It's good to see people starting to wake up and realize what a huckster Fauci has been this last year. He lives for the spotlight and shifts his opinions to suit that need for the spotlight.
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/art...he_775628.html
Interesting, this comes around the same time as an analysis of the complete failure of the containment/mitigation that Fauci pushed:
https://fee.org/articles/costs-of-co...hers-conclude/
The mitigation efforts not only cost lives (suicides in particular - with many more deaths likely to still come, with delayed cancer diagnoses), for younger people it cost an average 100k, all to extend their lives an average of 7.5 HOURS. For 89 percent of the population, there was essentially zero benefit, at high cost (which will likely continue in coming months as eviction moratoriums begin to lift and people begin to lose their apartments and rental homes, later cancer gets treated finally, addictions that developed during the lockdowns continue to worsen, etc.)
Brilliant work there, Fauci.
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/art...he_775628.html
It’s nice to see that Anthony Fauci is beginning to earn the solid international reputation that he deserves. Yen Makabenta, an acute observer and regular contributor to the Manila Times, recently acknowledged Dr Fauci as COVID’s “fearmonger-in-chief.” At long last, a departure from treating Fauci as an infallible demigod.
Dr Fauci’s panic patina started to become obvious as his much feared post-2020 holiday season “surge on top of a surge” failed to materialize. Rather than an objective and dispassionate scientist, it began to appear that Fauci is more a brilliant cheerleader for catastrophe, unerringly finding and fanning the flames of fear for the worst-of-all-possible-worlds scenario.
Over the opening months of 2021 Dr. Fauci’s gleaming ineptitude has been further burnished by repeated warnings of “impending doom” (to borrow from his colleague, Dr. Walensky):
None of Fauci’s above warnings have any basis in empirically derived fact. Indeed, none of these warnings is even rational.
(cont. in link)
Dr Fauci’s panic patina started to become obvious as his much feared post-2020 holiday season “surge on top of a surge” failed to materialize. Rather than an objective and dispassionate scientist, it began to appear that Fauci is more a brilliant cheerleader for catastrophe, unerringly finding and fanning the flames of fear for the worst-of-all-possible-worlds scenario.
Over the opening months of 2021 Dr. Fauci’s gleaming ineptitude has been further burnished by repeated warnings of “impending doom” (to borrow from his colleague, Dr. Walensky):
- In mid-February there were major blizzard-induced delays in COVID new case reporting, followed immediately by a compensatory upswing in reporting. Dr. Fauci, referencing one of the myriad of omnipresent COVID dashboards, informed the nation that this glitch in reporting was not an accounting artifact, but in fact “a plateau” in the US national epidemic curve (it wasn’t), heralding the next deadly “surge” (it didn’t).
- In March, following the withdrawal of the statewide mask mandate in Texas, Dr. Fauci warned the world that Texas would soon be in the grip of a new COVID surge. When this particular prophecy of doom failed to make its appearance, he admitted that absence of a new Texas “surge” was “confusing.” Dr. Fauci went on to speculate that it might be due to everyone in Texas displaying their Neanderthal worldview by “doing things outside”(c’mon, man, really?).
- In April, at the recurrence of a spring outbreak in Michigan (just like last year), Dr. Fauci sounded the alarm that Michigan was likely the “bellwether” for the “fourth wave” in the US. As it turns out, the “dire” Michigan outbreak epidemic curve peaked on or about April 5, two days before Fauci’s April 7 “bellwether” pronouncement. This “disturbingly high level” of new COVID cases in the US peaked out on April 9, accompanied by a monotonic decline in new COVID associated deaths, which continues through today. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, of course, made more headlines at that press conference with her lurid confession of “recurring feelings of impending doom” and being “scared” by “bellwether” Michigan.
- As we make our way into May, Dr. Fauci insists that herd immunity can be reached only when 80-90% of the population have been vaccinated, due to the dire ravages of the B.1.1.7 strain of SARS-CoV-2, better known as the “British variant.” His latest foray into fanning the flames of doom ignores the transmission characteristics of a viral pathogen whose R value has never been reasonably calculated as higher than about 3.8 (50% higher than the wild type R value of 2.5). This yields a first order estimate of herd immunity threshold occurring at something like a 73% prevalence of immunity in the human population (not 80 to 90%). Further, Dr. Fauci ignores that 30% or so of the US population have recovered from and are immune to SARS-CoV-2 infection, thus reducing the need for vaccine induced immunity to something like 45% in order to reach a herd immunity threshold. Finally, Dr. Fauci seems uninterested in the body of research which strongly suggests that somewhere between 10 and 30% of the human population is able to mount a robust immune response to SARS-CoV-2 even in the absence of exposure to the virus. Investigators believe that this may be due to exposure to other so-called “common cold” coronaviridae. If even 10% of the US population can mount such a response, this could drop the need for vaccine induced immunity to as little as 35% of the population. Better, though, according to the dogma of Dr. Fauci, to cling to the impossible goal of 80 to 90% vaccination prevalence, which allows him to declare herd immunity an impossibility, mandating all the rest of us to: stay home indefinitely, wear two masks at all times, nurture symptoms of anxiety disorder with panic attacks (the symptoms reported by Dr. Walensky), and wait breathlessly for the next pronouncement by Dr. Tony Fauci. This is called “following the science” and “saving lives.”
None of Fauci’s above warnings have any basis in empirically derived fact. Indeed, none of these warnings is even rational.
(cont. in link)
https://fee.org/articles/costs-of-co...hers-conclude/
This article is excerpted from the FEE Daily, a daily email newsletter where FEE Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo brings you news and analysis on the top free-market economics and policy stories. Click here to sign up.
COVID mitigation measures were always a question of costs and benefits, of good intentions versus unintended consequences. Two health researchers just concluded that for roughly 89 percent of Americans the benefits of both voluntary and government mitigation efforts alike have been vastly outweighed by their costs.
“The list of [pandemic policy] mistakes is long, but the most glaring was the failure to understand and act on the virus’s propensity to attack the old and vulnerable,” pharmaceutical consultant Charles L. Hooper and Hoover Institution health economist David R. Henderson write in the Wall Street Journal. “Policy makers failed, in other words, to understand the enemy.”
They looked at the fact that COVID-19 death rates varied widely among age groups, with an 85-year-old roughly 2,000 times more likely to die from the coronavirus than an 18-year-old. Then, they calculated the expected life years lost from infection for different age groups. Using this, the researchers estimated the value gained, on average, from mitigation measures for individuals of different age groups.
They weighed this against the costs of mitigation measures, which include “reduced schooling, reduced economic activity, increased substance abuse, more suicides, more loneliness, reduced contact with loved ones, delayed cancer diagnoses, delayed childhood vaccinations, increased anxiety, lower wage growth, travel restrictions, reduced entertainment choices, and fewer opportunities for socializing and building friendships.”
The result?
Hooper and Henderson conclude that—only looking at economic, not social costs—mitigation efforts cost young people $102,000 but only preserved an average of 7.5 hours of life per individual.
https://twitter.com/nickgillespie/st...rs-conclude%2F
“Would you pay $102,000 to live an extra 7.5 hours?” the researchers ask. “What 18-year-old values his time at $13,600 an hour?” However, they find that for the elderly the benefits of mitigation efforts do exceed the costs: “The benefits of protection, measured in life expectancy, are 210 times as high for the older person.”
“Had policy makers understood the enemy, they would have adopted different protocols for young and old,” Hooper and Henderson conclude. “Politicians would have practiced focused protection, narrowing their efforts to the most vulnerable 11% of the population and freeing the remaining 89% of Americans from wasteful burdens.”
I’d take it one step further.
The fact that costs and benefits associated with pandemic mitigation measures vary so enormously across different people is all the more reason to leave decision-making to the individual judgment level.
As Nobel-prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek wrote, “...the more the state ‘plans,’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” That’s why top-down dictates by bureaucrats who try to plan for all of society only lead to more dysfunction.
COVID mitigation measures were always a question of costs and benefits, of good intentions versus unintended consequences. Two health researchers just concluded that for roughly 89 percent of Americans the benefits of both voluntary and government mitigation efforts alike have been vastly outweighed by their costs.
“The list of [pandemic policy] mistakes is long, but the most glaring was the failure to understand and act on the virus’s propensity to attack the old and vulnerable,” pharmaceutical consultant Charles L. Hooper and Hoover Institution health economist David R. Henderson write in the Wall Street Journal. “Policy makers failed, in other words, to understand the enemy.”
They looked at the fact that COVID-19 death rates varied widely among age groups, with an 85-year-old roughly 2,000 times more likely to die from the coronavirus than an 18-year-old. Then, they calculated the expected life years lost from infection for different age groups. Using this, the researchers estimated the value gained, on average, from mitigation measures for individuals of different age groups.
They weighed this against the costs of mitigation measures, which include “reduced schooling, reduced economic activity, increased substance abuse, more suicides, more loneliness, reduced contact with loved ones, delayed cancer diagnoses, delayed childhood vaccinations, increased anxiety, lower wage growth, travel restrictions, reduced entertainment choices, and fewer opportunities for socializing and building friendships.”
The result?
Hooper and Henderson conclude that—only looking at economic, not social costs—mitigation efforts cost young people $102,000 but only preserved an average of 7.5 hours of life per individual.
https://twitter.com/nickgillespie/st...rs-conclude%2F
“Would you pay $102,000 to live an extra 7.5 hours?” the researchers ask. “What 18-year-old values his time at $13,600 an hour?” However, they find that for the elderly the benefits of mitigation efforts do exceed the costs: “The benefits of protection, measured in life expectancy, are 210 times as high for the older person.”
“Had policy makers understood the enemy, they would have adopted different protocols for young and old,” Hooper and Henderson conclude. “Politicians would have practiced focused protection, narrowing their efforts to the most vulnerable 11% of the population and freeing the remaining 89% of Americans from wasteful burdens.”
I’d take it one step further.
The fact that costs and benefits associated with pandemic mitigation measures vary so enormously across different people is all the more reason to leave decision-making to the individual judgment level.
As Nobel-prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek wrote, “...the more the state ‘plans,’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” That’s why top-down dictates by bureaucrats who try to plan for all of society only lead to more dysfunction.
Brilliant work there, Fauci.
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