Are Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health
Organization our best guides through current events? Are we so
confident in their opinionsmodels of COVID-19 spread that we are willing to
risk whole economies? Is it possible that those authorities not only
miscalculate, but see such a small piece of the overall biomedical/social
picture that they are creating worse problems -- by shouting “fire” in a
crowded world theater?
I have reason to believe that
they will: As a postdoctoral fellow at Fauci’s NIAID from
2004-2009, and one of its few theoretical biologists, I found Dr. Fauci to
be exceptionally knowledgeable about all aspects of virus biology and immunity. So
it is difficult to understand why he and others are promoting models of
COVID-19 spread which all but completely ignore the likelihood that most people
will have powerful natural resistance against the virus (unless they are quite
old, have hypertension, smoke, or have other pre-existing lung or immunological
damage).
My guess, judging from
historical precedent, is that Dr. Fauci and his colleagues are just plain
afraid of what might happen, although we have no real data to
make a prediction about what actually will happen. After all,
they are human beings, and beings of a particular sort -- namely
doctors. Although imagining all hospital beds suddenly filled
with coughing people is something that terrifies them beyond belief -- as a few
have confided to me -- doctors sometimes underestimate how much care they could
provide to patients in their own homes, if it were absolutely necessary to do
so.
Nonetheless, it is a matter of
record that Dr. Fauci has tended to be somewhat unscientifically fatalistic
about the threat posed by a new emerging virus: likely,
that is why he and others predicted in 1984 that AIDS would spread through the
heterosexual population -- despite already available knowledge that homosexual
men, IV drug abusers, and hemophiliacs likely had defective antiviral
resistance to start with -- with HIV acting as the last straw.
Perhaps the least known aspect
of Fauci’s ascendancy to AIDS Czar in the 1980s is that it depended on
completely derailing the main train of late 20th century medical thought, which
was about to shift focus from viruses and bacteria to real human beings and
their chronic noninfectious problems that make them susceptible to microbes in
the first place. In fact, AIDS short-circuited the revolution in
clinical research that was happening at several leading centers like Roswell
Park Memorial Institute in the 1970s and early 80s.
In fact, one RPMI mathematician
had garnered such deep knowledge of human resistance to disease that she
predicted the AIDS epidemic itself -- 5 years before it
began. Sister Rosalie Bertell had studied nonlymphatic leukemia in
men as a way of getting a handle on to what extent X-ray exposure accelerates
aging. She reported her discovery to Congress in 1978 that a
subgroup of baby boomer men was aging 11.75 times faster than the general
population and were heading for breakdown of their bodies’ immune-regulatory
systems.
HIV, the human kaposi’s sarcoma
virus, and most other viruses are more nearly the straw that breaks a human
being’s overall physiological stability, including defenses against disease,
more than a true “cause” of disease. Even in COVID-19 cases, mainly
those people who are old, have weakened immune systems, are stressed, or smoke,
are unable to fight it off. We need to know more about our natural
resistancemechanisms to COVID-19 so that we can help nature with
vaccines.
As much as I admire Tony Fauci
as a national dad, who makes people feel safe during times of crisis, we need a
national mom who will not only explain how best to boost our natural immunity
but marshal the best scientific minds to create broader and more realistic
mathematical models that include not just human innate resistance to viruses
but effects of quarantining millions of people on their mental and physical
health -- and on national economies.
As Stanford statistician John Ioannidis recently pointed out, we don’t
have anyreliable data upon which to make such a
determination. I agree. But as a rough guesstimate, I would wager
there is about a 1:100 chance that COVID-19 will overwhelm our hospital
resources, and about a 1:1000 chance it will become a virus as lethal as
HIV. Although those are real possibilities, it is an absolute
certainty that Dr. Fauci’s, CDC’s, and WHO’s recommendations, if followed to the
letter, will destroy economies and cause widespread mental and physical
disease.
Brandon P. Reines’s academic appointments include adjunct
assistant professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of
Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Visiting Fellow, Department of Applied
Mathematics, Australia National University
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/fear_not_science_guides_our_current_approach_to_covid19.html