#anthonyfauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci stops in Seattle for Fred Hutch Q&A, throws first pitch at Mariners game
Larry Corey (left) speaks with Anthony Fauci at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. (Fred Hutch Photo)
Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor and a leader of the country’s COVID-19 response, made a pit stop in Seattle for a fireside chat at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and to throw the first pitch at Tuesday night’s Mariners game.
Earlier on Tuesday Fauci sat down with Larry Corey, the former Fred Hutch president, for a conversation that covered everything from the country’s COVID-19 response to what keeps the 81-year-old up at night.
“I’m not even worried about my next nightmare. I’m living through my own worst nightmare,” Fauci said of the ongoing pandemic.
Fauci talked about his experience leading the fight against HIV, COVID-19, and now monkeypox. “Don’t ever underestimate, ever, an emerging infection,” he said. “You never know where it’s going.”
He also talked about combatting vaccine hesitancy and the rash of harassment against health officials. Fauci, a target of vitriol and death threats, was accompanied by several bodyguards.
Fauci received an honorary award from Fred Hutch called the Hutch Award, which was created in 1965 to honor major league pitcher Fred Hutchinson. His death led to the founding of the institute by his brother Bill Hutchinson, a Seattle surgeon. Fred was known for his service to others, and the award typically goes to a Major League Baseball player who has made an impact on society.
[
](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Anthonyfauci?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
gets mixed reception when introduced to throw out the first pitch at
[
@Mariners
](https://twitter.com/Mariners?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
vs
[
@Yankees
](https://twitter.com/Yankees?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
game in
[
](https://twitter.com/hashtag/seattle?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
[
pic.twitter.com/V9Wom7f0rI
— Matt Markovich (@mattmarkovich)
[
August 10, 2022
](https://twitter.com/mattmarkovich/status/1557186945028984832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
Fauci and Corey have known each other for decades, dating back to when Fauci spearheaded efforts to combat HIV at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which he has led since 1984.
Early in the pandemic, Fauci and his colleagues tapped Corey to run the COVID-19 Prevention Network, which coordinated the massive phase 3 clinical trials for shots made by Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and others. The COVID-19 vaccine group is patterned on the world’s largest publicly-funded network of HIV vaccine trials, also led by Corey.
Corey called Fauci “a great friend and an extraordinary human.” Read on for more highlights from Facui’s appearance at Fred Hutch. Answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
What keeps you up at night?
I don’t sleep anyway. People would always ask my what is your worst nightmare. If you go back and look at things I’ve written 20-to-30 years ago, it was the emergence of a new virus that’s respiratory-borne, that has a high degree of transmissibility, and that is capable of a high level of morbidity and mortality. I’m not even worried about my next nightmare, I’m living through my own worst nightmare. It’s the terrible gift that keeps giving. This is going into our third year in January. No one in their wildest dreams would have ever thought that we would have a virus that is as canny is this, that has already killed a million Americans. …This virus is playing a very cruel and nasty trick on us all.
On what the fall holds for COVID-19
Boosters are going to be extremely important because we know very clearly that immunity — at least against symptomatic infection, maybe not so much against severe disease — wanes at about four or five months. We’re concerned about there being a surge in the fall; we don’t know exactly when it’s going to occur. We will very likely be using a BA.4/BA.5 bivalent booster [against both prevalent strains]. It’s very likely that Pfizer will have it by the first or second week of September and Moderna will likely have it by the end of September, beginning of October.
On monkeypox
We have diagnostics, therapeutics, and we have vaccines, so it becomes an implementation issue.
On addressing vaccine hesitancy
This really is a heterogeneous group of people. If you make them unidimensional you’re going to miss the fact that some people don’t want to get vaccinated because they don’t have enough information; others have got so much misinformation thrown at them; and then others are just hardcore, there’s nothing that you’re going to do to change their minds. In the same way misinformation tends to flood the system, we try to flood the system with correct information that’s delivered in a non-pejorative way by trusted messengers. That’s the reason why I’ve done a lot of those public service announcements with rap groups. It works!
On congressional leaders who provide misinformation about COVID-19 and other scientific issues
Vote.
On what he tells young people in commencement speeches and elsewhere
Don’t accept as normal distortions of truth and reality. Because once you do that, truth doesn’t mean anything. We’ve got to keep pushing back against the distortions of reality that we see, we can’t give up and say it’s a waste of time.
On the “Fauci effect,” an increase in people pursuing biomedical science and public health
I happen to be a very visible person so it’s called the “Fauci Effect.” Trust me, I don’t get excited about that. In an era of the normalization of untruths and lies, and all the things you’re seeing going on in society from January 6 to everything else, people are craving consistency for integrity, for truth, and for people caring about people.
The other side of the coin of that, which is really painful and a shame, is the abuse that public health officials are getting for saying the truth about what’s going on. I’ve never seen in history physicians and public health officials getting harassed and threatened. Not just me, I get that all the time. That’s why I have these guys with things in their ears that are taking care of me. But that’s really horrible for public health when you have physicians and public health officials get harassed, and their family get harassed because they’re telling people to do things like get vaccinated or wear a mask.
On what the U.S. could have done differently about the initial COVID response
If we knew in the first weeks what we know now, we would have done everything different. But the country would not have been accepting of what we were saying. What we know now is that as we were looking at one or two cases, there were cases that were spreading throughout the country that turned into thousands, that turned into millions. Unlike what we originally thought, it isn’t just animal to human, it’s human to human transmission. It’s highly efficient human to human transmission. And it’s transmitted mostly by people with no symptoms. The entire CDC program was what’s called a syndromic program, which means you only tested people who have symptoms which retrospectively, was huge.
If we had said, I know this is going to be tough, but everyone is going to wear a mask and everybody’s going to stay say six feet from each other, people would have said, “But Dr. Fauci, there are only three cases in the country!” . And if I said, “Trust me!” it never would have happened.
Beers with a legend.
Thank you for your dedication, years of service and selfless example, Dr Fauci.
[
pic.twitter.com/v2buGCScfX
— Dr. Vin Gupta (@VinGuptaMD)
[
August 10, 2022
](https://twitter.com/VinGuptaMD/status/1557195260769406977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
On **the development of HIV treatments and the origins of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, which is the model for COVID-19 Prevention Network**
We developed an HIV clinical trials network before there were treatments. There was a lot of pushback from people in academic communities. But by the time we got the network going, we had a lot of drugs to test and that was really the success story. So next we said well, we’re going to need a vaccine network. It gets back to that Kevin Costner film: build it and they will come …From 1997 to 2000, we completely transformed HIV. People who previously had an eight-month lifespan were projected to have a normal lifespan.
On the origins of PEPFAR (the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)
I had known President George W. Bush, because following 9/11 there was the anthrax attack. I was put in charge of developing medical countermeasures against bioterrorism. We developed a very good relationship. I presented to the president a $500 million program to prevent mother-to-child transmission in Africa. He was so excited to actually save so many children from infections, that he said this is not enough. We came back with another plan. PEPFAR has now has saved between 18 and 20 million lives. The credit goes to George W. Bush.
posted by pod_feeder
Long-term CIA asset and "vaccine" enthusiast Bill "Depopulation" Gates reveals he holds profound contempt for what he considers the 7.8 billion "sub-human cattle" consuming "his resources" on "his planet."
#billgates #gates #depopulation #usa #billandmelindagatesfoundation #uk #CIA #vaccine #vaccines #mrna #ccp #ciaasset #jeffreyepstein #epstein #mrnavaccines #vaccination #fauci #anthonyfauci #fda #nih #niaid #cdc #peterdaszak #daszak #covid19 #wiv #covid #geneticengineering #rna #pathogenesis #wuhan #china #eu #wuhanlab #wuhaninstituteofvirology
#reptilianbrain #meme #memes
Faktencheck: Fünf Fakes über Affenpocken | DW | 03.06.2022
Wurde der Affenpocken-Ausbruch durch den Corona-Impfstoff von AstraZeneca verursacht? Stammt das Virus aus einem Labor? DW-Faktencheck hat die wichtigsten Verschwörungsmythen zu den Affenpocken überprüft.#Affenpocken #FakeNews #DWFaktencheck #BillGates #Corona-Impfung #Gürtelrose #Fotos #MünchnerSicherheitskonferenz #Labor #Wuhan #AnthonyFauci
Faktencheck: Fünf Fakes über Affenpocken | DW | 03.06.2022
COVID-19: U.S. could control COVID by spring 2022 if more people get shots -Fauci
The United States could get COVID-19 under control by early next year if vaccinations ramp up, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday, one day after Pfizer (PFE.N) won fuller FDA approval for its shot, with more potential approvals coming in the weeks ahead.
Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said in multiple television interviews and a White House press conference that full Food and Drug Administration approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine paves the way for more people to get inoculated, with potential approval for Moderna Inc's (MRNA.O) in the coming weeks and authorization for younger children by autumn. ...
Or, if I may offer an alternative interpretation:
The earliest possible timeframe for control of COVID-19 within the US is April 2022, and it will in all likelihood be later.
Given the current state of affairs, much later.
Welcome to Eternal Covid.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/LR2COZHKTZJ6PK66LW7GKCWXLE.jpg)
COVID-19: Aerosolization spread possible, not just droplets: Wear a Mask
John Campbell, RN PhD, in his April. 4, 2020 update notes that the coronavirus can be spread through aerosolized transmission (3m44s), meaning amounts which can be suspended in air for hours, and not just droplets, which rapidly fall to the ground, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci of the US White House Coronavirus Task Force. This revises previous understanding and is why universal wearing of even homemade masks is recommended when out in public.
Looking for a specific recommendation, the closest I find is this statement of Fauci's:
"Because of that and because of some recent information that the virus can actually be spread even when people just speak, as opposed to coughing and sneezing, the better part of valor is that when you’re out, and you can’t maintain that six-foot distance, to wear some sort of facial covering.
In "Face Coverings Help as Virus Can Spread by Talking, Fauci Says" (Bloomberg) April 3, 2020.
That piece continues:
Fauci stressed that the most important recommendation is still to keep six feet away from people, regardless of whether you’re wearing a face covering. And he said the face covering recommendation “should in no way ever take away from the availability of masks that are needed for the health-care providers.” The face covering recommendation is on top of the call to stay six feet away from people, “not as a substitute for it,” he said.
Via Wikipedia's Coronavirus Disease 2019 article, a reference to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine article "Rapid Expert Consultation on the Possibility of Bioaerosol Spread of SARS-CoV-2 for the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 1, 2020)". This is a letter -- that is, a credible account though. not formally reviewed research -- summarizing experience is several medical facilities directly treating confirmed, and often intubated COVID-19 patients. That is, close to a worst-case scenario:
A study of SARS-CoV-2 raises concerns about transmission via aerosols generated from droplet contaminated surfaces. Liu, et. al. collected 35 aerosol samples in two hospitals and public areas in Wuhan. From samples collected in patient care areas the highest concentration of virus was found in toilet facilities (19 copies m^3^), and in medical staff areas the highest concentrations were identified in personal protective equipment (PPE) removal rooms (18-42 copies m^3^). By comparison, in all but two crowded sites, the concentrations of virus found in public areas was below 3 copies m^3^. The authors conclude that a direct source of SARS-CoV-2 may be a virus-laden aerosol resuspended by the doffing of PPE, the cleaning of floors, or the movement of staff. It may be difficult to re-suspend particles of a respirable size. However, fomites could be transmitted to hands, mouth, nose or eyes without requiring direct respiration into the lungs.
(The paper is freely downloadable though an email address is requested but not verified. Any email-shaped string will suffice.)
Particle densities on tested surfaces in these facilities are relatively low -- if you're exposed. by this route, the inoculum, the amount of infectuous material received, is small. This is probably a low-risk exposure, especially for incidental contact. But the risk is measureable and non-zero. For those in constant or repeated exposure to such environments, e.g., public-facing positions, the risk is far greater than for those with occasional -- once a week or two, say -- exposures.
Upshots:
- This represents a change in prior medical understanding. And the advice I've previously relayed.
- Masks here are principally aimed at reducing transmission by the wearer, not to the wearer. You're protecting others far more tha yourself.
- Virus-grade masks -- N95 or equivalent -- should still be reserved for medical personnel, first responders, critical services workers, including grocery and other essential retail workers, and the confirmed or suspected ill with COVID-19.
- DIY and non-virus-grade masks offer limited to no protection against receiving the virus, and are NOT a substitute for other nonpharmaceutical interventions: staying at home, washing your hands, not touching your face, keeping a healthy distance of at least 6 feet / 2 meters preferably more. A false sense of security is a real risk itself.
- A used mask is an infected mask and must be sterilised before it can be safely handled. Boiling, heat, bleach, Lysol, hydrogen peroxide, UV light, or 60%+ alcohol, and possibly soap or detergent, are recommended treatments. Longer treatment is better, generally 5-10 minutes, even longer for UV. Certain mask materials can be damaged themselves by various decontamination processes.
Clarifying a point: there's never been a question to my mind that masks are effective at reducing disease transmission, the question has been whether universal wearing has been recommended, for the general population, given intrinsic shortages of supply. The question has always been who to deploy masks to for greatest common population benefit. And the answer, for now, is "even less-effective masks, to more people, is better".
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LsxVRnNGl5A&t=3m44s
#covid19 #coronavirus #faceMasks #DrFauci #AnthonyFauci #aerosols #StayTheFuckHome #WashYourHands #DontTouchYourFace