This article is wrong on many accounts. Ignored is the serious health issues for those surviving Covid-19 infections, called Long Covid, immune system damage, brain fog, debilitating fatigue, blood filled with clots. Research shows children infected by Covid-19 suffering immune system damage leaving them vulnerable to RSV and other infections. The Barrington Doctrine essentially condemns people to Long Covid. "Natural Immunity" is another name for people with Long Covid.
Millions refused to comply with the mitigation methods Dr. Fauci stipulated with the result their Covid-19 death toll far exceeded that of those who got vaccinated and wore masks. Dr. Fauci saved the lives of hundreds of thousands with his entreaties to be vaccinated and wearing masks. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2022/12/update-on-covid19-mask-and-vaccine.html
Thank you for being brave enough to battle the woke scientists who run their offices like Home Owner's Associations wielding their power over others like cudgels, and being unable to give it up. Most of us who disagreed with the draconian actions of the CDC, the NIH, the Teacher's Unions, etc who acted without the merest hint of scientific validation by preying on the fears of the populace were subjected to ridicule. The thing that really bothers me is the lack of taking responsibility for what they did. We went to the dentist today, and there are still mask notices up which we ignored.
I just read in the WSJ that the FDA is looking to approve the new Omicron booster without completed human subjects trials. Furthermore, it appears that the booster will be recommended for ages 12 and up.
In a recent statement (ourwayforward.wfu.edu/2022/08/covid-19-update-for-the-fall-semester), Wake Forest University announced that they will require the new Omicron booster for students when it becomes available this fall. Bear in mind, these students have already been required to be vaccinated and boosted with the current versions of the vaccines.
This policy seems like madness for a student population with very little risk of an adverse covid event. I understand that all vaccines carry some risk of adverse reactions, but what is the benefit of requiring this group of people (almost all of whom are young and previously vaccinated/boosted) to take this vaccine? One with incomplete human testing at that.
This is a very real concern. We have a student at Georgetown, and there is no doubt that they will mandate this untested vaccine as well. Despite the data that is emerging about myocarditis in young people, the dramatic increase in young adults suffering heart attacks and sudden death - particularly athletes - and the increase in all-cause mortality around the globe.
Personally have no objection to vaccination recommendations - but ferocious objection to the mandates. At this point, college students have had COVID at least 2 if not 3 or 4 times (and survived, with nothing but a few sniffles or some fatigue), and have been required to obtain at least one booster. If a parent or student remains fearful of COVID at this point, then they should shoot themselves up with boosters every other week. But please....do not mandate this vaccine one more time.
I am praying that the media finally wakes up to the sudden adult death syndrome that appears to be directly correlated to the mRNA vaccines, and alerts these colleges that their very, very large endowments - and reputations - are on the line if they continue to mandate an unnecessary vaccine to an incredibly low risk population. It's truly insane behavior at this point, to be terrified of this virus if you are a healthy young person with a functioning immune system.
Hindsight is 2020. At the beginning of Covid, no one really knew what was going to happen, and the precautions advocated by Fauci were reasonable. But at that point it quickly became a political football.
Trump could have appointed a bipartisan commission of infectious disease and public health experts, balancing the variety of conflicting priorities that we faced at that time. That could have rescued the situation. The mainstream media mostly fed into the hysteria and the tendency for premature conclusions, and supporting Fauci dovetailed nicely into an anti-Trump narrative.
Fauci was not evil. He simply did not get everything right. No one ever does. We are lucky to have many highly qualified people leading our institutions, and to have the freedom to criticize them as we do.
I just realized something about Covid origin theory censorship (lab leak discussion ban). I am anti-censorship but pretend to be pro for this thought experiment. If I write down each covid topic, I see two major categories: (A) Effecting health outcome (B) Not effecting heath outcome. An example of A is mask. Pretend that mask on = more protection. The censorship Jon decides the “mask off” needs censorship because of health outcome. Category B topics include; spelling Covid with uppercase or lowercase; wearing orange or blue shirt when I get booster shot; origin of Covid as natural environment or lab.
Misinformation is only a problem if it results in undesired effect, otherwise if you don’t specify square footage of my apartment on my address on the letter you send me - I could obsess over “mis-information”. I never saw a reason why lableak theory discussion connects to harm downstream. The reason needs to be connected to a rule grounded in obvious logic or research findings otherwise known as “real public heealth”.
Look at monotheism origin theory (1 God). That one theory has 3 pathways downstream- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A competing origin theory is atheism. The woke athiest ends up on Islamic pathway, the liberal athiest -Jewish and the conservative athiest goes to Christian pathway. I predict a similar origin to pathway relationship for Covid. There is no legitimate connection between covid origin theory A, B or C and expected health effect. It is the responsibility of behavioral scientists in public health to visit Fauci while holding hands with a therapist. The behavioral scientist says “no behavioral outcome associated with covid origin selection. The therapist says, I”I want my 330 million patients to not experience undue anxiety or depression caused by arbitrary censorship. Telling people to not have discussion about X is antithetical to the career of every psychologist, psychiatist, PsyD and therapist in the nation.”
Thank you for this article. There is so much here, and it’s not merely visible with hindsight. As Dr. Makary points out, there were frustrating inconsistencies right out of the gate- beginning with masks and questions around origin and going right through to vaccine mandates and school closures. Wise and thoughtful people with legitimate concerns were ignored or ridiculed. It has been incredible to witness. And now I’m going off on a tangent, but how on earth can the pharmaceutical companies be allowed to be shielded from liability AND not be required to share all data right from the beginning. How is it that taxpayers funded GoF research, vaccine R&D, vaccine purchase, vaccine promotion(thru CDC)…. yet all profits go to pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Makary, it's impressive that you kept your job and never wavered in your views. Thank you for being one of the bright lights so many of us turned to when searching for some sanity and scientific data and truth.
I think the saddest thing is our government won't even study the effects of masks on kids. Although let's be honest, they never did a single study on masks period. I saw a headline the other day that quoted some medical association. It said something like, "concerned about masks impacting your child's development? Don't be. There's no studies to support the concern..." What they fail to mention is no one will run any studies to determine the impacts because that goes against the narrative that the CDC, FDA, etc. got everything right for 2 1/2 years. These agencies won't even admit that it's possible that the damage to children was greater than the risk. That would go against the narrative.
Dr. Prasad hits on this all the time. The obligation to produce supporting data rests on the shoulders of the group trying to institute change. It was never anyone's responsibility to prove that masks negatively impacted children. The burden of proof was on the morons that thought masking kids provided a health benefit. He said something like "there's no studies showing the negative impacts of masking children because no country (until now) was ever stupid enough to do it..."
Our government will clearly only pursue the knowledge necessary to support whatever today's narrative is. The exact same thing is happening with government. Look at the Dutch farmers at risk of losing their farms in the name of climate change.
Retired from public health in 2021 after blowing whistles since Covid. Something is not right in a very big way. Everyone I know in public health was extremely outspoken and quite vocally against president Trump from 2016 onward. That is three years of experience challenging the nation’s highest office. Any local or regional public health disagreement with Fauci would have had the Trump critiques as dress-rehearsal. Yet, all I saw anywhere I looked was 100% agreement. To me that says clandestine partnership that was concealed from everyone else.
Fauci and other directors were strangely uninterested in the 2019 “normal turned pathological” leadership in the major “spotlight” cities like SF, NY and LA; where absolute censorship was implemented. And when the 2020 protests happened - I would have thought that Fauci would have fired every single director for threatening local populations with mega-transmission.
I could probably write a health director’s apology to pretend concern and regret- while concealing the true cause from the public- because that’s a secret. The previous sentence is the attitude of 2 colleagues who tried to stop me from connecting dots (too late, dots already connected) within the past 14 days. And these were guys who I always thought would jump in front of me to stop a bullet.
Every colleague, manager or director I know has maintained a strict policy of complete silence- even when I wave evidence of extreme misconduct in their face. Yesterday, I confronted psychologists with “We know more than anyone that discussion is critical to avoid society-wide violence.” Their response- silence. They do not care about the direct consequences of their propaganda campaigns.
Silence is the best strategy for a con-man who pre-meditates a fake alibi at the future time of reckoning(5 years or so), “I never went along with that authoritarian stuff, race hate propaganda I pushed, nor the police hate propaganda I pushed, nor the fake Black victimization, nor the fake trans victimization that activist groups designed for us to push as official public health certified evidence.”
But any directors should instead, expect in the post-Equity/Covid era- the Hepworth standard of judgment. That is if public health exists. I am hoping that all of public health including CDC and NIH will be completely abolished and recreated ethically from the ground up. I consider it a matter of national security.
On this “subject” several thoughts come to mind. As an Internal Medicine physician in private practice, with a background in virology & pharmacology I well remember in 2003, SARS CoV1 & in 2014 MERS thinking at the time with trepidation the potential for a devastating global pandemic. In retrospect why didn’t the scientific powers that be prepare by initiating the development of a vaccine then & not in the midsts of a pandemic? Anyone with any knowledge & foresight could have seen the potential for a catastrophe. To say that Bush ll & Obama dropped the ball is a gross understatement. More importantly has anything been learned? One only need look at “Monkeypox”, the term of which is a misnomer. I think from an epidemiological standpoint it’s important to understand whether SARS Co V2 jumped species or was genetically engineered in a laboratory via Gain of Function “research”? Will we ever learn the truth? I know a very precocious 12 year old, only child, who became emotionally devastated by the two years of isolation & quarantine resulting from dictatorial mandates. One of many recent, great American tragedies. It’s also safe to say that for far too long we’ve been led by a succession of incompetent political leaders both in Congress & the White House. Ultimately the fault lies with us, the population of voters!
This article is wrong on many accounts. Ignored is the serious health issues for those surviving Covid-19 infections, called Long Covid, immune system damage, brain fog, debilitating fatigue, blood filled with clots. Research shows children infected by Covid-19 suffering immune system damage leaving them vulnerable to RSV and other infections. The Barrington Doctrine essentially condemns people to Long Covid. "Natural Immunity" is another name for people with Long Covid.
Millions refused to comply with the mitigation methods Dr. Fauci stipulated with the result their Covid-19 death toll far exceeded that of those who got vaccinated and wore masks. Dr. Fauci saved the lives of hundreds of thousands with his entreaties to be vaccinated and wearing masks. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2022/12/update-on-covid19-mask-and-vaccine.html
Thank you for being brave enough to battle the woke scientists who run their offices like Home Owner's Associations wielding their power over others like cudgels, and being unable to give it up. Most of us who disagreed with the draconian actions of the CDC, the NIH, the Teacher's Unions, etc who acted without the merest hint of scientific validation by preying on the fears of the populace were subjected to ridicule. The thing that really bothers me is the lack of taking responsibility for what they did. We went to the dentist today, and there are still mask notices up which we ignored.
Thank you, Doctor Makary. My children are double boosted. They are at NO RISK WHATSOEVER. Yet they STILL must go to school with masks each day.
I just read in the WSJ that the FDA is looking to approve the new Omicron booster without completed human subjects trials. Furthermore, it appears that the booster will be recommended for ages 12 and up.
In a recent statement (ourwayforward.wfu.edu/2022/08/covid-19-update-for-the-fall-semester), Wake Forest University announced that they will require the new Omicron booster for students when it becomes available this fall. Bear in mind, these students have already been required to be vaccinated and boosted with the current versions of the vaccines.
This policy seems like madness for a student population with very little risk of an adverse covid event. I understand that all vaccines carry some risk of adverse reactions, but what is the benefit of requiring this group of people (almost all of whom are young and previously vaccinated/boosted) to take this vaccine? One with incomplete human testing at that.
This is a very real concern. We have a student at Georgetown, and there is no doubt that they will mandate this untested vaccine as well. Despite the data that is emerging about myocarditis in young people, the dramatic increase in young adults suffering heart attacks and sudden death - particularly athletes - and the increase in all-cause mortality around the globe.
Personally have no objection to vaccination recommendations - but ferocious objection to the mandates. At this point, college students have had COVID at least 2 if not 3 or 4 times (and survived, with nothing but a few sniffles or some fatigue), and have been required to obtain at least one booster. If a parent or student remains fearful of COVID at this point, then they should shoot themselves up with boosters every other week. But please....do not mandate this vaccine one more time.
I am praying that the media finally wakes up to the sudden adult death syndrome that appears to be directly correlated to the mRNA vaccines, and alerts these colleges that their very, very large endowments - and reputations - are on the line if they continue to mandate an unnecessary vaccine to an incredibly low risk population. It's truly insane behavior at this point, to be terrified of this virus if you are a healthy young person with a functioning immune system.
Well, there you go. Yes, that sometime is now. And, the cookbook as well.
Just returned from a two day trip to the NE USA, via Toronto.
Everything is a disaster on both sides of the border.
Airlines, airports, car rental, hotel, restaurants, all terrible.
No people
Tell me where all these people went who did these jobs? Coding? At home?
Supply chains screwed and getting worse.
I think it will be 5 years before we begin to understand how badly we have messed it all up
And Biden with his Inflation Acceleration act can’t possibly do other than make it all worse.
We are here because of government dictat
We can’t fix it with more dictat.
Hindsight is 2020. At the beginning of Covid, no one really knew what was going to happen, and the precautions advocated by Fauci were reasonable. But at that point it quickly became a political football.
Trump could have appointed a bipartisan commission of infectious disease and public health experts, balancing the variety of conflicting priorities that we faced at that time. That could have rescued the situation. The mainstream media mostly fed into the hysteria and the tendency for premature conclusions, and supporting Fauci dovetailed nicely into an anti-Trump narrative.
Fauci was not evil. He simply did not get everything right. No one ever does. We are lucky to have many highly qualified people leading our institutions, and to have the freedom to criticize them as we do.
c
I just realized something about Covid origin theory censorship (lab leak discussion ban). I am anti-censorship but pretend to be pro for this thought experiment. If I write down each covid topic, I see two major categories: (A) Effecting health outcome (B) Not effecting heath outcome. An example of A is mask. Pretend that mask on = more protection. The censorship Jon decides the “mask off” needs censorship because of health outcome. Category B topics include; spelling Covid with uppercase or lowercase; wearing orange or blue shirt when I get booster shot; origin of Covid as natural environment or lab.
Misinformation is only a problem if it results in undesired effect, otherwise if you don’t specify square footage of my apartment on my address on the letter you send me - I could obsess over “mis-information”. I never saw a reason why lableak theory discussion connects to harm downstream. The reason needs to be connected to a rule grounded in obvious logic or research findings otherwise known as “real public heealth”.
Look at monotheism origin theory (1 God). That one theory has 3 pathways downstream- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A competing origin theory is atheism. The woke athiest ends up on Islamic pathway, the liberal athiest -Jewish and the conservative athiest goes to Christian pathway. I predict a similar origin to pathway relationship for Covid. There is no legitimate connection between covid origin theory A, B or C and expected health effect. It is the responsibility of behavioral scientists in public health to visit Fauci while holding hands with a therapist. The behavioral scientist says “no behavioral outcome associated with covid origin selection. The therapist says, I”I want my 330 million patients to not experience undue anxiety or depression caused by arbitrary censorship. Telling people to not have discussion about X is antithetical to the career of every psychologist, psychiatist, PsyD and therapist in the nation.”
Thank you for this article. There is so much here, and it’s not merely visible with hindsight. As Dr. Makary points out, there were frustrating inconsistencies right out of the gate- beginning with masks and questions around origin and going right through to vaccine mandates and school closures. Wise and thoughtful people with legitimate concerns were ignored or ridiculed. It has been incredible to witness. And now I’m going off on a tangent, but how on earth can the pharmaceutical companies be allowed to be shielded from liability AND not be required to share all data right from the beginning. How is it that taxpayers funded GoF research, vaccine R&D, vaccine purchase, vaccine promotion(thru CDC)…. yet all profits go to pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Makary, it's impressive that you kept your job and never wavered in your views. Thank you for being one of the bright lights so many of us turned to when searching for some sanity and scientific data and truth.
I think the saddest thing is our government won't even study the effects of masks on kids. Although let's be honest, they never did a single study on masks period. I saw a headline the other day that quoted some medical association. It said something like, "concerned about masks impacting your child's development? Don't be. There's no studies to support the concern..." What they fail to mention is no one will run any studies to determine the impacts because that goes against the narrative that the CDC, FDA, etc. got everything right for 2 1/2 years. These agencies won't even admit that it's possible that the damage to children was greater than the risk. That would go against the narrative.
Dr. Prasad hits on this all the time. The obligation to produce supporting data rests on the shoulders of the group trying to institute change. It was never anyone's responsibility to prove that masks negatively impacted children. The burden of proof was on the morons that thought masking kids provided a health benefit. He said something like "there's no studies showing the negative impacts of masking children because no country (until now) was ever stupid enough to do it..."
Our government will clearly only pursue the knowledge necessary to support whatever today's narrative is. The exact same thing is happening with government. Look at the Dutch farmers at risk of losing their farms in the name of climate change.
So many intelligent responders on the Common Sense site. Thank you, Jeff M.
Dr. Fauci will be remembered as one of the most controversial figures of the COVID period.
Retired from public health in 2021 after blowing whistles since Covid. Something is not right in a very big way. Everyone I know in public health was extremely outspoken and quite vocally against president Trump from 2016 onward. That is three years of experience challenging the nation’s highest office. Any local or regional public health disagreement with Fauci would have had the Trump critiques as dress-rehearsal. Yet, all I saw anywhere I looked was 100% agreement. To me that says clandestine partnership that was concealed from everyone else.
Fauci and other directors were strangely uninterested in the 2019 “normal turned pathological” leadership in the major “spotlight” cities like SF, NY and LA; where absolute censorship was implemented. And when the 2020 protests happened - I would have thought that Fauci would have fired every single director for threatening local populations with mega-transmission.
I could probably write a health director’s apology to pretend concern and regret- while concealing the true cause from the public- because that’s a secret. The previous sentence is the attitude of 2 colleagues who tried to stop me from connecting dots (too late, dots already connected) within the past 14 days. And these were guys who I always thought would jump in front of me to stop a bullet.
Every colleague, manager or director I know has maintained a strict policy of complete silence- even when I wave evidence of extreme misconduct in their face. Yesterday, I confronted psychologists with “We know more than anyone that discussion is critical to avoid society-wide violence.” Their response- silence. They do not care about the direct consequences of their propaganda campaigns.
Silence is the best strategy for a con-man who pre-meditates a fake alibi at the future time of reckoning(5 years or so), “I never went along with that authoritarian stuff, race hate propaganda I pushed, nor the police hate propaganda I pushed, nor the fake Black victimization, nor the fake trans victimization that activist groups designed for us to push as official public health certified evidence.”
But any directors should instead, expect in the post-Equity/Covid era- the Hepworth standard of judgment. That is if public health exists. I am hoping that all of public health including CDC and NIH will be completely abolished and recreated ethically from the ground up. I consider it a matter of national security.
On this “subject” several thoughts come to mind. As an Internal Medicine physician in private practice, with a background in virology & pharmacology I well remember in 2003, SARS CoV1 & in 2014 MERS thinking at the time with trepidation the potential for a devastating global pandemic. In retrospect why didn’t the scientific powers that be prepare by initiating the development of a vaccine then & not in the midsts of a pandemic? Anyone with any knowledge & foresight could have seen the potential for a catastrophe. To say that Bush ll & Obama dropped the ball is a gross understatement. More importantly has anything been learned? One only need look at “Monkeypox”, the term of which is a misnomer. I think from an epidemiological standpoint it’s important to understand whether SARS Co V2 jumped species or was genetically engineered in a laboratory via Gain of Function “research”? Will we ever learn the truth? I know a very precocious 12 year old, only child, who became emotionally devastated by the two years of isolation & quarantine resulting from dictatorial mandates. One of many recent, great American tragedies. It’s also safe to say that for far too long we’ve been led by a succession of incompetent political leaders both in Congress & the White House. Ultimately the fault lies with us, the population of voters!