Working in a retirement home. Covid arrived and within a few weeks, a third of the elderly died. The doctor that said it was just the flu didn’t dare come near the place after the first few deceased. And still so many people didn’t wanted to take it seriously.
Another fucked up part of this is how much this brain dead conservative American anti science rhetoric spread across the rest of the world.
The brain dead right wingers are poisoning the world with their special flavour of idiocy.
A century ago, Fauci would have been lauded as a hero.
He is in my book.
Anyone with family in medicine with even half a brain or heart during this time is keenly aware.
Yellow ribbons for days for troops, but largely thankless, brutal work for medical personnel. Turnover was high throughout and following covid from burnout and disrespect.
Dr. Fauci is a national treasure, up there with Mr. Rogers.
Trump and Republicans were responsible for so much loss of life during that time. People still don’t fully grasp.
Yeah, kinda hard to forget how millions of people said “some fucking idiot politician doesn’t think this is real/as bad as doctors and scientists say it is, so clearly the politician is right because I’m an entitled overconfident asshole who doesn’t wanna give up muh freedom”. For the first time in human history (probably), we had the ability to prevent millions of deaths with knowledge. The circus of morons threw that in the trash.
Weird part is that they say that politicians are lying and corrupt, and still somehow believe them.
Only the politicians not vomiting back their preconceived ideas are lying.
Oh of course they aren’t always lying. Just when they disagree with me!
It’s worse actually, he took PPE from states he didn’t like and sent it to Russia. There’s a phone call proving it. Literally giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
And ventilators, testing kits and actually useful medications (not bleach or horse dewormer)
Fauci was trying his best to navigate a shitty situation and you had fuckers like Krystal and Sagaar on Breaking Points spewing hatred at him. All of them are fucking assholes. Fauci isn’t a fucking politician or pundit or anything … he’s trying to save lives by making choices and decisions where people were ready to sacrifice him regardless for political reasons. But Breaking Points are oh so happy to shit on him and the comment section is full of antivax and covid deniers.
I have never heard of Krystal Ball until recently, and she’s making the rounds for an interview with Adam Smith, and seems to be portrayed as some leftist pundit. And now seeing this comment, it feels like life has been and will be ok not hearing from her ever again.
Don’t forget that hospitals in desperate need of PPE had shipments hijacked and stolen by the feds, given to corrupts pop-up resellers run by cronies and auctioned off back to the hospitals that originally bought them.
Having a memory and attention span longer than 2 weeks is fucking exhuasting
The New England Patriots used their private plane to smuggle PPE into the country because the regime was stealing shipments off the runway.
I, like Pepperidge Farm, also remember. That was such a massive shit show, I have no idea how the Administration Responsible for PPE Hijacking managed to get a second installment of the show going. That really should have been the end of them all.
Thats because the people who voted for him the second time either don’t know, or don’t care.
IT happened in Maryland too. The took it right off the Tarmac.
I swear I read that some hospitals had to have it shipped to odd places or roundabout fashions just so they’d have a chance to actually get it delivered.
Yeah, supposedly that’s how we worked around it.
The hilarious thing is that half the ‘masks cause brain damage’ crew is now masked up as ICE agents so no one can see their crimes against humanity.
To be fair, ICE agents do demonstrate a correlation between masks and brain damage. (The causality just happens to go the other way.)
You should be criticizing Fauci for not doing nearly enough.
Ohhhhhh do fuck off, you blithering imbecile
great coherent argument
Why would I waste my time with you?
Fauci was doing the best he could in the face of an idiotic and oppositional government
If you think he should have somehow been doing more, then you’re not just stupid, you’re disingenuous
He’s a doctor who was forced to act like a politician. He was probably doing his best.
“Mr. Fauci, how dare you tell people not to inject bleach and snort Ivermectin?!”
Then they say my body, my choice no doubt.
It’s only a thing if it benefits them
We stopped teaching science decades ago…
No Child stripped all the critical thinking out and made it all short term rote memorization.
You don’t learn science by memorizing things, you learn science by learning to think analytically
We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go through (higher education). If not, we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people. That’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.
– Roger Adolf Freeman, economics professor at Stanford, advisor to President Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon
Once again, it leads back to Reagan. Not that he’s a root cause, but he enacted the legislation that did the bidding of capitalists to fuck us all.
Years ago, someone sent posted a listing of 200 reasons why Reagan sucked. All seemed accurate. As you say, he wasn’t necessarily the root, but man did he help facilitate the future we got shoved down our throats.
I guess she won’t read this but she is a real life hero.
Id love to send her some love and thanks — but that probably requires me joining a corrupt and toxic social network I’m purposely trying to avoid.
If you search the handle that’s in the screenshot, you can very quickly find what looks to be a legit email address for her.
c/ootl - got the context for this? Who’s criticizing him and why?
Dr. Fauci got called to a Senate committee that Rand Paul put together to question him on COVID-19 after publishing his personal diary. The Republicans tried to do anything to make Dr. Fauci look bad and publicly insulted him over and over to his face. It was all an attempt to get him to say something they could construe as perjury. So, because he’s not some idiot, he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights over and over. Now, the Republicans want to hold him in contempt for…using his constitutionally protected rights. The same constitution, by the way, they swear to support and defend.
Rand Paul yelling “Who the fuck do you think you are?!!” In a congressional hearing should embarrass all Americans, but we’re well past that point, I guess.
I’ve been embarrassed since he turned our politics into reality tv.
Republicans are dogpiling him right now because after appearing before congress like 20 times already to talk about covid, during the latest appearance he stopped giving AF and exercised his right to remain silent while basically calling Rand Paul an asshole lol.
So in typical conservative fashion, despite hundreds of hours of context leading up to this moment, all the headlines are like “SEE HE MUST BE A LIAR OTHERWISE HE WOULD TESTIFY”
They basically blame him directly for covid. And by covid they mean the social and economic harm of masking and social distancing, because the actual virus itself obviously isn’t real. And if it is real it was made in a lab. But despite being made in a lab it does absolutely nothing to you, total nothing virus, basically just a bad cold. Actually it’s the vaccines that caused all the deaths. The same vaccines that are Joe Biden’s fault despite them literally being produced and released under the direction of Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed”, all during his first term as president. Which isn’t true Trump would never do that. And if he did it’s because Fauci lied to him
Make it make sense
Conservatives have been wrong about everything for a few centuries now. Covid was one of those most clear and unambiguous examples of their world view and ideology being wrong. It broke them, because there was no longer a single grain of doubt to hide behind, as millions died around them. So now they just manufacture a separate reality whole cloth, because it’s easier than trying to spin objective reality in their favor.
It doesn’t, that’s the problem. A problem a lot of us Americans are dealing with - when you can’t make any sense of what or why these politicians and their supporters have these ideas and do the things … It’s very hard to not be worried. Like I have anxiety bad enough it’s a disorder but I feel like every thinking man woman and child in the USA right now is walking around just holding onto that low-key anxious energy because nothing makes any sense.
Like even if you try to find a reason there isn’t one and if there is a reason it’s nonsensical, probably racist, and one hundred percent not grounded in our shared reality.
But it does make sense (just not good). You and I might not agree with the motives, but they do exist. There are entities both external and internal to the US that want to tear society down. Causing disfunction, fomenting hate, allowing infrastructure to decay, creating chaos, sowing discord and more are all a part of that effort. There might be differing reasons these entities have, but it boils down to greed and authoritarian control. It is happening elsewhere, as well. We see right-wing ideology/politics springing up in Latin America, Europe and Asia.
The Foundation of Geopolitics is one of the texts that lined out the (Russian) path for the future and how to disrupt the West that was aligned against them and it appears to be working. The other large influencer is Israel. I am certain the Mossad is out there thwarting the democratic process to help shape their goals. The billionaire club are the other parties that are helping to bring all this together. I thought I read somewhere that they are pressing the gas-pedal for human extinction b/c they believe they are better and above that. Therefore they will survive and will start the new (improved) human cycle or something after we are removed. Again, their reasons might vary, but the results are the same. Shackles for you and me and the world is theirs to conquer. So far.
I am sure I have a less than perfect perspective and two paragraphes doesn’t cover much here really, but this is roughly how I see current affairs from my limited proto-human lense.
Iirc the House is subpoenaing him again to try and blame him for all their failings
As above. This was a global crisis. The issues were not caused by the Republican party, nor by the Democrats, nor by anyone even in America! I know… Imagine a thing happening that isn’t directly to do with America!
A nasty virus spread throughout the world. Governments and scientists didn’t know what to do. They rushed to make policies to deal with it, within the crappy, corrupt political systems that all countries have. Most came up with a mostly crappy response, mostly dictated by corporate lobbies and electioneering, like every other policy they’ve ever come up with. Lots of people died. Lots more than would have if everything had been done perfectly, but we don’t live in such a world and we would no more have if the Democrats were in charge.
Nobody is angry at the republicans for causing the pandemic.
Democrats are angry that republicans (specifically under Trump) fucked up the pandemic response and at least indirectly- but also frequently directly- killed hundreds of thousands of the millions of dead Americans.
Imagine not being angry at that.
For example, Trump resisted lockdowns because rich people didn’t want to lose money. This lead to greater spread, which lead to a larger surge which lead to overwhelmed ICUs and deciding who got ventilators and who didn’t.
While Trump was looting medical resources exactly like ventilators and sending them to his bestie, Putin.
Fuck you for spreading trump apologia.
As above. This was a global crisis. The issues were not caused by the Republican party, nor by the Democrats, nor by anyone even in America! I know… Imagine a thing happening that isn’t directly to do with America!
Welll there were some people trying to prevent lockdowns from being enacted, some people suggesting Ivermectin and bleach as cures or prevention for COVID, etc…
Different countries had very different outcomes and while the US wasn’t the worst, it could’ve been a lot better if a certain party hadn’t hampered any effort at improving the situation.
What’s any of that got to do with Dr Fauci? Covid was a global crisis managed by thousands of health policy bureaucrats across the world.
On policy, Fauci did pretty much the same as the rest of them which is follow advice from official organisations like the WHO. He didn’t save the world by coming up with some crazy idea which ‘might just work…’ like the final scenes in a Hollywood film. He’s just took the advice of the agencies whose job it was to provide it, and then relayed that advice to his staff.
Where there was uncertainty about best practice he didn’t even do particularly well, nor particularly badly either, both of which, of course can only be judged in hindsight. America’s experience policy-wise was about middling.
He certainly obfuscated more than was helpful about the likely origins, which doesn’t make him a great person, but I’m not sure that made any difference to the course of the pandemic.
Anyone whose overall assessment of Fauci is anything other than ‘meh’ needs to spend half a day with Médecins Sans Frontières and see want real heroes look like.
On policy, Fauci did pretty much the same as the rest of them which is follow advice from official organisations like the WHO. He didn’t save the world by coming up with some crazy idea which ‘might just work…’ like the final scenes in a Hollywood film. He’s just took the advice of the agencies whose job it was to provide it, and then relayed that advice to his staff.
This is literally his job. His role is to be a central figure with the medical knowledge and training to be able to understand the reasons for those recommendations and to approve them for dissemination to the general public.
Where there was uncertainty about best practice he didn’t even do particularly well, nor particularly badly either, both of which, of course can only be judged in hindsight. America’s experience policy-wise was about middling.
He certainly obfuscated more than was helpful about the likely origins, which doesn’t make him a great person, but I’m not sure that made any difference to the course of the pandemic.
Like every credible medical professional, Fauci is a scientist. Scientists don’t deal in absolutes. Ever. With a situation like COVID, where basically every virologist was clamoring to study the thing, there was very little truly provable information around. In that position, you cannot make blanket statements about policy when the foundational data you’re working from is not trustworthy.
The choice to obfuscate any information about the origin was done for this reason too. In that position, it is simply unethical to state something as fact when the information you have is unverified. RFK does that shit all the time and every single time it happens, scientists have had to come out and say “No. The thing the secretary of health just stated as fact is untrue and you should not trust it.” Maybe it’s because I’m old enough to remember what things were like before, but it’s fucking insane that the general scientific community has to come out and refute official policy.
And on your last point. Scientists did come out and question many of Fauci’s policies. They were removed from social media and in many cases fired.
It’s easy to claim majority support when you silence opposing voices.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11024-022-09479-4
You’re stupid
I just want you to know that.
Thank you for trying to give a nuanced viewpoint on this. Public health officials aren’t saints but somehow because there was a pandemic we have to worship them now? Or hate them? There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.
Easy to forget how much lying and idiocy “both sides” did. The conspiracy theorists may have had crazy theories but they weren’t crazy for thinking they were lied to and/or their fundamental rights were threatened.
In France they wilfully oversold vaccines by saying they would stop transmission. When questioned in Parliament the health minister admitted they had no proof for their grandiose claims. Then the opposite happened because people were told they were invincible with the vaccines, but you couldn’t go to all the “optional” public places without an insanely priced Chinese-made test from less than X hours ago (X changed a few times) or without proof of vaccination, all this on government controlled databases. This also became the standard restriction for travel for around a year, even for going back to your home country… All that and retirement homes weren’t on strict lockdowns for a very long time in 2020, data showing older people were more vulnerable was available early on.
I was paid a lot of money to stick social distancing stickers in public places and there was nothing proving it was of any use: the distancing or the stickers.
A lot of people hated the restrictions because they were hypocritical at best. I couldn’t do remote work and was always forced to work in proximity with others anyway. The government made false promises like no loss of salary for anyone catching the virus, that quickly went out the window, I still lost more than 40% of my salary the month I inevitably got it. I got it before vaccines were available and never got it again (got tested a lot, mostly because I was curious): I was still considered like a plague ridden heretic for not wanting to get the vaccines when they decided to force people to get vaccinated and wasn’t allowed to do sports outside in a club without paying 40€ or more for a test each time. The first lockdowns I still had to work but I couldn’t go for a walk outside more than once a day.
EDIT: oh and in 2020, and until 2022, it was expected to clean and disinfect shared tools and surfaces. Now no one cares! I go through a lot of disinfectant wipes to minimise how dirty my hands get at work, and I shouldn’t have to do one pass to remove the black grime then another to disinfect…
Exactly. That’s his job and he did it. That’s it.
As to the obfuscation. He went on the Newt Gingrich podcast and said the idea of a lab origin was a conspiracy theory without any scientific basis eight days after a meeting he had with top scientists at which the majority were of the opinion that it probably was. In what way is that ‘not stating something as fact when it’s uncertain’?
He’d just come from a meeting where he’d been told it was uncertain, and he stated publicly that believing it amounted to conspiracy theory.
I can’t understand why people defend the man. I can’t understand why anyone would particularly hate him either. He’s just a normal political appointee.
You ignore the immense pressure he was under by Republicans at the time. Any precautions were terribly unpopular among half the country and in the White House.
Again, this is normal. All bureaucrats were under immense pressure, it was an unprecedented situation. He faced no personal consequences whatsoever for the unpopularity of his policies and wrote in his diary how pleased he was about the positive attention he was getting. He wasn’t drafted in, he chose a highly public-facing, political appointment.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Standard political appointee willing to hold a highly public position. A mildly narcissistic pen-pusher.
But the key thing here is not Fauci’s character, it’s the fact that none of the terrible things the nurse mentioned had anything to do with him. He didn’t personally do anything to prevent them, he didn’t come up with any ideas, he didn’t ‘fight the system’ to get some concession that no one else wanted. He just followed advice, and he didn’t even do that as well as others did.
No, this is not normal, and never should be. I know of no country where politicians of the ruling party are still trying to nail their former secretary of health to the wall with absolutely insane arguments and even trying to throw him in jail.
And if a mountain of death threats is not a personal consequence, I don’t know what is.
Politicians trying to make appointees look bad is standard practice. David Kelly was literally driven to suicide by the pressure to relent over Iraq.
People have been calling for his death non-stop ever since the beginning of COVID.
Again, he chose a job in the public eye. He wasn’t drafted in. And he literally wrote in his diary that he was enjoying the attention.
You’re grotesque
Oh, and stupid.
5 days in…
