Drawing by Gösta Iwasiuk
I do not understand the hatred directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci. He did not shut down the country. He did not have the authority to do so. That was the governors of each state. He did advocate for it because that is common-sense standard public health policy going back to the 1918 flu epidemic, where shutting down places of public gathering certainly reduced the spread of that disease that killed 675,000 in the US. And without question, it saved thousands of lives. Some kids didn’t go to school, but as a consequence they did not get infected either. There were mistakes made, but it was a new experience for the entire country, if not the entire world, and much was not known.
The mask issue was another thing Fauci is blamed for. The masks do help no matter what you have read, although not as much as it was hoped for. Science is not an exact field of inquiry. It is what the current data says is right. And new data often changes. It is quite clear in very large studies done by Yale and Stanford involving hundreds of thousands of people, well over 340,000 people participated, and showed that there was significant benefit. Masks work better for curbing outgoing air than filtering incoming air. They reduce the ability to spread the virus by 80% but decrease incoming risk by only 30%. However, 30% is still better than 0%. I have worn masks all my life as a practicing surgeon. That has been and still is the practice of all surgeons in the world, and to my knowledge, no surgeon has had damaging effects from the mask in the last century. I have one question for all those people who resented wearing masks. Would you go to a surgeon who refuses to wear a mask for your surgery? The surgical mask was introduced by a French surgeon, Paul Berger, in the 1890s and has been mandated in every hospital around the world since. No Hospital allows surgeons not to wear a mask when performing surgery! In fact, in operations where infections would be very devastating, such as joint replacement, the entire surgical team is required to wear special suits that isolate the air in the OR from the air breathed by the surgical team.
Dr. Fauci did not invent any vaccines or treatments for Covid 19 and did not profit from either, as claimed, and has donated the generated royalties of that income to charity. As to where COVID originated really makes no difference. Gain-of-function research has been conducted by all the large national labs, both here, in Russia, and in China. What “gain of function actually is” is debated by scientists with no clear answers. Discovering “who let the dogs out” will remain a debated issue, and there likely will never be a certain answer. The Wuhan lab was working on bat viruses but on a different strain than what Covid 19 was.
I believe that Dr. Fauci is a person, although not perfect, who did the best he could at the time given the knowledge that was known about this new virus, in a difficult circumstance that had little to no solid scientific evidence to guide the proper course, and ultimately was solved by coming up with a vaccine that, by and large, stopped the pandemic (Operation Warp Speed). Vaccine mandates are not an affront to our freedoms but a recognized means to stop deadly diseases from infecting the uninfected, and COVID-19 is not the only vaccine that has been and is still mandated. Among populations that have a mandate are the military, children who attend schools, physicians, and hospital employees in hospitals anywhere in the US, etc. We do not have a constitutional right to spread a deadly disease. I was the infection control officer at my USAF base during my two years in the Air Force and was responsible for giving thousands of vaccinations to our troops and myself, which I felt were totally justified and necessary. Other than the occasional person who fainted and a minor elevation in temperature, those were the only side effects that I noted. It is time to let bygones be bygones. Besides, does Senator Rand Paul not know what a preemptive pardon is? Furthermore, I am going to keep my mask at the ready for the next pandemic and will get the latest mRNA COVID vaccine when it comes out!
Dr. Rand Paul, a physician and a senator, although not an infectious disease expert nor a lawyer, is obsessed with putting Dr. Fauci “behind bars,” by his own admission. If I were interrogated by him in a Congressional probe, I would also take the Fifth, as Fauci’s lawyers advised him to do. The “Fifth” was invented by our Founding Fathers to curb overexuberant prosecutors!