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Posts tagged ‘Dr. Anthony Fauci’

Newly surfaced emails show Fauci’s agency gave grants for bat coronavirus research to US-Chinese scientists; Wuhan lab scrambled to find disinfectant


Reported by PAUL SACCA | July 09, 2021

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/wuhan-fauci-china-research-bat-coronavirus/

Newly surfaced emails show connections among a U.S. health agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance, and Chinese scientists. The recently exposed documents also show that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were scrambling to find disinfectant and asked a National Institutes of Health official for help.

Judicial Watch obtained 301 pages of emails and other records from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officials who had connections with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. According to the documents that were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, the NIAID gave at least nine grants to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit organization focused on finding unknown viruses and infectious diseases in nature. EcoHealth Alliance reportedly used those NIAID grants to work with Chinese scientists on research such as probing the emergence of a bat coronavirus — years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Judicial Watch lists the nine grants to EcoHealth Alliance from the NIAID, where Dr. Fauci has been the director since 1984:

  • One grant awarded each year between 2010 and 2012 to EcoHealth Alliance, working with Chinese collaborator Jinping Chen of Guangdong Entomological Institute, to study in China “Risk of Viral Emergence from Bats.”
  • One grant awarded each year from 2014 to 2017 to EcoHealth Alliance, working with Chinese collaborator Changwen Ke of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong, in a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
  • A grant was issued in 2012 to EcoHealth Alliance, working with Xiangming Xiao of the East China Normal University, in a project titled “Comparative Spillover Dynamics of Avian Influenza in Endemic Countries.”
  • A grant was issued in 2018 to EcoHealth Alliance, again working with Ke in the project called “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”

The recently emerged emails also show that scientists at China’s Wuhan lab were scrambling to find disinfectant for equipment, including positive pressure personnel suits.

The physical facilities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology were completed in January 2015, which made it China’s first biosafety level 4 laboratory. BSL-4 laboratories are “used to study infectious agents or toxins that pose a high risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease for which no vaccines or therapies are available,” according to the U.S. Health and Human Services.

“Laboratory personnel are required to wear full-body, air-supplied suits, which are the most sophisticated type of PPE,” the HHS states of BSL-4 labs. “All personnel shower before exiting the laboratory and go through a series of procedures designed to fully decontaminate them before leaving.”

The emails from 2016 that were recovered by the FOIA request show a conversation where Wuhan Institute of Virology vice director Yuan Zhiming asked National Institutes of Health virologist Jens Kuhn for help getting disinfectant for the equipment in China’s potentially dangerous BSL-4 lab.

“I am writing to you to ask your help,” Zhiming wrote. “Our laboratory is under operation without pathogens, and we are now looking for the disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and surface decontamination indoor decontamination.”

“We have tried several ones do [sic] determine their antiviral efficacy and corrosion to pipeline and wastewater treatment equipment,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we have found a good candidate. I hope you can give us some help, to give us some suggestion for the choice of disinfectants used in P4 laboratory.”

Zhiming allegedly asks what kinds of disinfectants are effective for decontamination of airtight protective clothes, doors, the laboratory, infectious materials, and air decontamination. Zhiming concluded the email, “Best regards and looking forward to seeing you in Wuhan.” In a later email, Kuhn said he “personally” met Zhiming “in Wuhan twice.”

After news of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, Zhiming purportedly wrote to Kuhn on March 20, 2020:

The 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak is a major challenge for global public health security. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 has been associated with serious acute respiratory distress syndrome with large number of patients’ hospitalization and relatively high mortality. We had a very hard time in combating the infection in Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 in China, and now we can see the situation goes in good direction, with no reported confirmed case, no reported suspected case in last two days here.

My colleagues and I, have been working on characterization of pathogens, antiviral screen, vaccine development, animal modeling since the early January this year, and some progresses have been made. I hope our understanding of the virus and the technology could be valuable in the global fighting to the virus.

There is also a February 2018 email from Dr. Ping Chen, the NIAID representative in China, discussing a “type of new flu vaccine using nano-technology from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Judicial Watch added that “the Chinese had blocked all Internet links to reports on the new technology.” This development allegedly prompted Chen to write a “night note” to U.S. government officials, which said, “The intranasal nano-vaccine can target broad-spectrum flu viruses and induces robust immune responses.”

In a January 2017 report to NIH colleagues, Chen mentioned the “Global Virome Project,” which described its mission as: “Stimulate the development of an innovative network of public, private, philanthropic, and civil organizations to detect the majority of our planet’s unknown viral threats to human health and food security to prepare for and stop future epidemics.”

Chen described the Global Virome Project and showed a link to Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance:

The purpose of the project is to identify viruses present in the wildlife with potential crossing over to humans, causing human infection and disease. Following the identification of the viruses is the development of vaccines to protect human population… One of the partners in this project is EcoHealth Alliance. Peter Daszak from EcoHealth Alliance is one of the leaders for the GVP project and he has NIAID grant from RDB looking at the coronaviruses in Bat populations in China in collaboration with Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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Three Important Reports Beginning with; NYT: Fauci admits to deceiving the public about herd immunity because he wanted more people to get vaccinated


In a startling interview with the New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the government’s coronavirus taskforce, admitted that he did not level with the American people about how many people would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity because he didn’t think the public was ready to hear his true thoughts, which he feared might discourage people from getting vaccinated.

The Times article catalogued Dr. Fauci’s changing position on how many Americans would need to be vaccinated, which he initially stated would be 60-70 percent. As noted by the Times, about a month ago, Fauci’s tune began to change and he suggested that the figure was actually 70-75 percent. Last week, in an interview with CNBC, he upped that figure (again) to “75 to 80-plus percent.” In the interview with the Times, he changed his estimate yet again and suggested that the figure actually may be “close to 90 percent.”

According to the Times, in the telephone interview, “Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”

In other words, Fauci’s advice to the American public on one of the most critical aspects of the coronavirus pandemic, has not consisted entirely of his honest opinion, formulated by the best science, but rather on what he thinks the country is ready to hear.

Dr. Fauci went on to even more expressly admit that he had fudged his public pronouncements in order to encourage people to take the vaccine. According to the Times, Dr. Fauci was ready to raise his estimates “weeks ago” but refused because “many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.”

Blithely continuing to explain how polling, rather than science, informed his public pronouncements, Fauci went on: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so Iwent to 80, 85.“

Moreover, Fauci went on to explicitly state that his future pronouncements might still be based on his feeling of what the public thinks, not what the science says: “We need to have some humility here. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Why won’t he say 90 percent? According to the Times, the answer is that “Doing so might be discouraging to Americans, he said, because he is not sure there will be enough voluntary acceptance of vaccines to reach that goal,”in light of the fact that “sentiments about vaccines in polls have bounced up and down this year.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci is defending startling comments he made last week in which he admitted he was not completely honest about the number of Americans who needed to get the coronavirus vaccine before the American population can achieve so-called herd immunity.

Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

What’s the background?

Fauci admitted in an interview with the New York Times that he moved the goal posts on herd immunity percentages partly based on public polling data to covertly encourage more Americans to get vaccinated.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Fauci stated publicly that 60-70% of the American public would need to be inoculated with a vaccine to achieve herd immunity. But Fauci slightly increased his percentages as the pandemic raged on, suggesting in his interview with the Times that achieving herd immunity would require 90% of the American public to receive the vaccine.

The Times reported:

In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci told the Times. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ʻI can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

“We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

What did Fauci say on Sunday?

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci denied that he was not being straight with the American people.

“The reason I first started saying 70, 75, I brought it up to 85 — that’s not a big leap to go from 75 to 85 — it was really based on calculations and pure extrapolations from measles,” Fauci said. “Measles is about 98 percent effective vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccine is about 94, 95 percent.”

“When you get below 90 percent of the population vaccinated with measles, you start seeing a breakthrough against the herd immunity,” he continued. “So, I made a calculation that COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is not as nearly as transmissible as measles. Measles is the most transmissible infection you can imagine. So, I would imagine that you would need something a little bit less than the 90 percent. That’s where I got to the 85.”

When show host Dana Bash confronted Fauci over his admission that public polling played into his public statements, he initially denied that — then admitted that polling did contribute “a bit.”

“I want to encourage the people of the United States and globally to get vaccinated, because, as many as we possibly get vaccinated, we will get closer to herd immunity. So, the bottom line is, it’s a guesstimate,” Fauci said.

 

Dr. Fauci Admits He Has Treated The American People Like Children

Reported by David Marcus DECEMBER 28, 2020

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/28/dr-fauci-admits-he-has-treated-the-american-people-like-children/

Dr. Fauci Admits He Has Treated The American People Like Children

In an interview last week with The New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted something that many of us have suspected for some time: The media-anointed, all-knowing guru of COVID has been fudging the truth in order to encourage what he views as better behavior from the American people. Put simply, Fauci has been acting less like a public official and more like a parent keeping certain truths from his children.

This quote, which has been rightfully making the rounds, really tells the whole tale. Asked why he changed his mind about how much vaccination would result in herd immunity, Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent … Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here …. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

This is a problem. Fauci is clearly admitting that he was not simply telling the American people what he believed to be true, he was instead trying to manipulate us into behaving how he wants. And it’s not the first time. Back in March, Fauci told Americans not to wear masks. He now claims he did so largely because he feared a shortage. So, once again, instead of just giving us the unvarnished scientific truth, as he understood it, he told us only what he thought it was good for us to know.

Sen. Marco Rubio was quick to point out how obvious it has become that Fauci has been operating more as a public relations flack than a scientist for some time now, tweeting:

Rubio is correct that it is not just Fauci who has failed to be straight with us. For months it was clear that in-school learning was not only safe, but hugely advantageous for children compared to remote learning. But teachers unions, politicians on the left, and the media refused to acknowledge it. They refused to listen to science because it wasn’t about science, it was about power.

It was also about power when social media giants like Twitter and Facebook censored posts that contained accurate scientific information that questioned the efficacy of lockdowns. This happened when Dr. Scott Atlas was banned from Twitter literally for posting scientific studies. Twitter thought that we were not prepared for that information, that it might make us less vigilant, or something. Meanwhile, the very big tech sector that is silencing lockdown doubt is also the lockdown’s biggest financial beneficiary.

The bottom line is that we are not being told the truth by our public officials or the media; they are trying to manipulate us, not inform us. How a society chooses to deal with and respond to a pandemic that lasts months on end is inherently a political choice. It is not a matter for experts to simply decide and then lie about the science to compel adherence to their plan.

Enough is enough. The American people are not children to be guided with half-truths to the decisions that their betters deem best for them.

If you have the sense that you are not getting the whole story, and that you have not been getting the whole story for some time now, it is because you aren’t. It was only under pressure from Republican elected officials that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo released the contact tracing data that showed restaurants only caused 1.4 percent of the virus spread in his state. Even so, he closed the restaurants anyway, because this isn’t about science, it’s about power.

It needs to be made completely clear to Fauci and every one of our public officials that the American people expect to be told the accurate truth, not whatever unelected officials think is best for us to know. With more officials moving the goalposts to suggest that even after the vaccinations we might not get back to normal, we need the real science, right now.

We need, not what Fauci thinks is best for us, not what Joe Biden thinks is best for us, not what Andrew Cuomo thinks is best for us, just the truth. Then, and only then, can we decide how to proceed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Marcus is the Federalist’s New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: Is There a Vaccine Against Pandering?


Commentary by Ann Coulter Ann Coulter | Posted: Dec 23, 2020 4:48 PM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Is There a Vaccine Against Pandering?

Source: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky  

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It now appears that the greatest threat to black Americans isn’t COVID, it’s being pandered to death.

As the distribution of vaccines got underway last week, the Centers for Disease Control was trying to ensure that black people would get the vaccine before the elderly (too white!), while the media were focused on rationalizing black people’s opposition to taking the vaccine at all.

— NPR’s “Weekend Edition”:

Scott Simon: “Help us understand why many black Americans may be skeptical of a vaccine.”

Liz Walker: “Well, Scott, you know, black people have been traumatized by a betrayal of the system forever for generations. … We have all now talked about the experiment that used people with syphilis in Tuskegee. We all know about Henrietta Lacks.”

— ABC’s “Good Morning America”:

Zachary Kiesch (voiceover): “From the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, where scientists deliberately infected men and withheld treatments, to Henrietta Lacks, a young black mother of five who, in 1951, unknowingly had cells taken from her that biomedical research led to breakthrough cancer treatment.”

— MSNBC’s “The Reidout”:

Joy Reid: “And then the other piece is, when it comes, particularly in our community, black people, they might be like, I don’t trust science, the science. We — Tuskegee experiments, etc. There’s just not a lot of trust. And it was developed during the Trump era.”

Yes, because black people have a long track record of trusting the government …

A New York Times/WCBS-TV poll found that 70% of African Americans believed that “the government deliberately makes sure that drugs are easily available in poor black neighborhoods to harm black people.”

A CNN/Essence poll found that 88% of African Americans think the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was part of a “larger plot.”

A survey of more than 1,000 black church members by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference showed that 35% believed that AIDS was a form of genocide, and another 30% were unsure.

Although vaccines are one of Western medicine’s greatest inventions, I think people should be free to refuse to take the COVID vaccine for any reason, such as, off the top of my head, they’re young and healthy.

But liberals don’t! Anti-vaxxers are one of the media’s most despised groups — provided they’re affluent white women.

When people like Jennifer Biel and Jenny McCarthy opposed mandatory vaccinations, they were universally reviled for hawking scientific nonsense. Los Angeles Times: “Jenny McCarthy: anti-vaxxer, public menace.” The New York Times headline: “When Did We Start Taking Famous People Seriously?” Even “Saturday Night Live” ridiculed McCarthy for her anti-vaccine stance.

But now that it’s African Americans who are reluctant to take the COVID vaccine, they’re treated like children. Who can blame them? It’s because of Tuskegee and Henrietta Lacks!

I know about Tuskegee, but what did the bad white doctors do to Henrietta Lacks? Answer: Johns Hopkins Medical School provided this poor black woman with the most advanced treatment available for her aggressive cervical cancer — gratis.

Her rapidly reproducing tumor cells were then studied around the globe, advancing cancer research by leaps and bounds. But apparently, it was a violation of Mrs. Lacks’ “black body” for her cancer cells to be used to benefit mankind. Maybe she wanted to display them on her mantle!

But the runaway winner for patronizing black people is … director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci! This media darling recently announced: “So, the first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African American woman. And that is just a fact.”

Wha …? So far, we’ve got vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, and soon may have one from AstraZeneca.

Pfizer’s CEO is a Greek businessman. The company has no black women in its executive leadership.

Moderna’s chief executive is Frenchman Stephane Bancel. The president of the company is the translucently white Dr. Stephen Hoge.

AstraZeneca hasn’t had its vaccine approved yet, but it’s a British-Swedish company, and the chief executive is Frenchman Pascal Soriot.

Each one of these companies had hundreds of people working on a vaccine, so who’s the “African American woman” who single-handedly “developed” it?

She’s a government bureaucrat with the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. The NIH, you see, “worked with” Moderna during the vaccine approval process. Corbett made the invaluable contribution of accusing doctors of allowing black people to die of COVID, calling the pandemic a black “genocide” and condemning “systematic oppression” of black people. Among the oppressors was one … Anthony Fauci, whom she directed to “check” his “privilege.”

How could we ever have come up with a vaccine without her?

First, it was racist not to put black Americans at the head of the line for the vaccine. Once again, black people have to go to the back of the bus!

Then the CDC decided minorities would get it first, before the elderly. True, those over 70 make up the lion’s share of COVID deaths, but they’re mostly white, so screw them. Oh wait — black people are getting the vaccine first? You see! They’re using us as guinea pigs!

Just tell me when black people get the vaccine, so I’ll know what the explanation is.

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Reported by DR. SUSAN BERRY | 

URL of the originating web site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/21/minnesota-sen-dr-scott-jensen-under-investigation-after-criticism-cdc-classification-virus-deaths/

 

Senator Scott Jensen / Facebook

A physician who serves as a Minnesota state senator announced this month that his state’s Board of Medical Practice is investigating him following his criticism in April that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidelines on the classification of coronavirus deaths could artificially inflate counts.

Dr. Scott Jensen (R) tweeted on July 6 that his video message was the “most important” he has done.

The physician said the Board of Medical Practice wrote to him that he was under investigation because of allegations he has been “spreading misinformation in regards to the completion of death certificates on a news program,” and “providing reckless advice” in a comparison between COVID-19 and the flu.

In April, Jensen appeared on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham, who read guidelines developed by CDC for completing death certificates.

“In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID-19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed,’” Ingraham read from the guidelines, emphasizing they appeared to concede how the death certificates are completed is a “judgment call.”

Jensen responded the CDC guidance was “ridiculous.”

“The idea that we’re going to allow people to massage and sort of game the numbers is a real issue,” he continued, “Because we’re gonna undermine the trust and, right now, as we see politicians doing things that aren’t necessarily motivated in fact and in science, the public’s … trust in politicians is already wearing thin.”

During the broadcast, Jensen also provided a hypothetical example of a patient who died due to influenza, with symptoms of cough and fever, but who would have the primary cause of death as “respiratory arrest.”

“I’ve never been encouraged to [notate ‘influenza’],” he said. “I would probably write ‘respiratory arrest’ to be the top line, and the underlying cause of this disease would be pneumonia … I might well put emphysema or congestive heart failure, but I would never put influenza down as the underlying cause of death and yet that’s what we are being asked to do here.”

Jensen added that, under the CDC guidelines, a patient who died after a bus accident, but then tested positive for coronavirus, would still be counted as having presumed to have died from the virus.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Ingraham also played a clip of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s response during a briefing to a question about the possibility of coronavirus deaths being “padded.” Fauci replied there are often “conspiracy theories” during “challenging” times in public health crises.

Jensen responded by observing that hospitals receive greater reimbursements for patients being treated for coronavirus. 

The senator said in his recent video that he believes he has been “targeted,” but that he intends to cooperate with the investigation.

He received a statement of support from Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka:

Of course I support Dr. Jensen and his medical expertise on COVID because he has proven to be right. USA Today fact-checked and verified Sen. Jensen’s claim that federal payments were greater if patients were confirmed to have COVID.

Gazelka added he is exploring “whether or not the board is compelled to investigate every complaint or if they are choosing to investigate Dr. Jensen.”

“It’s also concerning there are two separate complaints, raising questions about coordination,” the statement continued. “Legislators should not have to fear regulators based on their speech. If the bureaucratic state can silence speech through investigations, we have very dark times ahead for our democracy.”

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Horowitz: As Europe opens schools, nanny Fauci pushing school shutdown possibly into fall


Written by  May 13, 2020

Anthony Fauci

Lie Jie | Getty Images

Missed in the headlines from yesterday’s Senate hearing is the implication from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s assertion that it may not be safe to reopen schools even in the fall. What that means is that any existence of a virus, even when is causes fewer death in kids than the flu, is now a pretext for closing schools and destroying a generation of education, children’s mental health, and parents’ ability to work and provide. This is unacceptable, and it’s time for Trump to #FireFauci.

Shutting down the schools was a colossal mistake. Kids have next to zero risk from the virus, and study after study has shown that they have little or no transmissibility to adults (data from Iceland, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, France, and Taiwan) The collateral damage of closing schools is enormous and outweighs any risk we take – and the risk during every flu season is already much higher. This is why even the worst lockdown countries – from Israel and Australia to Norway and France – are reopening schools. Our government, on the other hand, is not directed by science, so nearly every state has closed schools for the rest of the year. But summer camps and school in the fall will be on schedule, right? Especially with so few deaths occurring now outside of nursing homes, right?

Think again.

In a hearing full of Republicans who sounded like Democrats, Senator Rand Paul was the only one who stood up for the American people and noted the low fatality rate for most people and that there is no science behind closing schools. Bristled by Rand’s charge that Fauci is not “the end-all,” Fauci responded by saying, “We don’t know everything about this virus and we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children.”

Then he pulled out his latest trick, the Kawasaki-like disease they are seeing in New York City among children. “For example, right now, children presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome very similar to Kawasaki syndrome,” added Fauci as a rationale for continuing to close schools.

Kawasaki is something that causes over 5,000 hospitalizations in young children some years, and we never hear about it. Fauci and the purveyors of perpetual panic porn point to the fact that some of those kids in New York tested positive for COVID-19 to insinuate some sort of relationship. But the New York serology study showed that roughly one-quarter of all city residents have contracted COVID-19, so naturally any studied population for any medical analysis will contain people who test positive.

At the end of the hearing, Chairman Lamar Alexander asked Fauci to clarify whether he meant to say there should be no schooling until we have a vaccine. He replied that he was “absolutely not” saying we should wait for a vaccine but that it will depend on the testing capacity and the “dynamic of the outbreak in the region.”

Earlier in the hearing, in response to a question from Alexander, Fauci also seemed skeptical about opening colleges in the fall.

So Fauci is now laying the groundwork for a lower threshold of risk to trigger mass school closures than the flu. Every year you can find numerous media articles about children dying of the flu. Just a few weeks before coronavirus was declared a pandemic, CNN was reporting on a record number of children dying from the flu. In early January, the network reported on an unprecedented harsh flu season causing the death of children in NYC. One New York doctor was quoted as saying these kids being seen in hospitals and on life support weren’t even immunocompromised.

In total, according to the CDC, 174 children died from the flu this winter. Nobody in the country even knew about it. Yet when it comes to the religion of coronavirus panic, which had fewer deaths even at its peak among children than the flu, let alone now, it is a pretext for closing schools unless we conduct endless testing and meet impossible benchmarks.

According to the CDC, “For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons.” Consider that as of May 6, only 10 children 14 or younger had died from COVID-19, according to the CDC, as opposed to 174 from this flu season.

Just this week, JAMA pediatrics published the results of a major study of 46 COVID-19 pediatric patients from the U.S. and Canada treated in PICUs, 40 of whom had “significant preexisting comorbidities.” Among other things, they concluded that, “children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.”

One final concern from the hearing is that nobody pressed Fauci on why so many European countries are opening schools now and whether the CDC or NIH have data refuting the endless studies that show little or no transmission from children to adults. Either they have the data and don’t want to share it, or they are criminally negligent by not using their tens of billions in new funding to study this issue.

Finally, has Fauci ever thought about the consequences of taking the young and healthy and turning them into bubble babies for a year? What will this do to them when they eventually get exposed to all sorts of viruses and bacteria that typically did not harm them with a stronger immune system? What will happen to them next flu season? Is he now going to use next flu season as a pretext to close schools?

There’s a reason why “Bubble Boy” is a fictional movie and not a way of life.

Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.

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