happened in one of the most free nations in human history.
My husband always says, history begins the day you were born. Meaning, no one cares to look back any further.
Sorry if I did, I spend 6 years studying American history in college and grad school before getting a professional degree. History is extremely helpful but you don't need to know much to disregard (and be surprised by) the comments saying Fauci is the worst/most evil etc. in history.
I have a degree in American history. I'm just not waiving it around like I'm the second coming of Christ like you are. Relax, killer.
LIKE.
It’s hyperbole and I personally think it’s acceptable here. People are very angry and rightfully so IMO.
Your degree was a waste. We already know millions of people around the world were thrown back into abject poverty beginning in 2020 because, primarily, of 2 people: Fauci and the head of the WHO (who takes his marching orders from Fauci and Gates). Millions of children will be stunted. How many millions died from COVID who were denied safe early treatment and/or put on death drugs like remdesiver. How many millions will die from injections Fauci profited from. I could go on. And that’s just in 2.5 years. If you really knew anything about history, you would know it’s not a snapshot in time. It unfolds over years, decades, sometimes millenia and it’s backward looking. We have yet to know whether Fauci will be the most evil man of all time (which I’m willing to say he is not) or just in the top 10 (which is where my $ is).
What role did the CDC play in this?
If you study history as well as you say you do, then you should know that discovery of the damage done by miscreants enthralled by their own power is often not known until they are themselves history.
We simply do not know comprehensively what damage has been done, unwittingly or not, by Drs Fauci and Collins and their willing accomplices in institutions and media, but history if written honestly will tell us.
Not sure why you’re not seeing that, being an historian and all, and reserving judgment as history instructs us to do.
This! Downplaying the long-term effects of the response to Covid is irresponsible, because minimizing the death toll makes it all too easy for the proponents of that response to excuse doing many of the same things again in the future.
Ok then, my two "best schools" against your two. I agree on the poor standards of universities to day, but come on, reading around 80-100 books on history is useless? As for your calculations, who knows (well, you and I surely don't)but your perspective on "engineered global catastrophes" and comparisons to Mao, Stalin and Hitler seem a tad off -- and I'm trying to be polite here.
Is this a private fight or can anyone get into it?
The ping-pong game continues. The MSM, Big Tech, corrupt finance and our compromised political leadership once again butchered our national dialogue and exploited a literal life and death crisis to leverage personal power, position and gain while driving the wedge of dissent, fear and distrust ever deeper into the American heart. 2008 was of the same life and death magnitude. Criminal finance killed people, destroyed lives, homes and families across our entire world. Covid, like the 2008 crisis was mishandled because we're ill. One of the first things a man should learn is that evil is real, it always enters the home undetected and it takes the entire village STANDING TOGETHER to overcome it. The first recognition being, that it has poisoned US.
We (that's US or U.S.) live from crisis to manufactured crisis for the exact purpose of preventing the reality based national dialogue necessary to put rational and practical solutions on the table for the creation of a brighter American future. Obfuscation and the "bitch slap" is our daily bread. How, stretched to the limits of survival, tongue tied by lies and spoon-fed hysteria twenty four hours a day, would we maintain a connection to healthy human reality at all?
Someone once said that if a man doesn't know his history he doesn't know who he is. I believe that history is a living breathing presence that informs the fact of our lived and shared reality. If I lose my connection to mythos and history I fall out of time into ANOMIE. As a general observation I'd say there are forces at play in our lives working to sever our connection to American mythos and history with a chainsaw. Got Constitution?
Mao, Hitler and Stalin are entirely relevant to our discussion but not because of Dr. Faust er, Fauci. All three manipulated pathological ideological utopianism and the mass projection of evil ,by a confused and desperate populace, to suspend human dignity and install the murderous totalitarianism that defined the 20th Century, and took the lives of millions. We stand on the threshold of a new age. The brutalization of the American psyche by a nefarious and venal force is underway. It intends to steal our future. Call it anything you want, but it's there. That's why we're here. GET CLEAN. GET STRONG. GET CLEAR.
As an English friend of ours, who at this moment is spinning in his grave at the arrest of his fellow citizens for thought crimes, once said:
"...Here come old flat top he come grooving' up slowly....he say I know you and you know me..one thing I can tell you is you've got to be free...come together...right now..."
Pondering……..Do you enter a room with a sign that says your smart? No need to reply.
“Reading around 80-100 books on history is useless?” Yes. Btw - I’ve read 800,000 books on history. See, we all can lie on the internet because your lack of understanding of the pedagogy of history makes me disbelieve your claims.
HEY, A KAUFFMANN, ……I READ A BOOK, ONCE.
What role do you think China's lockdowns have had on the supply change issue?
Rush Limbaugh liked to say that
I have no worthless paper hanging on the wall as proof that it was understood , you go with what you believe , Fauci screwed the pooch on aids and covid you keep on praying to the cult of faici
By all means dear professor suggest three or four. Visceral disdain of Fauci on opinion boards is what America is about. Perhaps you should read up on the founders.
AMEN!
In my fantasy world, the word "Fauci" becomes an epithet for 100 years. As in, "he really fauci'd that up".
All true and know this: he did not do it alone. It took an army to carry out his orders. The American victims are too many to count and we are forever broken.
Fauci's reputation at this point is very much like what Adolf Hitler's would have been if the Nazis won WWII. Revered by his camp and reviled by the rest, but with his camp in control.
The CDC needs to share any criticism aimed at Fauci. Dr. Redfield, and now Dr. Walensky need to be held accountable.
True. Will never happen. They are in bed together.
So sad that this hate-filled, ignorant screed is the most popular comment on Bari Weiss's publication. I guess that's the kind of audience she attracts.
Fauci is highly regarded among his colleagues. Right-wing media has demonized him because he dared to contradict Dear Leader. And you fell for their propaganda.
Have you ever considered the possibility it is *you* who have fallen for the propaganda?
I look at a wide variety of media and check everything against other sources. When you take the mainstream media together as a whole, over time you get much closer to the truth than anything in right-wing media.
Not really, because NYT, CNN, WaPo, NPR, MSNBC, AP, etc. all have pretty much identical biases.
So your "wide variety of media" is really just interchangeable talking points with different brand names.
To actually have a "wide variety" you have to include at least some of those dreaded "right-wing media" sources, no matter how much they may trigger you by failing to reinforce your preferred echo chamber.
The problem arises when people do the opposite of what you do, and *only* get their news from a "wide variety" of right wing sources, i.e. using a mix of Fox, Daily Wire, Breitbart, etc. in order to meet their "variety" quota.
When it comes to covering politics, I agree with you. It's unfortunate that the pandemic became political. It shouldn't have, but it did. I blame both sides of the media for this. Politicians and social media jumped on board. I also blame the CDC for not being transparent.
10 miles away rather than 20 miles away? LOL
That comment is quite representative of Matt Mullen and his ilk.
Fauci fucked up bad enough that he's now trying to memory-hole everything he said in 2020.
It took him roughly 18 months to go from "we must lock everything down" to "I never said we should lock anything down".
That said, he's not the mustache-twirling supervillian the MAGA crowd makes him out to be.
I agree he's more Brad Marchand than Raffi Torres. But, you still need to guard your knees.
I would say he's more of a Patrik Stefan, if Stefan insisted he totally didn't miss that open net and anyone who thinks he did is a deplorable with a faulty memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBns6ZUn0U
He was the Bill Buckner of NHL hockey
you are probably still wearing a mask and ordering all of your food to be delivered
Wrong. Are you still more afraid of the vaccine than covid? Do you still think that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid?
I had two shots. so no.. I am not a doctor so I dont know if Ivermectim is a help when it comes to covid. do you?
Right-wing media has been peddling the false claim that Ivermectin cures covid. They've done several major studies and it has been shown to do nothing.
I have no such illusions. however Ivermectin is an important human drug used world wide.. especially in poverty stricken areas.. The left called it "horse wormer". which it is. but only one of a myriad of uses for humans. However even the NIH says this."Clinical Trials
Several clinical trials evaluating the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 are currently underway or in development. Please see ClinicalTrials.gov for the latest information." so while the current recommendation is the Ivermectin is not a "cure" for covid it seems that science is always changing. .. there is no "the science" and certainly Fauci is not the arbitor of what is "science'..
Dear Leader - who in the h—l are you talking about. The last 2 presidents did everything Fauci said. If there’s any Dear Leader around, it’s Fauci.
"Egomaniacal depravity?" You should have been talking about Trump, who did everything he could to downplay the dangers of the virus and sell people on ludicrous quack cures. Keven Stitt, the governor of my state, who's rural residents were ravaged by the misinformation they received from Trump and Fox News and often died from eating Ivermectin, blew a million and a half of taxpayers money on hydroxochlorine.
I just laughed so hard I spit out my coffee. You really should put a warning at the top of a post like this. "Do not consume food or beverage while reading the following".
I had seen on MSNBC (or was it Vox?) how they ran out of grave sites in the red states trying to bury all those deplorable Trump supporters who died from consuming horse paste as they were instructed. And you forgot to mention the bleach injections. What was the mortality rate on that again?
"everything he could"
Makary seems all too kind. One does not have to dig very deep into Fauci to find the ugly. Gain of function research. Horrifying experiments on dogs. And I don't see many people having anything kind to say about his approach to AIDS.
I find his attempts to avoid any blame for the harmful Covid responses based on his advice disgusting at best and near-criminal at worst. People in government did things because HE told them to. And when his assertions were questioned (which is the way science is done), he made sure the questioners were silenced.
I've met (mercifully few) medical doctors with a "God complex," but the insistence that he was "The Science" really takes the cake.
I was also going to bring up Fauci's AIDS response. It is far from anything that deserves praise.
Fauci was one of the drivers behind the 'anybody can get AIDS' campaign that is now being rerun with monkeypox. While technically true, it was well established early on that anal sex and IV drug use were major risk factors for AIDS transmission. The CDC and others bowed to political pressure and wasted resources on general warnings while refusing to take specific actions to limit AIDS transmission.
In a foreshadowing of what happened during COVID, Facui championed the concept that an AIDS vaccine should be developed, and spent years attempting to discredit treatments such as AZT and various drug cocktails in favor of funding vaccine research that ultimately failed.
Seriously, he was Mengele bad. No person in my lifetime has caused more international economic and human destruction as this man. He sold his soul to the WHO/Chinese/Pharma, and forever damaged a generation of young people. It will be 10-20 years before we can accurately gauge what the emotional impacts on our children were during two years of hysterics and learning loss.
Yep! Fauci was Mengele here. He was acting on orders. The same orders that created similar rules and mandates across the globe.
Thank you for that information! I could not remember the details.
If you have not read "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts, please do. It's an excellent book about the poor governmental response to AIDS in the 80's, and speaks of Dr Fauci (I pronounce it Falsy). Tragically, Randy died of AIDS in 1994.
I lived through that era, although it did not affect me personally. Which is probably why the name Fauci didn't mean much to me until Covid. But I remember thinking that the approach the health authorities were using was pretty messed up.
It used to be a standard requirement for heterosexual couples getting a marriage license to get an AIDS test! Sound familiar?
I got married in 1985 (37 years ago today). I don't recall needing any blood test. But, that was a long time ago. I do recall there was a concentrated effort to lecture heterosexual people that had just as good of chance of getting AIDS as homosexual males. I think only lesbians were off the hook? Anyway, there was some truth to it w/r to blood transfusions, and shared needles. Then there was Magic Johnson. Wuh Woa. Skip a few decades later, and its Charlie Sheen.
Sad to say, but even then he was a bureaucrat.
You are correct. His ego is unrivaled. I am grateful for the med school recommendation letter he signed for me, however. I actually liked him and even trusted him for a few weeks at the beginning of this. He’s delusional regarding his own impact. Now, I just feel sorry for him. God will have the final word.
Narcissists are disarmingly charming when they choose to be.
I had a professor in grad school who always seemed very nice, and oddly less aggressively Woke than most. But one day I arrived slightly early for class and, as I stood just outside the door, heard him berating a student almost violently--particularly considering his usual demeanor--over something that seemed fairly trivial.
A couple of years later, he was suspected of murdering his ex-wife in an extremely brutal fashion: the medical examiner could not be sure exactly how many stab wounds there were because there were so many on top of each other. Due to that day outside the classroom, when I asked myself if I thought it was possible he had done it, I had to admit that it was.
He was ultimately convicted on a mountain of mostly circumstantial evidence. The most damning of which was that he had answers for all of the cops' questions *before they asked them.* He genuinely believed he was smart enough to talk and talk and talk to the cops and get away with it.
Wow. What a MOMENT IN TIME for you.
Yeah, it was extremely disturbing to realize that I personally knew someone who had committed murder.
One of the few people in my program who I was still in contact with told me about it via email--evidently he had explained his bandaged hands to the class that day as a gardening injury (which was not what he told police).
There is evidence to suggest that he may have had an accomplice, but outing the accomplice would involve admitting that he committed the murder, and it seems highly unlikely he will ever do that.
Whoa..... And he committed murder in one of the most brutal manners!
madaboutmd, could you please give me the site you found this guy? I couldn’t find it. Thanks!
OMG.
Not to be gruesome... But do you mind sharing this guy's name? That's a dateline I'd watch.
Thomas Murray.
I just looked him up and there is a "48 Hours" episode. Looks like he was married to an attorney and "peace activist". Yowza!
A tell was a photo I saw of him sitting in his office and directly above his desk was his own portrait. Who does that? Ego maniacs do.
Yes, well said.
Not talked about much are the “simulations” that were performed by research institutions about pandemic response. It doesn’t take much reading to see that Fauci got his approach (vaccine focus instead of therapeutics, lockdowns instead of protecting the vulnerable, etc.. ) to Covid from these simulations.
Yep and right back to Bill Gates.
Yes, one such study was completed within 12 months of the actual Covid outbreak with Gates prominent in the discussions.
Two evil, selfish, narcissistic assholes.
The sadistic, horrifying experiments on beagles was just heartbreaking, and I'm sure it was just the tip of that iceberg.
What people seem to forget is that when Obama said no to gain-of-function in US labs, Fauci circumvented that order by off-shoring the gain-of-function experimentation to the bat lady at the Wuhan Lab via Eco Health Alliance/Peter Daszak. He lied about that while he simultaneously set himself up to profit extensively off the "vaccines". How convenient to profit from both the poison AND the (supposed) cure.
Follow the money. Fauci and his Big Pharma buddies made obscene profits from Covid. It's astounding to me that people refuse to connect the dots and continue to fawn over him.
To me, it seemed that Fauci did what he did because the administration wanted him to (so many flip flops), especially with regard to vaccine mandates in order to reach its preposterous jab percentages, the only metric they cared about (and that led to the denial of treatment). And now he’s slinking away just in time to avoid losing his pension when the hearings finally start—after the midterms. The civility of this piece is wholly unwarranted.
Agree but Dr. Marty Makary, who I've followed from the beginning, is a class act.
Very good point. He’s been honorable the whole time.
I'm so happy you bring up his horrendous abuses during the AIDS epidemic. He and Gallo were fiends. When I saw Fauci appear that first night of the briefings, I gasped. I knew that nothing good would come from his involvement and as his power grew, more and more of our rights were taken away.
There's an entire Matthew McConaughey movie "Dallas Buyers Club", the true story of taking into their own hands access to drugs to combat AIDS because Fauci insisted on clinical trials here in the US while men/women were dying. Fauci is a despicable man!
I would really like to hear more about his approach to the AIDS crisis. I know there is some controversy there, but I don't understand it well enough to have an opinion.
This link can get you started. The author was one of the most intense of intense AIDS activists (a founder of ACT UP, I believe), but his complaints in this “open letter” greatly echo criticisms I and others have had with the one-size fits all approach to COVID: “The vaccine! The vaccine!” ( https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111 )
Also, the plot to the movie Dallas Buyers Club (after which the gorgeous Matthew McConaughey has never again looked healthy) derives from an underground drug buying club to procure experimental meds for AIDS patients, who weren’t receiving treatment for symptoms or for preventing lethal infections.
This guy is pretty spry and resilient for 81, I’ll give him that. But, you are so right about his legacy. Some, those who opted to keep themselves ignorant throughout the pandemic, would still sing his praises. Yet, like the CDC and the FDA, he blatantly showed his willingness to obfuscate, lie, ignore useful data, distain the use a balanced epidemiological approach, hide data, and rewriting the narrative (e.g., “no one EVER said that the vaccines would prevent infection”). Despicable him and them.
"This guy is pretty spry and resilient for 81, I’ll give him that."
Maybe compared to Biden?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xhx1PK0lF_Q
Everyone is spry compared with sleepy Joe.
I am one of the physicians who signed the Great Barrington Declaration and one who used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to successfully treat adult patients, although admittedly a very small cohort. I am glad that Science is retiring, although that begs the question as to why the vast majority of doctors abdicated their responsibilities to evaluate and honestly report on treatments that appeared to show promise - political pressure from The Swamp notwithstanding. Their job, and their sworn duty, per that dead white guy Hippocrates, is to take care of their patients; why didn't they do that?
Now I see that some medical schools are lowering their standards in the name of "equity." When I was a medical student I had the same conversation with the Associate Dean, Dr. David Z. Morgan, may he rest in peace. When I asked him if the school would lower its standards to accommodate calls for "diversity," his comment was that if forced by politicians to lower standards, he and the dean had agreed they would publicly shut down the school. Where are men such as these?
Im a 54 yo doc . Im appalled at what i saw over the last 2 years. The medical comunity is in mass formation
Thank you for honoring your oath.
I had to witness the struggle my naturally immune physician husband had to endure for being under the imposition of a vaccine mandate. He eventually relented (me: make them terminate you!) and got one JNJ but it was not without a fight.
This wasn't the first round. About two years before I retired, the Evil Empire for whom I worked decided that everybody in the hospital must have "flu shots." Having watched a local optometrist with flu-vaccine-induced Guillain-Barré struggle to recover, I said no. They said, "it's mandatory." I said no. They said, "You have to wear a mask, then." "No."
They said, "We'll fire you." My response? "I've always wanted to own a small hospital, ditto a small house to use for vacations. Your hospital and your house will do nicely, and I will guarantee you that my attorney, who is so mean he scares ME, will have the suit papers in your office and at your front door tomorrow morning."
We were at an impasse until the neurosurgeons, who brought in millions in revenue, refused as well, and the admin retired from the field of honor suitably chastised.
Great story. Awesome job standing up for yourself Jim!
I’m speaking tomorrow on “escaping corporate medicine” & I believe it will be live-streamed
GatewaytoFreedom.com
My husband has seen a lot of changes in his almost 30 years practicing medicine. It's only become "corporate" recently and he's been able to sidestep much of the corporate BS. He has about 20 more months until he goes part time.
never took that shot, made no sense from a risk /benefit standpoint. less than 0.15 percent change of severe illness or death to me. No reason to take experimental drug. got natural covid in aug 21. Noone would rec superior nat immunity. Was enraging. the medical communitu around me was and still is delusional cowardly ignorant.
Agreed. I took the vaccine because, having worked in an mRNA research lab at Johns Hopkins between college and med school, I am pro vaccine for myself. I doubted the vaccine would be highly effective, or remain so, due to the highly mutable nature of corona viruses. The mandates and neglect of natural immunity, however, were repugnant to me. The declaration by an individual that he “is science” should be disgusting to every scientist. I read and discussed real science with my patients regarding mRNA viruses, vaccines, natural immunity, efficacy of masking, and any topics they wished, without regard to Fauci’s dogma. Fortunately for me, I live in Florida, and our governor yielded to political pressure for a much shorter time than most.
You might comment on the below: my reading suggests that the Wuhan virus, as are all viruses, was relatively simple in structure, and that it displayed five proteins available for attack, one of which was the "spike protein." As I understand it, the "vaccines" by attacking only the spike protein, promoted immunity pretty much limited to a single viral variant, with no significant cross-immunity to others, whereas natural immunity stimulated activity against all five proteins, meaning at least some immunity against multiple variants.
Also, initial viral replication in the nose stimulates production of "secretory IgA," which takes place primarily in the lungs, hence when the virus eventually makes its way down to the lungs, they already have a defense in place. Of course, the vaccines bypass that, which may explain the very high prevalence of severe disease in jabbed individuals.
My overall understanding is that this particular virus' threat was very little different and no more virulent than dozens of other flu variants that we have dealt with since time began. Old people were at quite high risk, as were the infirm. Everybody else dealt with it just fine. I'm certainly open to better data.
That’s exactly right. This mechanism of IGA mucosal immunity is the reason why vaccines given a shot for respiratory viruses have not been very successful. The natural infection is always in everywhere better than vaccine immunity.
The COVID-19 virus is simply not any more dangerous to most healthy adults than a regular flu
This whole episode was a giant fiasco. They were powerful forces in the permanent bureaucracy in the United States government didn’t want Donald Trump reelected and they used Covid and weaponized the entire public health bureacracy And used it against Trump to defeat him
There was a theory awhile back that masks helped make the already infected even sicker as the mask concentrated and confined the virus to the nasal sinuses by greatly reducing air flow. Haven't heard much about it for while but it would seem to make sense (at least to a lay person).
Then there were the ventilators which where initially the go-to treatment for the hospitalized, from which many could never be taken off of without killing them. "The operation was a success, however the patient has died."
We've certainly learned a lot over the past 2 1/2 years, not least of which is whom to trust and whom to not.
if you have EVER trusted the CDC or NIH you are a fool. Governments in general should never be believed or trusted at all for any reason. Everything gov says in a lie or is perverted through a political and ideological lens. The US gov is no different. The founders of the US knew this . this same thing has been happening for thousands of years. The romans had a republic and it degnerated into an empire and the emperor WAS TRUTH! no jesus not science the EMPEROR.
if a group of politicians and bureaucracts tell you to think a certain way or believe something DONT!
if they tell you they are going to do somthing to help you : grab your children and hide your wallet and RUN!
If they tell you to take a drug you dont want and dont need: DONT DO IT.
Everything gov touches it destroys. everything gov does it ruins.
Every problem gov tries to solve it makes worse.
Here we had a new flu virus slightly worse than the usually seasonal influenza for most. And it turns out the the virus itself might hav ebeen a product of a gov lab and everything they did in the name of "solving" covid turned into a global hysteria and resulted in the deaths of millions of people for lack of early outpatient treatment and a dangerous vax.
We went from 2 weeks to slow the spread to MASS DEATH.
Never trust anything gov agencies or officers have to say. This was the whole point of the United states.
Very much agree. The issue with mRNA viruses, and corona viruses in particular, is multifactorial (isn't everything). The fragility of mRNA limiting vaccine distribution due to storage issues was evident. Your point about lack of stimulation of secretory IgA is very important (witness Jill Biden's second bout in as many weeks). Corona viruses are particularly mutable, so vaccines have very short durations of efficacy. As I've told many people, the mortality of COVID-19 in over 65s is somewhat less than acute hip fracture mortality, and no one is outlawing throw rugs and small dogs.
yes and many people who read the original pfizer study documents knew that the vax was unlikley to stop infection , spread and transmission b/c it was not shown to be a sterliizing agent. It was specificaly developed to reduce the chance of severe illness and death and hosptitaization , which it did do for some for a short time but then the vax itself produced escape variants and people became tolerant of it. If there had been a simultaneous effort to roll the vax out to the most vulnerable as well as intensely focus on early outpatient treatment then far fewer people would have ended up in the hosp and dead. this is what happens when you mix politics and medicine
Well said. The shot was available for anybody who wanted it. It was too bad that it wasn’t more effective and safer than it turned out to be. But it wasn’t entirely unexpected because it was a new experimental product. There hasn’t been a good track record with these types of products against respiratory viruses in the past. So whoever wanted to get the shot could get it. It did not protect other people just the person receiving it. The level of coercion and propaganda Floyd to coerce people was disgusting
Alas, those men are of the past. When decisive people do things—like change scheduling for new CT scanners so they can erase 6 week backlogs—everyone hates them. For about three days. Most “leaders”of today can’t think 3 days ahead. They only think of the current news cycle.
Understood. And remembered. Well done.
After this horror show I have gotten new doctors. Any doctor pushing the AMA narrative is a doctor I don’t need. Makes my job a little harder, but at least I have more confidence in the information I’m receiving. I don’t trust anyone now.
I think I've mentioned it before, but when people ask me what I do in retirement, I only half-jokingly tell them that I protect my friends and family from my colleagues.
Love that! You’re a credit to your profession!
Much less the American Academy of Pediatrics advocating for medical and surgical gender reassignment in prepubertal children.
The AMA is useless. The AMA’s completely captured by pharmaceutical companies and woke ideologues
No argument here. I resigned my membership about 30 or 35 years ago. At this point, I think something like 20% of American doctors or members.
I was never a member . I finished med school in 95. Ama always came across as a toxic lobbying group to me
By then it was. Back in the day, it was a reasonable group. Then it went sideways.
What city are you in?
Boston!!!!!
We know a lot of docs in Boston who are quite good. Let me know if you need a referral.
Thank you!
Thank you for your high ethical standards and courage. Only a few doctors raised to the occasion like you did. And thank you for verbalizing what we all have been wondering about for the last two years: why did doctors abandon their Hippocrates oath? Out of fear? Cynicism? What kind of doctors our medical schools produce? Robots? Political hacks? I come from a family of two generations of doctors. My elderly mom keeps repeating in shock: how could these doctors send people from the hospital to die at home if they were not candidates for a ventilator instead of helping them with any medication available? Millions of lives could be saved. It was a crime of unprecedented proportion. And we may fully realize it only when we look at it from a distance.
Perhaps you treated only a small cohort with that cocktail, but I, and plenty of people I know directly and through hearsay, used it and went from symptomatic (hardcore muscles aches for me) to 90% better within 24 hours. It is sick and criminal that these drugs were not the first line of care. Everything I've read from the like-minded has said that if they were, over half the deaths from covid would have been avoided. Based on my first hand experience, I believe it.
One of the people I treated was terribly sick and getting more so by the hour. Her husband is a pilot and had a pulse oximeter handy; her oxygen saturation was in the 'eighties - that's really low - very short of breath, and near panic. The results with ivermectin were nothing short of remarkable; she has told me several times since then that the treatment "saved my life."
Thank you.
Thank God for you and all of the Great Barrington docs! Sanity in an insane world. The effort put forth by Fauci and others to discredit, dismiss and denigrate you and Bhattacharya and all of the others told us exactly what we already knew. You were onto them.
Jim, I do not know any doctors socially, and I would like to know something. How do treatment decisions in cases like this actually work? Is there a standards-book that tells prescribes your actions to essentially any disease? Are your choices confined by CDC? By FDA? By your insurance? For example, did your carrier raise any objections to your use of "unsanctioned" treatments? Would they have if they'd known? I'm just trying to understand how the system works, with a goal of figuring out how to improve it. I'd love to hear your ideas for the top 3 things that could be done to improve it. Thanks.
I'm not a good example. I'm retired and have no malpractice insurance, since I'm not actively practicing, so I don't answer to THEM, but they always had conceded to a physician's training and experience anyway. They figure that with over a decade of training, you probably have a good idea of what you are doing.
The people I have treated have all been relatives or close friends; it was a bit serendipitous, actually. In March, two years ago, I had seen the congressional testimony of several doctors who had been actually treating CCP-virus patients, and they were compelling. They were working 80-90 hours per week with no letup - remember this was in the thick of the pandemic. You could see they were exhausted. But they had considerable experience - I think the three of them working together had over 200 papers published - and their experience and frustration with the "protocols" had led them to try other treatments that, again, in their many years and thousands of hours of experience and training, might offer better results.
It was amazing to watch them testify. I didn't realize at the time the extent that this whole lockdown and treatment propaganda was being used to test Americans' willingness to knuckle under to the government, and I watched the video with the usual curiosity of a lifelong academic.
So, purely by chance, I suppose, the next week I received a call from my relative-the-pilot, living in another state, telling me that he, his wife, and twenty-something year-old daughter had tested positive and were getting really sick really fast. The were terrified at the prospects of hospitalization, well aware of what happened there: people were essentially imprisoned, put on ventilators, and died.
I remembered the protocol I'd seen on the congressional testimony, although I was a little puzzled that I couldn't find it on YouTube, still not realizing that with all the politics going on, and of course Google (who owns YouTube) in the thick of it, it had been taken down.
I called in prescriptions for him, his wife, and daughter in the early afternoon. Checking in that evening, they were "a little better." Next morning, "much better." Two days later, "cured."
So, as I say, it was serendipity to some degree. I did not realize at the time I was afoul some federal political fatwa, though it wouldn't have made a difference.
Thanks to both of you. I was trying to figure out if this level of oversight (the total freakout about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for example) was typical or something really unusual. It sounds like it was EXTREMELY unusual. Thanks.
I am familiar with off-label freakouts. About 6 years ago, the FDA pulled lidocaine ear drops from the market. As you both know, in low concentrations, lidocaine is about the safest product in the world, and mothers had been using lidocaine ear drops for infant ear aches literally for 50 years. Suddenly, FDA determined such drops were illegal because they hadn't been proven "safe and effective". Ever since then, I stock up on medications whenever I can.
All this is ironic when marijuana is legal in so many states. A mind altering, potential gateway drug that's stronger than ever and the FDA regulation and oversight is, shall we say, nebulous.
You want to live virtuously, we'll come down on like a ton of bricks. Virtue implies objective standards, and objective standards would interfere with people's pleasure, thus you can not be allowed to believe in virtue. But we'll defend your right to consequence free drugs and sex to the hilt.
What the 60's revolution hath writ.
Also, to chime in, physicians have always used certain medication off label -- meaning that other non-intended uses with good outcomes have been discovered, often by accident, for many drugs. Then there is a process to get the FDA approval for use in a different capacity other than the one for which the drug was invented. Take Botox as an example. A migraine headache pain relief injection discovered to relax wrinkles. Dermatologists used Botox in this way for years before it was approved by the FDA cosmetically. With Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine a physician's discretion to prescribe and use these (long prescribed, safe, on the market forever) drugs off label was challenged. Most pharmacies would not honor the prescription. One had to go on line and through various sites and other resources to get them from pharmacies willing to dispense or from India (where they are OTC). There seemed to be federal dictates prohibiting doctors from prescribing these medications. Insulting and irrational.
Jim, you say: “…begs the question as to why the vast majority of doctors abdicated their responsibilities to evaluate and honestly report on treatments that appeared to show promise….” You seem to be unaware that the doctors were being responsible; unlike you, it’s time for you to offer a mea culpa!
“A phase 3 randomized, controlled trial published today in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that three drugs repurposed for the treatment of COVID-19—metformin, ivermectin, and fluvoxamine—didn't prevent hypoxemia, an emergency department (ED) visit, hospitalization, or infection-related death, although a secondary analysis finds that metformin may hold some promise.”
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/08/trial-metformin-ivermectin-fluvoxamine-dont-prevent-severe-covid
Not unaware at all. I read that article the morning it came out. The flaws in it are legion and have been pointed out multiple times, probably one of the worst being the administration of these drugs late in the course of the disease, where they have always been known to be ineffective.
The Wuhan-virus syndrome typically follows a three-phase pattern: First three or so days, in which viral replication takes place. The second phase is several days thereafter, during which the body's own "cytokine storm" does the majority of damage. Not everybody gets that. The third stage is what I call the "clotting" phase, during which coagulation defects predominate. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are relatively ineffective after the first (viral replication) phase.
Do a little research vis à vis federal laboratory funding, and you will see that these physicians are very, very far from having no dog in the hunt. Not that that would possibly affect perfect independence, objectivity or cause skewed reporting ....
"Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are relatively ineffective after the first (viral replication) phase."
That first phase is also largely asymptomatic; the symptoms show up in the 2nd phase. So you're describing a treatment that only works if administered BEFORE the patient starts showing symptoms. That's not a very practical treatment, because by the time you know the drugs are needed it's too late for them to do much of anything.
miles, Jim makes such a copious reply, full of information backing up his argument, typical rebuttal of a pompous know-it-all!
Incorrect.
Jim, that dog won’t hunt; you can use all kinds of word salad, you can tell me, up is down, and down is up, it’s all bull patties in the pasture; you need to ante up some proof!
Out of curiosity, just me, what proof would be acceptable to you that did not come from the very "Science, Inc" people that have universally opposed such treatments.
It's a little like global warming. "If you think global warming isn't real, go do a study and prove it! Of course, we control the money for climatology and only give grants to studies that attempt to prove it is real. But why haven't you produced the proof yet!?" When one side is outspent by the other to a ratio of 1000:1, it makes it hard to determine the veracity of any claim in that field.
Brian, are you proposing that ivermectin is like Galileo's heretical belief that the earth was Heliocentric, not geocentric? Do you believe the new England journal of medicine is a: ecclesiastical tribunal?
When the entire institutional Science apparatus has been captured by a single point of view, getting at the truth becomes very hard, because science (as in actual experiments intended to find truth) are essentially impossible since the grant money requires experiments to be skewed to find only "acceptable" outcome.
I used the example of global warming above, but a similar dynamic can be seen in the debate over transgenderism, which has also fully captured institutional Science. And just like with COVID, dissenting voices must be crushed.
COVID captured institutional Science with a vengeance and speed I have never seen before. In 2020, you couldn't get a major journal article published critically examining ivermectin, lab vs bio origins, mask usage, lockdowns, or anything else re: COVID. (Interestingly, grants for these sorts of projects were Fauci's precise responsibility.) That makes me highly suspicious. I'm not saying that ivermectin et al are effective. I honestly have no idea. But I have enough familiarity with the process to be highly skeptical of "scientific" results published in fields that have been institutionally captured by single points of view.
👏👏👏. Lawyers, too. When things go bad, you should be able to find a lawyer to at least plead your case. Not so with the Covid dogma.
Fauci is another in a long line of public officials and politicians for whom there is no accountability. It's the result of politics as cult of personality and the public's constant yearning to feel they have it all figured out, and national media that is more that happy to indulge that delusion. If you decide that a figure like Obama or Fauci is right about a serious social issue such as health care or responding to a pandemic then every criticism must be born of ignorance - the Fox News syndrome. Pretty soon, to admit any fault would mean the whole house of cards collapses, which is why we are all now being treated to national news stories about Fauci as the tireless public servant.
If Fauci knew that Covid-19 was being studied at the Wuhan lab, then why did he actively deny and push back against even the mere possibility of a lab leak origin in the initial months of the pandemic? This is a simple question that most anyone who still trusts Fauci has never been asked, or at least never seriously considered.
Fox News was literally the only major news organization pushing back against Fauci and the rest of the public health establishment. Trump was the only leader calling for reopening the schools.
I’m not sure if you misunderstood my comment or just agreeing with my point. I wasn’t knocking Fox News in this instance
Sorr, but what did you mean by “the Fox News syndrome”?
“If Fox News says it, it must be wrong.” In other words, same thing as Trump syndrome
I think I just forgot to add the word “derangement” haha
Ah, I see your point now. Sorry for the misunderstanding, and yes there's definitely a kind of anti-Fox skew among the liberal elites. I have found several of the Fox reporters to be excellent: Tucker, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham, Greg Gutfeld, plus a few lesser known hard working young reporters. The top management at Fox is crummy, just like CNN & MSNBC, but the reporting is still good.
I think it's typically called by more normie/centrist Democrats "The Fox News Fallacy"
“If you decide that a figure like Obama or Fauci is right about a serious social issue such as health care or responding to a pandemic then every criticism must be born of ignorance”
That’s the real problem, isn’t it? Given the facts, most ordinary people will make the right decision. Unfortunately, we are constantly bombarded with selective reporting, obfuscation and outright lies from self-serving politicians, bureaucrats, and the pseudoscientists they employ as propagandists. Fauci worship is only one example. The “global warming” scam and the left’s assault on our fossil fuel industry has the potential to be far worse. Just look at the self-induced food crisis currently ravaging Sri Lanka because the government followed the “experts” and banned the use of petroleum derived fertilizer. Look at the impending heating crisis that will hit Europe this winter because the idiots running “green energy” countries like Germany anointed a snot nosed, Asperger’s afflicted teenager named Greta Thunberg as their oracle and bet their future on windmills and solar panels.
Meanwhile, China which is the world’s leading CO2 emitter is building a new coal fired, CO2 spewing power plant every week to manufacture the solar panels, batteries, and windmills that Joe Biden’s Orwellian coined “inflation reduction act” demands we pay for. Lest there be any opposition, the act also funds 87,000 new gun carrying IRS agents willing to use deadly force to insure we do.
Wish you were President Timothy! This bullshit we have endured for the last 3 years beggars belief. The very worrying thing going forward is where to from here?
There's hope. People are starting to believe their "lying eyes" instead of the liars.
I sure hope you’re right
This is the logical result of a bloated federal government which cannot be effectively admnistered. All it can do is tax, tax, tax and seriously mismanage the spending of those taxes, creating the need for additional taxes.
Large companies constantly manage their departments and employees and adjust to the conditions of the market. They hire, they fire, they shut down departments that no longer make sense and start new ones that do. I know government is not the same thing, but forever growing without review or change as needed is not working. We need term limits so that there are people in Congress that are willing to go through the federal government and start to streamline it and make it work for us again. Right now it's only function seems to be to keep existing.
Large companies have a bottom line. The federal government is adrift rudderless. And to be fair it predates both the current and former presidents.
When a government body takes control over something (prisons, education, healthcare) and thenprivitizes it we should all take notice and demand transparency and accountability.
I'm not talking about privatizing. I'm saying, for example, they founded the Department of Education. I'd argue it has made things worse, and should be scrapped. There is never a review. Government is ever growing. I'm unaware of a time when they said, hey, the department of transportation is bloated. It needs to be streamlined. When in the history of the Federal government, after WW2, has there been less employees than the year before?
Oh I agree about the DoE. And the rest. Perhaps I jumped the gun on privatization but that seems to be the trend.
Some of my response is my anger at Republicans calling for smaller government since the 1980's and never coming close to doing anything about it whenever they have been in power. It's the reason I stopped calling myself a Republican.
I like privatization for some stuff, but I agree, transparency is a must.
all thanks to Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
Amen, and the Pied Piper of Mar-A-Lago is further evidence of the truth of your position.
If the government wanted anyone to have confidence in the Mar-A-Lago raid, Hunter Biden should have been arrested first! Then investigate Joey! All this Trump stuff is a distraction from the real problems this country faces thanks to Fauci, Joey, Mayorkas, Wray….the list is sooo long.
The DOJ should have explained their purpose and motivation more clearly. Instead, they went into a defensive posture which makes them look even more guilty.
They are guilty of manipulating a narrative to fit their unstated purpose which is to eliminate T forever. I’m convinced DTS and future fear of Trump is why covid was blown up and why the Jan 6 riot was cast as an “insurrection” and why Mar a Lago was raided. My question is what comes next? This country has been compromised and weakened. What insanity comes next?
They will arrest Trump - I am certain of that. They will try to keep him in prison saying he is a flight risk. They will stretch out legal proceedings for years, hoping Trump dies in prison - a process I'm sure they will "encourage" with really bad conditions.
This post doesn’t sound to far fetched but I think before they can arrest President Trump, there will be a civil war in America. The deep state has done literally everything other than the arrest of Pres 45 and still for all that, President Trump remains remarkably well any person with a lesser personality would have crumbled already
if they succeed in that, our Republic is finished.
The November elections are what comes next, and it will likely be pretty insane! Twitter has already announced plans to manipulate opinion and the other tech cos. are doing similar. I suspect the House will barely flip to GOP, Senate will remain 50-50, or even gain one or two Dem seats thanks to mediocre GOP candidates... and we'll have a couple more years of chaos and disastrous policy.
Then, finally, the vast, dimly aware voters will demand a change, and there will be an opportunity for moderate Dems and Repubs to sweep in, though likely it will just continue to be mostly Dem control until the country undergoes significant demographic changes.
It won’t be a demographic change it will be a totalitarian change, it will be the end of America the big three corporations will be controlling us our supply chain our meat supply our food source and our medicines I don’t think it will matter if it’s GOP or the Democrooks the manipulation and control will be complete Facebook will be running the country and Instagram
Please what insanity is next? If you know give me a heads up because there is definitely something brewing I just can’t put my finger in it yet
Right!!!! I feel the same. Just when I think things can’t get worse, they do! I am guessing but thinking either war with China, Biden falls off his bicycle again and we get Kamala, or Aliens land here!!! Any one of the three would shift the world. Aliens might be a good thing!!! 😉
Hardly…and the fake news continues
You lost me when you described him as kind and gentle. Perhaps he seems that way to a colleague he esteems. He is a well known narcissist and bully. Anyone who ever worked on the 7th floor in building 31 knows this. I watched him bring my boss at the Office of Policy analysis to tears. He’s many things, but kind and gentle ain’t it.
"Any physician who has met Dr. Fauci will agree that he is one of the kindest, most charming human beings you will ever meet."
I thought this comment was incredibly naive. Narcissists are typically charming and can present themselves as "kind" to those they want to impress. The ugliness comes out when they are opposed or behind the scenes.
Those who have never experienced the dark side of a narcissist may never stop believing that they're just the nicest person.
Well said.
My best friend's ex-husband is a textbook narcissist. His gentle demeanor fooled me for many years into thinking his sometimes irrational behavior was merely quirky. Once the mask slipped, his true viciousness was plain to see.
I worked for another textbook narcissist at a "reform school" for rich kids. It was the only job I've ever been fired from: I asked too many questions about things that did not seem right. A few years later, the school was shut down, and my former boss currently sits in prison for abusing students--particularly his sexual behavior toward girls who were imprisoned there. I know many people who, to this day, believe he was a great guy and couldn't possibly have done what he was convicted of.
Narcissists are all charm--frightening so--until they know you are no longer fooled.
or they become cornered, then become the rat they are. There's no shortage of interviews that show that side of him, and Rand Paul was very good at exposing it during House hearings.
I can hardly wait for Rand Paul to have-at him.
Our whole system now is set up to attract and reward narcissists. We offer more and more power to anyone who is charming enough to win a popular vote. We practically invite narcissistic psychopaths to rule over us. Then some will claim that their grand plans were “hijacked”. Guaranteed to happen every time the plan is for benevolent experts to have control.
Sadly true. Part of the point of having Senators appointed by state legislatures was to put a cushion between the "popular vote" and what was *meant* to be an office filled by the wisest men each state could produce. Now there is no political office in our country that does not depend on wooing the fickle mob. Which makes narcissism an easy substitute for genuine leadership.
But the desire to be ruled over by "experts" has been part of the Progressive mentality since the first iteration of Progressivism. Woodrow Wilson--who inspired the fascists of Europe--was a college professor before he was a politician. The eugenics favored by those early Progressives was all about the desire to rid our society of low-IQ "deplorables" so it could rise to new heights under the leadership of intellectuals.
So it's no accident that modern Progressives worship experts--they just have to be experts who believe the "correct" things.
Yet, again, another wow. If I were ever on trial for anything, I’d want you on the jury.
I’m curious about your experience with your friend’s husband. What was it like when the mask slipped? And how did he act when he stopped trying?
I’m dealing with someone who is very good at hiding their narcissism, I think ….
If you don’t want to respond here I’ll send my email address
For my best friend, it all came crashing down when she found out he was cheating on her. He made a huge, huge show to everyone who would listen of "repenting," but I recall one conversation with him where he let it slip that it was control over his daughters that was really motivating him to try to save their marriage.
Over the next five years, everything *appeared* to be fine...except that my best friend was horribly unhappy and slipping toward utter despair. It was only then that she revealed to me what she had been hiding, in her own good-faith effort to give him a chance to fix things:
All those weekly "dates" they were supposedly going on to bolster their relationship, the kids were always brought along, even though babysitting was not an issue. He constantly used their daughters as an emotional buffer between them.
Worse still was that he used her trauma over his affair as a bludgeon to attack her. Anything she struggled with was "proof" that she hadn't forgiven him (as was her moral obligation), which made her a horrible and evil person.
And, as always, his wishes came first and hers were nowhere. He had always made a good show of treating her like a princess, but in reality, there was only ever money for the things HE wanted to buy. His musical ambitions were paramount, but her literature-writing talent (which was exceptional) meant nothing. Like many cheaters, he had accused her of cheating because HE was.
When she reached a point where she was trying to decide if their marriage was salvageable for her, she came to hang out with me for a month. He harassed her with phone calls all day if she was not online where he could harangue her. He made a huge, huge show to anyone who would listen of being "traumatized" by the possibility that she would leave him permanently. I warned him that NOT giving her space to think was the surest way to lose her, but no, he had to control her.
When she finally made the decision that their marriage was over, he went instantly from loving her so much he couldn't bear to leave her to considering her the most evil woman who had ever lived. He literally went around to all the people she knew--even people who were not friends with him--and tried to convince them that they shouldn't associate with her anymore. He even tried the "she's no longer worthy of your friendship" schtick on ME, who had been her best friend for years before he ever appeared on the scene.
His determination to control the kids came out immediately. He threatened to tell all manner of lies to the family court judge if she tried to gain custody. And with his smooth and winning manner, he would have been utterly convincing. Whereas my best friend--who had already been squashed down by an abusive mother--found it very difficult to speak up and convincingly defend herself.
As we found out years later, after the girls grew up, he was constantly telling them that their mother had left because she didn't love them. He told them (and anyone who would listen) that she was a whore who slept with dozens of men. The girls, of course, knew that none of this was true, because they could see for themselves when they stayed with her that it was not. In fact, they did not know the truth about the divorce until they were young adults. Their father was finally about to marry the woman whom he'd cheated with, and my best friend told him that either he could tell them the truth and put his own spin on it, or she would. He (of course) refused. It was during THAT conversation that the girls revealed the emotional abuse he'd inflicted on them.
I don't know if that helps with your situation, but that's my experience.
Ok, Celia M. …..I always scan the sites that I subscribe to. There are some that I stop immediately and read (my favorites have developed for me over time). Then I go back and read everybody. But, my God, have you written a book or essays of your life? I mean a lot of what you say, I’m sure could help many, many people.
If I’m being too personal, I apologize. Thank you.
I write a lot on Quora. Maybe sometime I should gather my most interesting answers into a collection. Still trying to figure out the fiddly bits of self-publishing my cookbook to give to my kids for Christmas.
Thanks Celia. That does help a lot. I'm dealing with similar things, but on a much smaller scale, from my sister. The hardest thing is to believe yourself, because the narcissist is always right and very good at convincing other people. We're not in contact anymore (thanks god) and even though I have a few family members who also know the truth, I still question myself sometimes. Was it me? Did I make it all up?
The gaslighting from narcissists is terrible. And they will actively recruit people in their target's circle to support their lies (in the parlance, these are known as "flying monkeys").
When it comes to narcissists, they will literally tell you not to believe your lying eyes. When you point out actions they have taken or things that they have said, their modus is DenyDenyDeny.
Often the only way they are caught is because they are so convinced by their own lies that they get careless. My "reform school" employer *knew* he was under investigation, but he still took a group of girls to Victoria's Secret. If a caseworker had not spotted him there, I think the trial might have gone very differently. But he was so certain that he would get away with it, he didn't alter his behavior in the slightest.
"The hardest thing is to believe yourself, because the narcissist is always right and very good at convincing other people."
That is so true.
Another interesting post Celia. Please keep it up
I am grateful for Dr. Makary. His voice was one I listened to during this ordeal. It will be years before we truly understand the harm caused by the draconian measures prescribed by Dr. Fauci. IMO the damage this one man has done is incalculable. I was 60 when this started. I don’t have any health issues, not overweight, no high blood pressure, not even high cholesterol, just some arthritis. I decided to wait before getting the vaccine. I was fearful of the rush to embrace it despite all the assurances. All I wanted was time to see how everything played out before I signed up for, what appeared to me to be, mass hysteria. I hadn’t anticipated the demonizing of anyone who thinks outside the box….a quality valued once upon a time. Our boob President Biden, with the assistance of big tech and MSM, painted a white strip down the backs of all of those who did. Just like Fauci and Collins did to the Great Barrington Declaration. If you read the Declaration you will understand how much sense it made. The price I paid, while not as high as losing my job or educational learning, was among family, friends, colleagues, and associations. I was banned from everything and whispered about because I was “one of those”. Many well intentioned people took me aside and “for my own good” lectured me on my choice and then scorned me, others just scorned me. I will not forget! I will never ever consider what comes out of the CDC or any of our other politicized institutions, which means just about all of them, to be anything I should put stock in. As for my friends and family who followed all this garbage, well, let’s say they’re on the bottom of my Christmas card list.
i hear you. Total dedication to the Covid shot narrative has fractured my relationship with my father, possibly forever. I didn't care if you want to take the shot. I just wanted to wait to see the side effects because I knew my survival from Covid, according to actual SCIENCE from Stanford, not Fauci, is 99.98%. But as the data rolled out, the horrifying anecdotes came rolling in, and I knew 5 people younger than 50 who all died of either heart attacks or strokes, I knew it wasn't for me (or anyone honestly). My CNN NYT loving father has called me a racist, conspiracy theorist, an anti-scientist (I'm a trained scientist in the earth sciences so that's laughable), all because his GODS (aka Fauci, Biden, and friends) have told him again and again that I'm evil because I didn't take the shot. I had covid a month ago. My 6 week old had covid too. I took IVM and was fine after 48 hours. My daughter, taking nothing but breastmilk, fine after 12 hours. My father still asked me if I was now going to take the shot now since Novavax was finally FDA approved!! Madness.
So sad about your relationship with your father. Sadder that he still thinks the vax is a good idea. All this demonization of people just trying to do the right thing for themselves, and all the dramatic judgement, is the unfortunate product of a government determined to keep the masses asses. To the egomaniacal elites we are just a bunch of hamsters on wheels. I will never bend the knee.
The 1984esque recommendation to ostracize friends and family members were so awful I could hardly believe they came from fellow Americans.
Wow - just wow. Fauci & Co., especially Twitter, Facebook and other social media created one of the weirdest, frenetic & hyperbolic moments in my six plus decades. It was odd and distressing and seemingly much of it unnecessary. Another thing not mentioned in this overview is that 78% of deaths occurred in obese people but there was never a campaign to educate the public about this. Instead, we get left leaning magazines like Vogue (and it’s crazed editor Anna Wintour) and Sports Illustrated flaunting super fat women on the covers. This was pervasive in most media. Given that obesity was an obvious co-morbidity, this move by the liberal media was weird & Dystopian. Shame on Fauci and them all.
Bill Maher, a classic liberal with some common sense, said this from the beginning and was repeatedly chastised.
My wife's doctor said that all the patients she has seen on respirators are morbidly obese.
There was a time when there were public service announcements about the 'horrors of smoking' - but in our Woke Age you can't warn people because they say you'd be 'fat shaming' them; Clearly, the wokestors/progressives would rather die. Darwin speaks loudly.
We have a friend who's an admitting physician in a NYC hospital - He says that he often treats black women who have enormous girths. He asks them if they'd like diet counseling and they spit back at him, "It's our culture - mind your own business". And to boot, taxpayers eventually pay directly or indirectly for these bad habits/behavior making these women obese.
The whole purpose of PC, besides tyrannical control, is to couch your terms in such a manner as no not offend anyone which is BS because no matter how you say it someone is going to be pissed off.
I am not ashamed to say I do not find fat women attractive. I have no use for people who lie about this.
It’s incredible how fast people turned against each other.
If you don't toe the ideological line, no matter if you are right, you're toast.
My children will never trust the medical establishment and their lofty pronouncements ever again, due in large part to this man. They learned that the world can loose its mind, that common sense and reason can leave the room, and that whole systems (school districts, universities, rec departments, corporations and nonprofits, etc.) can adhere to rules and mandates that fly in the face of logic and tradition. They learned that prominence and popularity and titles and credentials don’t create wisdom or justify authority. I’m grateful that these lessons were learned and proud of how my kids have come out the other side. I hope they learn too that people like Dr. Fauci are held accountable and forced to face the consequences of their poor and demonstrably damaging “guidance”. I fear instead that they will learn instead that all of these actors, and those in the future as well, will never be held to account for the destruction they caused.
The damage to public trust is incalculable.
I view the deterioration of trust in "public health" as a huge unexpected positive that arose from the covid debacle. "Public health" is just another way of saying "computer model" which is just another way of saying "total guess". There is nothing even remotely scientific about "public health". It's yet another in an alphabet soup of ideological, opaque, unaccountable agencies that attempt daily to run our lives.
"public health" should be no more trusted on cloth masks than they are on vaping products. they make no sense, and are driven by personal enrichment, like all other humans everywhere. give them no trust, and give them NO POWER
the entirely of the federal government complex should be defunded and dispersed.
“They learned that the world can lose its mind, that common sense and reason can leave the room, and that whole systems (school districts, universities, rec departments, corporations and nonprofits, etc.) can adhere to rules and mandates that fly in the face of logic and tradition.”
I feel like we all learned it, and not just from the pandemic response. I can hardly believe how many widely held beliefs make no sense at all, and I worry about our collective ability to solve problems when we cannot even agree on what reality is.
Rich I totally agree... climate comes to mind of course.
Conventional wisdom = control
Another victim of the closures were mainstream churches. The more conservative, larger churches thrived because they remained open. Our church lost many members who have found it is just easier not to attend and I honestly think it was a dereliction of duty to restrict access to our houses of worship. (I want to make it clear, that this was a policy of the national/state church who followed CDC guideance- not state imposed.) People didn't HAVE to attend if they were nervous, but basically locking us out was never a good idea, especially during a time of international crisis. But I absolutely agree that the school closures were the worst idea with the most far reaching terrible effects.
I am one such person. My large (small town)traditional United Methodist church was shut down for months in a state where there were no lockdowns or mask mandates. Even at the time of the craziest crazy I kept thinking that surely the church should be open. We needed church. But mine was closed. I have never gone back. If I’m left on my own to worship when times are rough I figure I can handle it when they’re better too.
Yes. I agree. with your last sentence. The Catholics were the first of the mainstream to come back, we (Episcopalian) were among the last.
I had the unpleasant experience of visiting my home town in Maryland in May 2021 and applying to the church where my parents’ ashes are interred in an outside columbarium. I had been fully vaxxed since February, asked to visit on a weekday when no one was there, swore to wear a (pointless) mask, so I could walk across the lobby and go back outside in a little courtyard where the ashes are interred. My request was DENIED. I quoted literature to the pastor, made reasoned arguments, and was denied again. I finally told them I felt that the church had clearly abdicated their responsibility to their congregation and mankind through cowardice, and that I, as a surgeon, taking many more risks that they could ever imagine, never failed to show up for work through COVID. Or for that matter, HIV back in the 90s when I did residency in an inner city state hospital and if you got it you died, no exception. They requested I not come to their church. True Christian charity and bravery.
Truly horrible.
Can you move your parents ashes to a church of your choosing?
I think I'll respect their wishes to remain where they are and wait for a new (more intelligent and courageous) pastor. Whatever happened to the Christians who would go amongst the lepers to offer comfort, right?
Right!
This is a terrible story, truly not followers of Christ. I am so sorry to hear that, and because our dictates came from the diocese, there was no one to whom we could appeal. I am so sorry.
My request put no one at risk, so why deny me? On a sleepy, off season Wednesday, unlock the front door and go back in the church office. Let me walk across the lobby wearing a mask, and go into the outdoor courtyard to see my parents. Knock on the door to tell me it is time to leave, and I would walk, masked, back across the deserted church lobby and leave. Throughout, I would have touched 5 surfaces - door handles at the entry and the door to the courtyard, and the plaque over my parents' remains, all easily sanitized with a wipe. It still mystifies and saddens me. I have not been back, and that hurts. The diocese was wrong, but the pastors were more wrong to comply. Christians should have courage.
Another side effect from Covid.; irrational fear. We should all have courage and appropriate fear.
Dr. Makary has been a beacon of reason and sense since the start of the pandemic.
I think Anthony Fauci - and many, many, many like him, all over the world - are fundamentally emotional and flawed human beings. What they did was allow their own primal fears of COVID-19 to overtake their rational thinking and completely overrun their obligations to the public they serve
It is for this reason that Fauci sacrificed children and ignored obvious science around natural immunity and so on. His entire decision making was driven by fear; his own. Hundreds of public health officials around the globe were the same - abject cowards above all else
The words of Jordan Peterson ring very true here: "if you thought tough men are dangerous wait until you see what weak men are capable of"
I respectfully disagree with you that it was primal fear driving the decision making--it was purely financial. You simply can not ignore the hundreds of billions of dollars that changed hands as a result of the decisions made by Fauci, the CDC, etc. If there were no profits to be had, maybe you could argue that it was fear.
I've read that 75% of the GLOBAL pharmaceutical profits come from the US. No country's response to and policies regarding covid did more to help big Pharma profit than the US. As highlighted by Dr. Makary above, further knowledge was never sought but further drug development was. As new data became available, the policy (vaccine first) never changed. It wasn't until the profits from vaccines had started to fizzle out that we saw a softening of the "vaccines are the only way forward" policy.
Sadly our government has become a giant system that specialized in the transfer of wealth to a select few. That's what Covid was. That's what the next pandemic will be and Fauci's replacement will be responsible for ensuring that occurs.
Well said, but I think our answers are complementary, and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Cheers,
Totally agree. This was big business and political power, but remember we are also talking about a man who said that we may never shake hands again. When he said that, my jaw dropped not because I believed him, but because I couldn’t believe his germ phobia was so firmly entrenched that he felt comfortable expressing it to the world.
I agree 100%.
No doubt. In private the elites were not afraid of covid. They only wanted the people to be. Like the governor of California sitting shoulder to shoulder with all the medical experts at the French Laundry. No masks or distancing
One could draw a comparison to the elites that fly on private jets while telling us regular folk that we need to reduce our carbon footprint.
Dr. Vinay Prasad just put out something this morning on his substack that's along the same lines. Basically children, who were/are the least susceptible to serious illness/death from covid suffered the harshest restrictions. Even fairly recently, young kids in some states were wearing masks while adults were out partying at bars. Hell, one school called the cops on a 4-year old that wasn't wearing a mask. The consensus is that kids can't vote and voting is the only thing we have left (sort of) to express dissatisfaction.
Now with climate change, we're all expected to do "our part." Except corporations can continue to decimate the environment in the process of earning profits and wealthy people can fly all over the world on their private airplanes. But again, it's the average Joe that must sacrifice the most. I've seen a comparison of carbon footprints for a wealthy person flying on a private jet versus the average adult. It's a joke. You can't drive your car enough in a year to have half the impact one private aircraft flight.
I agree with you. The working class will ultimately pay the most for climate change policies despite being the least responsible for what is happening to the earth.
I think, as Ben Shapiro often says, two things can be true at one. It was fear and the money. I know that the drumbeat of fear still affects people. There is a truly hideous booster ad where a young man, who is perfectly healthy, runs away from someone who hasn't had a booster. The CDC is still feeding the fear...
His fear of the virus was a cynical pretense, IMO. I think he feared the threat the virus posed to his authority and power were the truth of its origins--and his own role in it--allowed to gain traction into a good faith, official inquiry. Also, he had the same data everyone else did about the clear stratified risk and comorbidity profile, but he needed to keep public fear high to promote Pharma solutions and profits. I hope he isn’t allowed to get away with his dereliction of duty and corruption. But given the state of accountability in our current culture, I won’t hold my breath.
Exactly, he had a blatant conflict of interest and was protecting himself by getting the public to look in another direction. And if his big pharma cronies got rich in the process, even better for them (not so much for us).
Good point--the gain of function research was his baby.
The reference to George Washington is timely. For some time now I’ve made same point, not just in reference to dictators like Putin and Xi, but especially toward Angela Merkel, who spearheaded the denuclearization of, and thus the dependence on Russian gas, of Germany. Germany’s industrial heartland is now shutting down. Any human in power for a long time starts thinking of their own legacy and place in history. Grandiosity. Surround themselves with toadies who echo back Amens. They believe their own BS. They get comfortable arrogantly wielding power. Fauci is no different.
Merkel’s worst offense by far was opening the borders to all, resulting in a flood of 3rd World migrants, opportunists, thugs, rapists, and jihadists into the country, fundamentally transforming Germany. Biden’s open door policy is wreaking similar effects on the U.S.
The main difference between the two leaders is that Merkel is a highly educated, brilliant idiot. Whereas, Biden is merely an idiot.
Correction - whoever is actually running the country (Obama?) is an idiot. Biden is spending less and less time in Washington, hidden from the public on all his “vacations” and he is more feeble and incoherent at each public appearance. I suspect his dementia is breaking through the drugs they’re using to prop him up.
Yeah.
Imagine the duplicity of electing a man to such an important office, then publicly hoping he won't run for reelection. Nor his VP.
He has always been in idiot. The law school he went to used crayons and to get an A on a paper all you had to do was draw within the lines and of course color choice was important.
Would that she had stuck to quantum chemistry. Who knows with her drive and grit what amazing things she might have catalyzed doing such fundamental research? I wonder if she wonders as well.
Sorry, but anyone believing a country whose economy relies on manufacturing could abandon nuclear power, let alone fossil fuels for windmills and solar panels is an idiot
Environmentalists are also fighting hydroelectric plants now, on the basis that they are an unnatural alteration of waterways. So 6.3% of the U.S.'s power generation is at risk of being shut down, along with gas + coal which are about 60%. Nuclear also likely to go, despite its "green" credentials.
Pretty soon, we won't be able to make anything. Actually, we are gradually moving back toward the stone age.
Luckily, China burns coal, and is building new mini-nuke plants, to make all those consumer products for us. They'll soon be making all our cars, planes, and anything else we need, though the Greenies want to toss those out, too.
A while back a German commenter noted that she grew up in East Germany and was a full-on socialist, regardless of her later political career. Imaginary thinking.
The Peter Principle!
As I entered my 50’s, I started to realize that many, seemingly irrational occurrences couldn’t be happening in a vacuum. I’ve had long discussions with an old friend (retired high ranking military officer) who feels the same way. While there are definitely unintended consequences of every action, no one can tell me that an open border with Mexico makes sense while closing the border with Canada during the Covid hysteria. Another example is allowing BLM riots and protests while shutting down schools and businesses. Both Fauci and Birx need to be held accountable.
Of course, if the goal was to foster chaos and create a breakdown of society through disintegration of its institutions, the casual observer can see tremendous success. The question is: who would choose that goal, and to what end?
Good question - why would Soros put millions into electing Attorney Generals that allow our cities to descend into chaos? Why wouldn’t the FBI infiltrate and shut down the BLM riots, but have 12 confidential informants instigate 6 rednecks in a “plot” to kidnap Whitmer? Why would Europe (Germany) and the USA open borders to allow millions of uneducated, poor and unvetted migrants to overwhelm the country? In the case of Sweden, they went from one of the safest countries in the world to a place where women can’t walk alone at night. I could keep going for a while, but the gist of it is that there appears to be some people that are working towards that goal.
If you listen to what the most Woke actually say--the full-on Marxists--they want to burn this country to the ground and build their utopia on its ashes.
I cannot prove but absolutely believe that Russia and China are conducting active psy-ops via America social media and the comment sections of popular web sites to amplify political divisions and to promote destructive beliefs, and it is working. Those countries have the capability and they have the most to gain. The effects are blindingly obvious to anyone who hasn’t been intellectually captured. Or, I’m insane. I haven’t figured out which one it is, but I’m pretty sure I’m not insane.
Trump was right when he told Europe not to build the Russian pipeline into Germany. He warned them not to trust the Russians to cut the gas off.
I am no big fan of Trump but he was right about so many things.
Ever consider how many who proclaim their belief in science do not believe in the scientific method? In a free society, questioning and challenging should be part of everyone's DNA. Those who quash dissent make clear where they stand when it comes to freedom. Note that freedom and democracy are not the same tjing especially today when you hear the phrase "majority rule."
Anyone who shouts "Science!" but tries to crush inquiry is not only not a scientist; they are a totalitarian.
Should we bring up that 99.9% of 'scientists' agree that climate change is the result of human behavior. and that it's now been incorporated into our federal institutions?
Anytime you see the word 'denier' added to anything, it's a big red flag.
Bingo
At least once a week I stop and think about the fact that in 2022, it's the party that supposedly represents liberal thinkers that also believes in the most censorship. It feels like the 2 sides have swapped roles.
I saw a good quote the other day: "you can't be pro-censorship and anti-fascisim at the same time..." I feel like that sums up half of our country right now.
Even the phrase 'believe in science' makes me want to chew glass. Using religious language like 'believer' and 'denier' when applied to science bespeaks a profound ignorance of the scientific method. Science doesn't care what you believe, go ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Another thing that makes me want to chew glass is when people look at scientific phenomena and scream "That's not fair!" or "That's racist!" As if science cares about your feelings.
When people insist on doing things that are figuratively like jumping off a cliff, I have very little sympathy when they complain that the consequences (knowable in advance) are "not fair." My go-to saying is "Gravity is not your friend." It doesn't matter how much you want to bend the rules of the universe to your will, if you go up against science with that attitude, you will always lose.
I can barely read this article without wanting to spit nails. Where were you two years ago when those who chose to be unvaccinated were reviled and excluded. When pharmacists refused your doctor’s prescription for Ivermectin or Hydroxychloriquin? When the VAERS numbers just kept climbing and no main stream media would touch it? When people pointed fingers at their neighbors for not wearing a worthless mask? When anyone thinking that early intervention was a conspiracy theorist.
If Robert Kennedy is right, Fauci’s “monomaniacal focus on vanquishing a single virus” is is ONLY play from AIDS to COVID and science is not the basis. Some kind of monomaniacal power play is.
The man should be stripped of his pension if not tried for crimes against humanity!
Sorry, my frustration is not with Dr. Markary. He has been a tireless voice of concern and reason throughout the pandemic. But news media has lost credibility along with public health.
I read this one after my previous comment.
Johns Hopkins was one of a handful of outlets publishing work that went against the narrative. Makary has been a dissenting voice from the beginning, along with Robert Malone and others. The mainstream press went hard after dissenters with any credibility. Twitter censored articles from Johns Hopkins, the British Medical Journal, the American Heart Association, and even the CDC itself, when people were drawing conclusions from the data they didn't like. Blame the midwit apparatchicks in the press and on social media, not the dissenters.
I don’t claim to know what Fauci thinks, but I’ve found that it’s generally useful to look at peoples’ actions and reason backward from them. Fauci and Collins both leapt into the spotlights by claiming to represent “science.” Their recommendations caused mandates that imposed draconian restrictions on society, presumably for its own good.
What kind of people do that? What motivates them? Money and power are usual incentives. My guess is that Fauci and Collins expected Nobel Prizes—or at least nominations. No Prize for work on AIDS, which must have been a bitter pill for Fauci to swallow. This time, by not “letting a crisis go to waste,” would be his time.
And I’d be surprised if significant money didn’t also find its way to them. I hasten to point out that I know none of this—it’s merely guesswork. But they’re guesses entirely consistent with the actions we’ve seen.
Actual science involves proposing and then verifying hypotheses. Or failing to verify them. It’s been said that nothing is quite as ugly as watching a beautiful, magnificent theory being beaten to death by a gang of unruly facts. When theory and data come into conflict, data must prevail: data = facts. What Fauci and Collins did was prevent people from getting usable data. Which means that what they did was about as far from real science as Tarot cards and astrology. Damage done to credibility in real science is immense and likely to have negative impacts for years.
You don’t have to suspect - Fauci fought to keep his financial disclosures secret, but when revealed, he had millions of dollars of payments and royalties from companies that needed his approvals. I believe it was north of 10 million. Many of the researchers at the CDC and FDA did also.
Well said.
Fauci and his gang could not have achieved such total and disastrous control without the full complicity of the tech companies.
These ignorant fools suppressed all dissent, effectively silencing and canceling all who questioned the orthodoxy. They have much to answer for.
Tech companies definitely fell victim to thinking that they were geniuses who can make the world better, when in fact they were all young, inexperienced idealists without a grasp of history or human nature. But, let’s not forget that originally social media platforms all wanted to be content neutral, and were forced into moderating content by people using the platforms for pornography, pedophilia, drug dealing, social unrest, and whatever other baser instincts are accessible to the most disturbed among us. Let’s also not forget that after that happened, Congress repeatedly threatened their businesses with stifling regulations and breakups if those companies didn’t toe the line. So, the tech companies have behaved poorly, but it isn’t like they all just woke up one day and decided to censor the internet. They were pushed quite hard in that direction by human nature and by our government.
I think you're letting the Progressive egotists in charge of these platforms off waaaay too easy.
Which they won’t though the tech companies are the spineless dogs of our times
Moderate, temperate comments. A lot harsher review of what has been done by the people in power over the past thirty months is fully justified.