Posts Made By: James Lacey

Originally Posted by James Brown

hi Dave and Jim, I agree that masks/vaccines, and distancing worked to flatten the curve. I agree that Trump‘s handling of the pandemic was buffoonish in many respects.

In my opinion however, Fauci‘s biggest “crime“ was lying to the public about the possibility of a lab leak. Lab leak was a theory seriously considered by many prominent scientists advising Fauci, at the exact same time that Fauci was telling the public that lab leak was a whacked out conspiracy theory. I feel personally lied to on this point.

I am not here arguing one side or the other of the origins debate. I am observing here that Faucii actively lied regarding possible origins at the beginning of the pandemic, even if his lies were justified in his opinion.  (Fauci obviously has a Trump like ego).   So, Fauci himself was a key player in driving down public trust in the public health system to its current abysmal levels.   This may not be a crime, but it is his legacy.  

https://www.racket.news/p/the-fauci-legend-will-not-die

Jim

Jim,

I've read a lot about what the science says about the origins of COVID-19, and I don't think many scientists who study pandemic origins give much credence to the lab-leak theory anymore. Most say there is very convincing, if not overwhelming, evidence pointing to an animal origin, and that the Wuhan wet market was simply the bull's-eye where the outbreak was centered. Keep in mind these same experts all agree that their minds could be changed if new evidence for a lab leak becomes available, but for now, the best explanation is a natural spillover or zoonotic origin.

I guess what I never get is what possible motive could Fauci have had for lying about the origin of COVID-19? You hear lots of speculation about his supposed motives, but is there any publicly available evidence that Fauci was trying to mislead deliberately? I've heard he was trying to downplay a lab leak to conceal gain-of-function research, but there's actually more evidence that gain-of-function research on COVID-19 never happened at Wuhan. Or maybe it was some other wrongdoing, but again, where is the evidence of the wrongdoing? The Republican fascination with blaming Fauci for the pandemic response is about making a scapegoat out of a symbolic figure, as far as I'm concerned, since there is no hard evidence to support their claims of malfeasance.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

Masks + social distancing + vaccine worked.  Perfectly.  Ivermectin and hydroclhoro-whatsit did not.  Categorically.    

Fauci's 'crime' was to publicly and repeatedly tell the orangeman that he and his fellators  were wrong. 

Who took the fifth over 400 times in hearings?   

Dave

In a nutshell, humans are really bad at assessing risk and evaluating available evidence. We are fearful of a vaccine that has a one-in-a-million chance of giving us myocarditis, when the base rate of myocarditis from the illness the vaccine is preventing or attenuating is far more likely. We trust our emotions and gut-feelings more than we do a well-powered study. We believe what we read on Facebook, instead of what experts in the field are saying. 

One of the things that I've had to endure over and over again, being the caregiver of a dementia patient, is well-meaning people sharing their anecdotal evidence regarding what helps Alzheimer's-related dementia, or the latest internet cure they have read about, that they swear is helping their spouse, mother, friend, etc. I'm so tired of having to smile and nod and pretend like I'm listening to their well-meaning, but ultimately flawed anecdotal evidence. For the ones that refuse to take no for an answer, or who will not move on once it becomes clear I'm not interested, I have to gently but firmly explain to them that what they are peddling is little more than modern-day snake oil that preys on fear and ignorance, and that is designed to separate them from their hard-earned money. I know I've upset more than one well-meaning person, but I didn't ask for their unsolicited advice either. It's becoming very tiring to deal with this phenomenon in my personal life. Even after finally moving my wife to a memory-care facility a few months ago, after taking care of her for over 12 years with some form of dementia, I still get people telling me I rushed it, or I should have tried XYZ, or ABC, before institutionalizing her. When they have no idea what I have done, what I will do, what I have spent, or what I will continue to spend taking care of her. I used to tell people sometimes, "Thanks for the advice, but what I could really use is someone to come over and watch her so I can get a break," which always seemed to move the conversation to a swift conclusion.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Fauci's own diary, as reported by Taibbi shows misfeasance (lying).  I am not saying that Fauci had bad intentions.  And of course I am not saying anything about the actual origins of the pandemic.  I am saying that he lied in 2020 and has since been exposed.  You and I both recall Fauci's hard line in 2020 that the mere possibility of a lab leak was a conspiracy theory.  We have know that he lied about this for a long time, and his lie is confirmed in his recently released diaries and emails.  So I personally think it is fair that he shoulder some level of blame for public distrust.  I trusted him and he lied to me, so I know how portions of the public feel.

Matt Taibbi explains it better than I can, using Fauci's own words, which I have highlighted in red: 

On February 9th, 2020, appearing on the Newt Gingrich podcast “Newt’s world,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said the idea that Covid-19 came from a lab was a “conspiracy theory… without any scientific basis.”

This was eight days after Fauci took part in a conference call with eleven other prominent scientists, including NIH Director Francis Collins, Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar, UK Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance, Scripps Research Translational Institute Director Kristian Anderson, Germany’s Christian Drosten, University of Sydney Professor Edward Holmes, the University of Edinburgh’s Andrew Rambaut, Tulane Virology Professor Robert Garry, University of Dundee Professor Mike Ferguson, and Ron Fouchier and M.P.G. Koopmans from the Erasmus Medical Center.

Thanks to the diary, we now know that just three of the scientists in that call — Fauci himself, plus the German Drosten and gain-of-function expert Fouchier — advocated for natural origin. Here’s how Fauci characterized the others:

“The rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible, and given the fact that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in GOF in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go.”

This is Fauci in writing explaining that 9 of 12 scientists at a key meeting he attended at the beginning of the pandemic felt that “deliberate insertion” of a key mutation was possible, in part because a prominent Chinese scientist known to all had been working on that exact sequencing problem just miles from where the first cases were reported. To repeat the smoking gun line: “Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in [gain-of-function] to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor.”

For Fauci to subsequently say in public that the notion of laboratory release was without “scientific basis” was clearly deceptive. It was deceptive when at a White House briefing on April 18th he said, “the mutations that [Covid] took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.” It was deceptive not to tell the public he’d been in constant communication with the authors of a Nature Medicine paper he kept citing as proof of this theory, authors who described him as having “prompted” the paper to begin with.

Fauci’s deception was proven long before the release of the diary, anyway. Three years ago a House Committee released an email by Fauci referencing that same February 1st meeting, noting that scientist described the mutations as “most unusual to have evolved naturally,” resulting in a “suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.” Why did they think this? In Fauci’s own words:

The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.

https://www.racket.news/p/the-fauci-legend-will-not-die

See the attached email from Fauci dated February 1, 2020.  I don't think one can reasonably deny that a public statement on February 9 of the lab leak theory being a “conspiracy theory… without any scientific basis”  is anything but a lie, given the state of Fauci's knowledge in February 2020.  J

I've read that what Dr. Shi was working on was testing viral binding and infectivity, not gain-of-function. Testing viral binding and infectivity are not even close to the same thing. In other words, she was trying to predict zoonotic spillover, not enhance a coronavirus so that it could infect humans or make a coronavirus more deadly. Testing viral binding and infectivity is incredibly common, so I'm immediately suspicious of any article that claims she was doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.

Regardless, neither of us should expect the debate to die down quickly, because it seems that just about any narrative can be supported by the available evidence.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

He is essentially the biggest narcissist on Planet Earth, and was all through the COVID pandemic.

Originally Posted by James Brown

“Gain of function” are the words used by Fauci in his own Feb 1 email.

Read that email, his own email, compare it to his contemporaneous public stance, and it is obvious he lied in 2020.   That’s all I’m saying, and I think this alone was very damaging to public trust.

Did he lie, or did his view change over time as new evidence became available? Regardless, it seems to me that the true nature of MAGA's obsession with Fauci is that they need someone to blame for the pandemic, and they are still upset about the vaccine mandates, mandatory masking, and so forth that they view as government overreach. Rather than take responsibility for who was in charge when COVID hit and their failures, they need a scapegoat so they don't have to admit uncomfortable truths.

Originally Posted by James Brown

You and Brian are missing my point.    Maybe it is a dumb point, but still….  Fauci lied at a point in time.   The point in time is the first week of February, 2020.   His own experts on his own call advocated for lab leak as a viable origin theory.   Fauci’s contemporaneous email documents that these were respected experts and they had good reason to think as they did given the GOF research in Wuhan’s lab.  

That week, the same week, the same point in time he publicly said lab leak was a conspiracy theory with no basis at all.   That was a lie at that point in time. Subsequent events may have changed Fauci’s opinion one way or the other, but at the beginning he lied.

I'm pretty sure I always understood this detail as you explained it. And as you said, the real damage done is that it erodes trust in public health figures and institutions, and for this, Fauci should take some accountability. But this is not evidence that the virus did come from a lab leak, and it's sure not worth dragging Fauci before Congress, some six years after the pandemic, to try and make him the scapegoat for our botched COVID response. The entire thing comes across as a political stunt. Heck, if this is really about our botched COVID response, then let's haul everyone involved in front of Congress, including Trump, and make them all testify, and if anyone pleads the 5th, let's vote to hold them in contempt and refer them to the DOJ. But Republicans won't do this because they know that Trump and his administration are far more politically vulnerable due to their failures during COVID. In short, it's a political stunt that is a waste of time and money. Both sides are guilty of this kind of political theater, of course, but if there is one thing that really grinds my gears about our government, at all levels, it is the amount of time we waste on pointless bickering and blame-fixing, all to make the other side look bad.

Originally Posted by Jim Moscheck

And then call it a win.

I, for one, am tired of winning! Haha. Someone remind me: wasn't the Strait open and free before the war? Asking for a friend.

Originally Posted by Jim Moscheck

Suppose these will end up in the Trump Presidential Library? This woman makes $150,000 a year as a Trump aide. She is head over heels in love with the the President, talks to foreign diplomats on behalf of the administration, and doesn't have a security clearance. You think Melania is pleased with this leak? I'll bet she doesn't care as she has someone else to deal with him. The content reads like an infatuated ninth grade girl with a crush on the star varsity QB.

Look, this is not normal. This woman needs serious help. I wonder what Republicans will say when it turns out Trump has been having an affair with his 35-year-old "special assistant."

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

"Vote for me and I'll give you $5000".  Why do you have to lie about what he said?  Is your assertion that lame and pathetic that you just have to make up and lie about what Donald Trump said.  

I've noticed that so much with you leftists, that you just make stuff up.  "

He didn't say anything like that. He said "IF the Republicans win both the house and the Senate, then I will issue a dividend of $5k to every adult American".

So I'll ask again since you failed to answer the question and had to make up what you said.  How is anything that he said REMOTELY similar to a bribe?  The words that you claimed he stated are a flat out lie.

Now then, where did I say that I know everything? I asked a question and challenged the lie that you put forth. I realize that you TDS suffering Socialist Democrats hear what you want to hear 90% of the time, rather than what is said but don't get angry and pissed off because someone challenges you on the lies that come out of your mouth and you can't defend your lies.  

Simply put, you sound like a petulant little boy whose Mommy took away his Tonka truck. 
Get over it.  You lied.  I called you on your lie and you're ovviously as mad as a hornet.  

Your nitpicky arguments that it isn't a bribe ignore the obvious context of how the promise was made. For example, Trump didn't just promise a policy outcome, like a better economy; he explicitly tied the cash payout to an election outcome. This is pay-to-play politics, plain and simple, which is not acceptable. Besides, fulfilling the promise would take around $1.3Tn, which we all know is money Trump does not have available, or, if he did, the authority to apportion. Hence, it clearly looks like nothing more than a desperate attempt to influence (bribe) voters before they head to the polls. You have to ignore a lot to claim that Trump's words do not amount to a political bribe.

Originally Posted by Brian McFarland

Can you imagine the colossal hissy fit this idiot would throw if Biden and/or Obama had offered to pay everyone for a particular election outcome?  We'd all need a huge batch of popcorn for that. LOL

Indeed. Rich's biases and double standards are completely obvious to everyone but him. What Trump does is only right and fair if Democrats could do the same thing without complaint from Republicans, and we all know that is impossible. There is only one explanation for why Rich can't see this: his undying group loyalty to all things Trump, MAGA, and Republican, and his us-versus-them blinders.