Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #122
9/24/2020
1) Dr. Paul KO’s Dr. Fauci
Dr. Rand Paul gave a near perfect recitation of the current facts and evidence: New York and New Jersey had the worst outcome in the entire world. The Swedish approach — light touch — was a fraction. The U.S. death rate overall is now worse than Sweden. Dr. Paul then went through a summary of the burgeoning literature on cross-reactive immunity.
Dr. Anthony “New York Did It Right” Fauci responded with either brazen dishonesty or shocking ignorance, praising New York again and saying: “If you believe 22% is herd immunity, I believe you’re alone in that.”
Of course, Dr. Paul is far from alone.
Dr. Fauci certainly has a right to disagree with scientific research from world-leading experts, whose papers have found herd immunity thresholds in the 15 to 25 percent range. But that would require acknowledging they exist and explaining why he disagrees; that’s science. What Fauci did was political grandstanding.
The best summary of the literature was published last week in the British Medical Journal, finding at least six studies showing significant cross-reactive immunity (which Fauci claimed doesn’t exist) and therefore low herd immunity thresholds:
https://www.bmj.com/content/
Dr. Gabriela Gomes finds low herd immunity thresholds even without assuming cross-reactive immunity, simply from the heterogeneity of population mixing — in brief, the super spreaders who account for a large portion of personal contacts also have an outsize effect on community immunity once they are immune. Her model has been refined to fit actual empirical data, unlike the doomsday models Fauci clings to.
Here are two of her key papers:
https://www.medrxiv.org/
https://www.medrxiv.org/
And here are some other key papers on this issue:
https://science.sciencemag.
https://www.medrxiv.org/
https://science.sciencemag.
That last one was funded by the agency Dr. Fauci runs, the NIH NIAID. Fauci did an extensive interview about it published on August 11 in which he admitted: “It’s sort of like a one-two punch. It’s conceivable that the T cells that you’ve made in response a couple of years ago — three, four, five years ago — when you were exposed to a relatively benign coronavirus that causes the common cold, could actually hang around, and when you’re exposed to the SARS-Coronavirus-2, could have some degree of protection.”
As for Sweden, these is no other explanation for its deaths and ICUs falling to near zero with no lockdowns and no masks except population immunity. Not to mention that Norway admitted its brief lockdown and school closures were based on panic not science and they wouldn’t do it again. All of the Nordics settled into a pretty Swedish approach after brief lockdowns.
Plus, we now have 3 “American Swedens” in Florida, Texas and Arizona where infections and hospitalizations went way up and came right back down with very light containment measures – outperforming New York and New Jersey handily.
All of this is not just an academic tiff. The left, led by Fauci, refuse, even eight months into this pandemic to concede that the “lockdowns” were a catastrophic mistake, not just economically, but from the perspective of health. They continue to lead nations like Australia, Canada, and the UK over a health and economic cliff.
2) Dr. Atlas Cleans Up Another Dr. Redfield Mess
And speaking of intellectual mismatches, White House health task force member Scott Atlas schooled CDC Director Robert Redfield on Wed. Redfield stepped in it again when he intentionally scared the bejesus out of Americans with his claim that upwards of 90 percent of Americans are still susceptible to COVID. As Dr. Atlas’ press briefing yesterday, that is based on old data and contradicts the most recent findings:
Dr. Atlas walked through the most current research on cross-reactive and T-cell immunity, explained that the CDC antibody data is in many places up to five months out of date, and recommended that the rude reporter from NBC who said “you’re not telling the science” take a look at the work of top scientists like Harvard’s Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Stanford’s Dr. John Ioannidis, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and the Oxford team led by Dr. Sunetra Gupta.
The snide comment from the NBCer was just the latest effort from the left to discredit Dr. Atlas. They hate that the president has an adviser giving him accurate fact-based analysis because it doesn’t fit their narrative that Trump is anti-science.
We previously reported on the attack on Dr. Atlas his own left-wing Stanford Medical Center colleagues. We should follow up to note that they were chastised by Provost Persis Drell Faculty Senate Chair Judith Goldstein for that stunt, noting it was “an inappropriate use of our official Academic Council email list” that was “not consistent with policy.” They noted that it “will not happen again.”
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