Tag: Dr. Fauci

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Pardon Me

Dr. Fauci, Anthony Fauci, covid, pardons, Biden, justice

Another round of presidential pardons, anyone?

At Medium, former New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr., urges President Joe Biden to “preemptively pardon Jack Smith, Robert Mueller, Merrick Garland, Brad Raffensberger, Fani Willis, Letitia James, E. Jean Carroll, Judge Juan Merchan and every judge who has ever issued a ruling that made Donald J. Trump unhappy.”

He says that “President Biden should also pardon himself,” along with “the heads of Operation Warp Speed and the chief executives of Pfizer and Moderna,” and “can’t even imagine how many political journalists … also need protecting.”

Is there anyone left?

“While we’re at it,” writes McNeil, “I’d like a pardon too.”

The award-​winning journalist had a colorful history at The Times. In 2020, the paper reprimanded him for comments attacking Trump and the head of the Centers for Disease Control over their COVID response, declaring “that his job is to report the facts and not to offer his own opinions.”* 

And we can’t forget the primary focus of McNeil’s essay, titled: “Now Biden Should Pardon Tony Fauci.” Declaring “Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong,” the reporter decries that “a motivated prosecutor can go after you for anything … can break you financially with legal fees just proving your innocence.”

Yes, we know … having watched it unfold against Mr. Trump.

McNeil clearly fears that Trump will become a dictator, throwing out the Constitution and the rule of law. Judging from Trump’s first term, I am not so worried. But does even McNeil really believe these pardons could survive his imagined MAGA maelstrom? 

For nearly 40 years, Anthony Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, with primary responsibility for the treatment of contagious illnesses, including during the COVID-​19 pandemic. A presidential pardon would be an official admission of his guilt. 

In your own vernacular, Mr. Biden: Don’t! 

Fauci deserves his day in court. And so do we. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Then, in early 2021, McNeil resigned from the newspaper “under pressure” after complaints surfaced about him using the n‑word on a student trip to Peru, for which he served as a guide.

Note: Back in 2022, Elon Musk did post on X: “My pronouns are Prosecute/​Fauci.”

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Back-​Pedaling at the Speed of Lies

Dr. Fauci, covid, blame

“Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down,” challenges Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Never. I never did,” he told the New York Times last week.

We sure are a long way from the heady days when he proclaimed, “I am the Science.” It’s more like in the book of Genesis, where Cain asks the great rhetorical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

In other words, Fauci’s trying to set the record … crooked.

For Fauci was the Authority that bolstered all the advice from the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere, urging mask mandates and lockdowns and what-have-you.

Now, he is doing more than back-​pedaling. He is shifting blame. Blame for failed policies.

But he’s not alone in this. For The Epoch Times, Petr Svab notes another famous back-​pedaler: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Watch Ms. Weingarten declare on C‑Span, “We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open,” but click that link and read the Twitter crowd-​sourced fact-​checks, showing how that’s … deceptive:

We still argue about how much COVID leaders lied during the heat of the panic. I advised, at the time, to give them a little leeway.

Regarding policy, that is.

Not lying.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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It’s Over But It Isn’t

Covid, emergency, Dr. Fauci

Is the pandemic over?

On March 29, House Joint Resolution 7 passed with a 68 – 23 margin in the Senate: 47 Republicans and 21 Democrats voting Yea. Earlier this week, Joe Biden signed it into law.

But, as The Epoch Times explains, that resolution “states that the pandemic national emergency ‘is hereby terminated,’” but “does not impact the public health emergency, which is still scheduled to terminate on May 11.” 

But that lag — why terminate one (“national”) emergency footing and leave the other (“public health”) to linger for another month?

It’s worse than that, though. Back in September, President Biden told 60 Minutes that the pandemic was over, noting then that “no one’s wearing masks; everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”

The administration offers bureaucratic rationales for the lagtime. But its impact on you and me is said to be zero: “To be clear, [the] continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-​19,” explains a January letter from the Biden administration to Congress.

Repeat that: the continuation of the emergency declarations does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct. Which should have been true from the beginning, for the Constitution does not provide any powers to the general government over individuals on these matters.

Does public health really need another month of crisis … after acknowledging there isn’t a crisis anymore?

At least, there is a May 11th at the end of the tunnel.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Imprudent Skeptics?

Covid origins

“For nearly three years, anyone asking whether COVID-​19 originated as a lab leak outbreak was silenced and branded as a conspiracy theorist,” stated Senator Josh Hawley (R‑Mo), on Monday. “Now these prudent skeptics stand vindicated.”

While I enthusiastically support the bill he and Mike Braun (R‑Ind.) introduced, the COVID-​19 Origin Act of 2023, may I be excused if I get caught up on that term “prudent skeptic”?

Apparently Hawley means “skeptics” such as himself. But who are the imprudent skeptics? 

What would Hawley say should they be vindicated?

The bill, unanimously passed the Senate, would require the Biden administration to “immediately declassify all intelligence reports pertaining to the origins of COVID-​19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Hawley insists that we, the people, “deserve to know the truth.”

But is it a mere curiosity that neither he, in his above-​quoted statement, nor The Epoch Times, in its article on the bill, finger any likely entity other than the Wuhan Institute for Virology and the Chinese government?

For, as noted here many times, the evidence of culpability for conducting dangerous gain-​of-​function bat coronavirus research in China does not point merely to the Chinese. 

It points to the U.S. Government, the offices of Dr. Anthony Fauci, specifically.

Hawley doesn’t mention that evidence, nor does The Epoch Times.

This is not to let China off the hook for the pandemic, a Debacle At Best. (I’m not known for being “soft on China.”) I bring this up because of the implication: we skeptics of the Zoonotic Origin Theory have not been pointing only to the Chinazis, but also to our own governmental conspirators.

Surely it’s not imprudent to be skeptical of our own government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Lessons Not Yet Learned?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, virus, masks

When will we learn to distrust big government?

While readers of this Common Sense have been tracking the Wuhan Lab Leak story for two years now, most people are still behind the curve. Fortunately, another government agency has weighed in on the Lab Leak side, as reported by Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel in the Wall Street Journal: “Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-​19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says.”

No wonder there’s disagreement and confusion, though: “The Energy Department made its judgment with ‘low confidence,’ according to people who have read the classified report,” Gordon and Strobel explain. 

There remains much we do not know, of course. But we should understand that is largely because China’s totalitarian regime has purposely hidden information from the world. With the full assistance of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Big Government Science in the U.S.… and evasive coverage by our media.

Then consult Brett Stephens’ “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” in The New York Times last week.

Now, many of us embraced masks early on, when little was known, bascally advising mask wearing as a signal of hope. We can do something. But soon the masks themselves masked something other than hope: the raw powerlust of the elites in their lockdown tyranny over the masses.

But for actual reduction in the contagion of a virus, Stephens reports, masks are useless. Citing an Oxford epidemiologist with the great name of “Tom Jefferson,” not even N‑95 masks do the trick: “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.

What about those studies we were informed proved the case? They were “nonrandomized,” “flawed observational studies.”

Yet lots of politicians and bureaucrats — including “the mindless” Centers for Disease Control — keep pushing masks.

It’s not that we cannot learn. It’s that they don’t want us to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Punching Fauci?

Mark Zuckerberg, Anthony Fauci, royalty

“This is just one of those things where things get taken out of context,” congressional candidate Hung Cao told WJLA in Arlington, Virginia, responding to his opponents TV ads, which charge that Cao said he “wants to punch Dr. Fauci in the face.”

Mr. Cao, a colorful fellow, came to America from war-​torn Vietnam when he was just four. He graduated from the Naval Academy and served for 25 years — a combat veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

“[T]he real quote was ‘if there’s two people I could punch in the face and get away with it, it would be Mark Zuckerberg and Fauci,’” explained Cao. “I’m not advocating violence. All I’m saying is we are so frustrated with people — unelected officials — making decisions for this country like Mark Zuckerberg being able to ban people based on speech and Dr. Fauci shutting down businesses.” 

Cao clarified that he is “all about law and order.” 

His opponents “are also tying Cao to January 6th in television ads,” notes WJLA.

“You know where I was on January 6?” Cao asks. “I just landed from my last combat deployment in Afghanistan and my kids voted unanimously to open presents after I returned. So, that morning … we were actually opening Christmas presents,” he said. “I was trying to keep my eyes open with toothpicks, because I was so tired from the jetlag. And … to superimpose my face onto January 6, and then, not only that, Confederate flags as if I’m some sort of white supremacist.”

His word for that: insulting.

While attacked as an extremist, however, Cao has not shied away from defending parents — including homeschoolers, like he and wife — from the real extremists running our schools, and opposing President Biden’s COVID vaccine mandates that are kicking “heroes” out of the military “like trash.”

He even has a commercial where, as a former kick-​boxing champion, he invited voters to join him in kicking Congress! 

Sadly, as much as I want to, I cannot vote for Cao. 

I’m in an adjacent district.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Asked to express the importance of “previous experience in government or politics,” Cao explained to Ballotpedia: “Career politicians are a cancer. Being a county supervisor or city mayor makes them no more qualified than a truck driver.”

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Doctor Dead End

Anthony Fauci, covid, vaccines, masks

Dr. Anthony Fauci not only holds a smoking gun, he’s standing over the corpse and sniffing the barrel, grinning like a cartoon villain.

Last week we considered the gross indecency of this director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force funding Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab to do more research on bat coronaviruses — to the tune of “Six Million Dimes.”

And now that a Boston group has publicized its gain-​of-​function research, we should ask ourselves: is Fauci involved in this, too? The answer is: YES — to the tune of $2.5 million!

This group of researchers, jiggering with a bat virus and the Omicron variant’s version of the infamous spiked protein, made a new iteration that killed 80 percent of infected mice. Success? What?!? 

We had been told that gain-​of-​function was against policy.

But that wise policy is no match for Fauci’s mania.

Wait, you cry, at least they developed the vaccines! 

Well, to what purpose?

A few weeks ago, in a European Parliament hearing, a Pfizer bigwig admitted that when the multinational introduced its anti-​COVID mRNA “vaccine,” it had not even researched the ability of the jab to reduce transmissibility of the virus. 

“We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what was taking place in the market,” Pfizer senior executive Janine Small explained. “And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk.” 

Clear? As mud?

This is a scandal … except … not according to FactCheck​.org, which states that “nobody claimed the vaccines — Pfizer’s nor Moderna’s — were tested for transmission prevention before they hit the market.”

But even the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s fact checkers admit that “some officials have overstated the transmission protection provided by the vaccines.”

Chiefest of these is Fauci, who said last year that by getting vaccinated we “contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. In other words, you become a dead end to the virus.”

Fauci, at the top of the Big Gov/​Big Pharma dung heap, is himself a dead end — to responsible medicine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Six Million Dimes

Covid, Wuhan, bats, money

“EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak should not be getting a dime of taxpayer funds,” declared Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R‑Wash.), “until they are completely transparent. Period.”

Nevertheless, “despite losing a previous award for failing to provide records essential to an investigation into that origin,” Daszak’s group is now slated to receive $600,000, The Intercept informs us.

While regular readers are well aware of what Rep. Rodgers calls “madness,” at Unherd.com’s The Post, Ashley Rindsberg refreshes our memories:

  • “EcoHealth Alliance is … responsible for funneling … US government grants to the now infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, considered by many to be the likely source of the pandemic.”
  • Still, “[Daszak] was the go-​to source for the American media as they sought to ‘prove’ that the lab leak theory was little more than a Right-​wing conspiracy. He also surreptitiously organised a letter in The Lancet, attempting to shut down the debate by labelling this potential origin as a ‘conspiracy theory.’”
  • “Most alarmingly,” Daszak “submitted a 2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that called for scientists to insert a furin cleavage site — a key distinguishing and extremely rare feature of SARS-​Cov‑2 — into SARS-​like viruses. In other words: a blueprint for making SARS‑2 in a lab.”

Instead of throwing money at EcoHealth Alliance (which would merely funnel it to a Chinese lab), invest in a thorough congressional investigation into how Dr. Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, and co-​conspirator Dr. Anthony Fauci purposely obstructed the inquiry into the origin of a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans and nearly seven million worldwide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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No Reason?

Dr. Fauci, transparency, China, covid

“Are we ever going to find out the truth of where COVID-​19 came from?” Sophie Raworth, host of the BBC’s Sunday Morning, asked Dr. Anthony Fauci recently.

“Given the fact that there are such restrictions on ability to really investigate it,” the chief medical adviser to the president admitted, “I’m not sure.” Still, Fauci argued, “the data are accumulating over the last few months much more heavily weighted that this was a natural occurrence from an animal species.”

“However,” he added, “we must keep an open mind.” 

Is Fauci’s mind open? His “data” argument is ridiculous bull. 

Raworth then pointed out that World Health Organization “investigators” who traveled to Wuhan “were prevented from seeing key details and from speaking to key people. Why do you think the Chinese government did that?” 

“You know,” replied Fauci, “I don’t want to create any or mention any disparaging remarks about that.”

No?

“But the Chinese are very closed, in a way of being very reluctant, particularly when you have a disease that evolves in their country,” he went on, “they become extremely secretive — even though there is no reason to be secretive.”

No reason? How does Dr. Fauci know that the genocidal totalitarian Chinese Communist Party has no motive behind their opaque response to the origin of COVID-​19 (about which, remember, he has a completely open mind)?

“So, when they see something evolving in their own country,” Fauci explained, “they tend to have a natural reflex of not necessarily covering things up but of not being very open and transparent.” 

Get that? A completely innate thing, totally unavoidable.

Fauci himself has long seemed “closed, in a way very reluctant” on the subject. Why? Not because “the disease” “evolved” in his labs, but because he and his colleagues outsourced work on bat coronaviruses to China.

Both parties have every reason to be … less than transparent.

With no Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Allure of the Mask

Covid, masks

Early on in the pandemic, I promoted mask-​wearing as something we could do to protect ourselves, loved ones, and our communities.

But as the pandemic progressed, we learned some things.

Over time, I became more skeptical of much good coming from mask-wearing.

Now that the panic portion of the pandemic is mostly over — and what a long panic it was! — we should be able to more calmly review.

Two months ago, Vinay Prasad, an actual epidemiologist, looked carefully at the CDC’s study allegedly showing a high medical efficacy in universal mask-​wearing during a major contagion. The study, he argued, was plagued with “very poor quality data, insufficient to support community masking, particularly for years on end. Cloth masks had especially bad data. Data to support masking kids was absolutely absent.” And the CDC’s own reporting of what its study actually found was unreliable and … well, dishonest.

Take the case of Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Pre-​pandemic, community masking was discouraged because the pre-​existing evidence was negative,” explained Prasad. “This is why Fauci was critical of it in early March 2020 on 60 minutes.” 

But many of us were perhaps unduly pro-mask because Fauci appeared to be protecting the supply of masks used by medical professionals, thus, lying for a strategic reason. It was hard not to learn a … dubious … lesson: Fauci lied to protect professional mask use, so masks for the masses likely worked well.

Then he changed tune. And went off the deep end, ignoring his previous statements and advocating double- and triple-masking!

Still, the most ominous issue about mask mandates is how it became “a marker of politics. Good liberals wear them and bad conservatives don’t.”

Prasad does not go where Matthias Desmet and others have: showing how mask mandates became a means to induce panic and the politicization of medicine.

Voluntary masking without mandates — as has been commonly the case in Japan, for example — provides important signals about infection rates, and allows people to negotiate their own physical distancing. Universal mask mandates spoil the informative aspect and instead serve tyrants and mass hysteria.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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