Scott Atlas, ladies and gentlemen....
About Fauci.
On protecting old people.
On Herd immunity.
On lockdowns
Actually it is, but it is really great that the person in charge of the COVID-19 response does not get this point. Think if he had said that about SARS, 'this is a coronavirus, this is not a completely novel disease'. The lack of prior exposure to the human population means that this is a novel disease. Just like Spanish Flu was a novel disease in 1918 even though it was just an influenza virus. Go back to reading x-rays, you tool....We don’t know how long someone’s immunity lasts to this, but this is a coronavirus, this is not a completely novel disease.
About Fauci.
Maybe you should speak to him to learn some of the finer points of Immunology before blathering away at things you don't really understand.He’s just one person on the task force — there are several people on the task force. His background is virology, immunology and infectious disease. It’s a very different background, it’s a more limited approach, and I don’t speak for him.
On protecting old people.
No S***.We have not been perfect at it, there’s no question — it’s very challenging.
Whatabout Flu. It is amazing that this is still the staple retort of COVID apologists.“I have a 93 year old mother in law, and she said to me 2 months ago, “I’m not interested in being confined in my home. I am not interested in living if that’s the life… I’m old enough to take a risk, I understand social distancing. I’m going to function, otherwise there’s no reason to live.” This sort of bizarre, maybe well-intentioned but misguided idea that we are going to eliminate all risk from life, we are going to stop people from taking any risk that they are well aware of, we’re going to close down businesses, we’re going to stop schools — these are inappropriate and destructive policies.There are between 30,000 and 90,000 people a year that die — that are high risk elderly — in the United States every flu season. We don’t shut down schools in response to that…”
On Herd immunity.
This strawman after repeatedly claiming that he doesn't believe herd immunity is their policy. But if he wants to conflate vaccination into the concept, isn't that exactly our strategy?In fact, if you don’t that believe herd immunity exists as a way to block the pathways to the vulnerable in an infection, then you would never advocate or believe in giving widespread vaccination.
On lockdowns
Yeah, clearly not promoting herd immunity. Another bit where he should consult immunologists because what he is saying is not remotely possible without massive collateral damage and probably is not possible even if you let the virus run wild.All of these harms are massive for the working class and the lower socioeconomic groups. The people who are upper class, who can work from home, the people who can sip their latte and complain that their children are underfoot or that they have to come up with extra money to hire a tutor privately — these are people who are not impacted by the lockdowns. This is the topic, this is why you open up. A secondary gain might be population immunity, but this is the reason to open up.
His circular logic on full display. Lockdowns are too damaging, even if they do decrease case counts. So, we can't do that. But there are also too many cases to test and trace, so we can't do that either. Remember the quote from the Harvard Epidemiologist that I posted yesterday? "If your goal is to do nothing, then you create a situation in which it looks okay to do nothing [and] you find some experts to make it complicated." This is it.Now, there are 7 million registered cases in the US but even the CDC says that it’s probably tenfold that, that’s 70 million people at least; if we look at the world’s cases, maybe 40 million cases but we know that it’s probably 10 to 20 times that. So it’s not possible to do things like contact tracing and isolating asymptomatic people.
More than you realize, buddy.....A lot of these people who have very fancy CVs have engaged in very sloppy thinking.
The guy cares more about his reputation IMO than the lives of any person in this country. You can tell. And, yes, he is angry that his colleagues wrote that letter criticizing him.I’ve gone through various levels of being angry. I’m not angry but I’m sort of disgusted and dismayed at the state of things.
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