Anthony Fauci was back in the new
lately, both for refusing to answer questions under
oath about what he did during
the Covid epidemic (despite
having a presidential pardon in his pocket)
and
for things in a diary he
kept during
the epidemic. Many Trumpists
and some ordinary Republicans saw
this as evidence that
everything or almost everything officials
did about the epidemic was
wrong, and everything or almost everything they said during
the epidemic was
a lie. Many leftists and some
ordinary Democrats took the positions that there really was nothing
to see, that Fauci and other officials did a fine job and dealt
honestly with the public, that officials had no political biases and
nothing to hide or cover up, and, for many, that
Fauci was still a saint, but
now also a persecuted one. It was an embarrassing and silly show
from both factions.
Fauci behaved dishonestly. He
suppressed evidence that the disease originated in the virology lab
in Wuhan, likely at least partially because he and colleagues had had
a hand in funding and supporting activities at the lab which
led to development of the
virus. During
the epidemic he frequently
ignored obvious uncertainties
and dismissed reasonable doubts, including some of his own, to
deliver apodictic sounding statements to the public. He
was arrogant and vain , to the
point of declaring that he
“was” science. If
there is another crisis in public health, it will be harder to get
the public to believe it or to trust officials to know what to do
about it, partly because of
things he said and did.
Many
things went wrong during the Covid
epidemic. Closing
schools was wrong. Shutting down much of the economic and
social life of the nation was
wrong. Requesting or requiring
the same behavior from healthy young people who had little risk as
from the
old people who really were in
danger was wrong. The draconian enforcement of masking was wrong and
also demeaning annoying, and idiotic. Suppressing evidence and
attempting to squelch discussion about the origin of the disease was
wrong. Over selling the effectiveness of the vaccines was wrong and
counterproductive. Public
health officials and American
politicians, including two presidents, did not perform optimally,
and often not
even adequately.
None of this justifies some of the
stuff we are hearing from the right. There
is an absurd claim from some
conservatives that Covid was
no big deal, but rather something no more significant or dangerous
than the yearly flu. Some call it the Wu-flu or something similar.
That is nonsense. In each of the years 2020 and 2021 several hundred
thousand more Americans died than in years before 2020 or after
2021. There were increases in
deaths from some other causes in those two years, but, after
factoring for them, there remain over 300,000 deaths in 2020 and
over 400,000 in 2021 from Covid. The data on this are
easy to get with a simple
internet search for deaths
in each year by cause.
Then there is the claim that the
vaccines were ineffective and useless or worse. The evidence is
strong that the mRNA vaccines worked well when they first came out
and, especially when augmented by annual booster shots, worked
fairly well at preventing infection and making infections less
severe later on. Development and approval of the vaccines were
rushed. Some people had unpleasant reactions to the shots. There
should have more caution about effects on pregnant women. But overall
the vaccines and the fast way they were created were remarkable
successes. Unjustified mandates for vaccination were the fault of the
politicians and bureaucrats, not of the vaccines. Instead of
recognizing all this, some fools and scoundrels on the right are
using the less than perfect record of the Covid vaccines as reasons
for skepticism about and opposition to vaccination in general. That
is inexcusable.
A person can believe that Fauci was
in some ways a bad person who did some harmful things without
joining with people out there who are trying to do much worse.
Labels: Covid, Fauci, politics, vaccines
