Lessons From Pandemic: Public Trust Easily Lost

Since the beginning of the pandemic, disciples of Dr. Anthony Fauci demanded adherence to science.    Anyone who challenged the octogenarian medical advisor was labeled a science denier. That shielded Dr. Fauci and his partners at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from legitimate professional criticism.

With the protection of the legacy media, Dr. Fauci and the CDC pushed for isolating an entire country and in the process shut down the world's biggest economy.  They issued calls for mask and vaccination mandates.  They lectured Americans on how many family members could attend a Christmas gathering.

In the beginning,  Americans generally heeded the health warnings. They were frightened by dire news reporting, often lacking context, about the virus.  The New York Times and other newspapers carried updated COVID death and case counts on the front pages. Fear was a weapon for compliance.

When miracle vaccines were introduced at the end of 2020, there appeared a light at the end of pandemic tunnel. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris evolved from suggesting the vaccines were rushed into production to becoming its biggest cheerleaders. Vaccines would halt the pandemic.

Administration officials, including the president, donned masks on every occasion, even wearing one as they walked  to the podium in a nearly empty room.  They were following the science.  Masks work to protect the wearer from spreading or contracting the contagious virus. No one questioned the science.

Just when there appeared to be a rising optimism for a return to normal, President Biden unleashed executive orders to require vaccinations for Americans in businesses, government, the military and health care workers.  The federal government usurped responsibility for Americans' health decisions,.

This appeared to many legal scholars to be unConstitutional, a breach of freedom.  Court cases were filed by a growing number of states. Americans were divided into two camps: those who believed it was necessary to force Americans to get the jab versus those who wanted to make their own choice.

By mid-year in 2021, more Americans were wearying of the never ending mandates.  They wanted to exercise their right of freedom from authoritarian rules.  States began lifting mask mandates, opening schools, liberating citizens from Washington's vaccination obsession and resuming normal life.

Clearly,  politics not science is carrying the day. Never was it more clear when Democrat states New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts and California announced last week they are revising or dropping mask mandates.  Mandates are deeply unpopular with voters.

Ironically, these moves come at a time when the spread of COVID remains rampant.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans are getting infected every day.  More than 3,000 are dying. In January, COVID killed more Americans than the flu has in three years.  There were 55,000 deaths, reports the CDC.

The seven-day fatality average in January was the highest point it has been since last winter before vaccines were widely available. Omicron is expected to push the U.S. total deaths past the one million mark, according to Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at University of California-Irvine.

So has the science of masks and vaccinations changed?  Mask policies are the victim of an admission by the CDC that a cloth mask is virtually useless against the spread of COVID.  And there have been thousands and thousands of so-called breakthrough cases of the fully vaccinated.

This month the CDC released a report showing that the effectiveness of the booster shot for fully vaccinated individuals begins to wane just four months after the jab, adding to public skepticism.  In another surprising move, the FDA postponed its decision on a Pfizer vaccine for children four and under.  

These are signs of a broad concession that vaccines are not the Holy Grail scientists once thought they were.  The are better than no protection against COVID, especially for high risk Americans, but the vaccines do not last as long as the CDC and Dr. Fauci claimed at one time.

As a result, there has been a near total collapse of faith in the government, the CDC and Dr. Fauci in particular, when it comes to the pandemic.  A NewsNationaPoll, conducted by Decision Desk HQ, found that a meager 15.5% trust the president and only 31% trust Dr. Fauci.

Other polls may show higher trust levels, but the research confirms Americans are losing faith in public health officials, particularly those in Washington.  An ABC News survey found that 43% of Americans do not trust the CDC.  Faith in Mr. Biden on the Coronavirus skidded to 37% in January.

The new media fared even worse.  One poll found that only one-in-ten Americans trust the information churned out by the news media on the pandemic.  At the same time, fully two-thirds of Americans trust the advice of their primary care provider on COVID.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll reflects the growing resentment of Americans with continuing restrictions.  In the survey, 75% of Americans expressed frustration and fatigue over the current state of the COVID pandemic. Fully 77% believe it is inevitable most people will be infected.

Some Democrat and Republican governors, eyeing upcoming midterms, are feeling the heat. That explains the about face on mask mandates and the softening of vaccine mandates.  Despite the administration mandates, 63.6% of Americans are fully vaccinated as of January. 

Politics is trumping science.  As the pandemic has stretched through the months, the line between science and politics has been blurred. That partly explains the erosion of public trust.  However, in a pandemic, trust in government and in one's fellow citizens is key to successful communications.

Dr. Fauci and the CDC were cast in the dominant role of the disseminating information on the virus.  It was incumbent on those speaking for the administration to be accurate, transparent, and truthful. When decisions are communicated, Americans expect facts to support the health directive. 

Unfortunately, the keepers of the information fell into a pattern of vacillating between contradictory positions, often igniting the flames of disinformation.  Worst of all, instead of admitting mistakes or just acknowledging the answers were elusive, Washington's health officials were unrepentant. 

Meanwhile, scientists, epidemiologists and health experts who disagreed with the prevailing advice from Dr. Fauci and the CDC were censored.  They were booted off social media.  Their studies were scrubbed from scientific websites  Despite their credentials, they were not allowed to have a dissenting opinion.

The censorship was conducted with the full-throated backing of Dr. Fauci, the CDC and the administration.  The move backfired.  When you end debate on a novel virus and insist on only one version of science, public mistrust deepens.  Americans are smarter than government officials believe.  

Now even Dr. Fauci has joined the billowing chorus of health officials in predicting the "full blown" pandemic could be ending soon.  He admitted that more health decisions will "increasingly be made at the local level rather than centrally" mandated.  

Then the face of the pandemic did the unthinkable by adding: "There will also be more people making their own decision on how they want to deal with the virus." Hate to burst his self-inflated ego but many Americans have been doing this since the winter of 2020 passed.

The inimitable doctor and the CDC should take stock of their communications missteps.  The lesson is trust is easily lost if Americans believe they are not getting the entire story.  Every contradictory directive, unexplained advisory and inflexible restriction chips away at public trust.

Communications also should be tailored to specific audiences.  At the start of the pandemic, more information should have been directed at the most vulnerable: the elderly, immune compromised and those with comorbidities.  Instead, the government aimed its information at the general public.

Defenders of Dr. Fauci and the CDC will retort: the COVID virus was an epidemiological mystery that required more than a year to unravel. Fair enough.  But it behoved officials to admit they didn't have all the answers. Temper advice with a caution that it is subject to change as more facts are known.

In a free society, health officials will fail or succeed in dealing with a pandemic by mobilizing public trust in the government and among its citizens.  A thorough airing of the contrarian views from health experts is healthy. Showing trust in citizens to do the right thing is crucial. 

Those are valuable lessons for health authorities to remember during the next pandemic.

Evidence Mounts Virus Escaped From Wuhan Lab

A  clump of square buildings hunker in the forests of Wuhan China.  At the epicenter is a windowless steel structure, which houses a bio-safety level 4 laboratory. The sterile lab handles some of the world's most contagious pathogens and also conducts classified research for the Chinese military.

The facility is located just a few kilometers from a "wet market" where the first Coronavirus infections  emerged. In recent weeks, the Chinese scientific lab has bolted into the headlines as scientists take a fresh look at a once discredited theory that a leak at the facility may have been the origin of the Coronavirus.

Nearly 18 months ago, the official version circulated by American and Chinese health officials claimed the virus spread from the market, where vendors sell meat, fish, produce and some live animals. Scientists agreed the Coronavirus was naturally transmitted from a bat to humans. Few questioned the thesis.

A brave scientist speculated the virus may have spread as a result of an inadvertent leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (WIV).  Molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright expressed concerns because of previous leaks at labs in Beijing.  Facebook and Google banned any discussion of the lab leak theory. 

In recent weeks, a drizzle of conjecture has evolved into a downpour of circumstantial as well as unambiguous evidence that the Coronavirus may be linked to a leak from the Wuhan facility, despite continued and often contentious denials from Communist Chinese officials.

Last year President Trump publicly speculated the virus may have been engineered in a laboratory, fueling a firestorm of outrage from scientists and the media. They coordinated an attack on the accusation, demeaning it as a conspiracy theory.  The lab leak thesis was effectively banned. 

The Washington Post huffed that the president and his supporters were "fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts."  The New York Times labeled the claim a "fringe theory."  The media piled on to promote its narrative that Trump was solely to blame for the virus.

Still questions lingered in medical chat rooms and among scientists whose concerns were never made public.  There were coincidences too foreboding to deny.  However, Dr. Anthony Fauci led a chorus of scientists who blotted out even the possibility of a leak being the origin for the pandemic.

A recently-released trove of emails from Dr. Fauci, the government's top specialist during COVID, revealed at the time he was pooh-poohing the leak publicly, he and his associates and colleagues privately discussed the possibility that the virus had indeed escaped from the Wuhan lab.

As early as last January, Dr. Fauci was alerted about the suspicious characteristics of COVID samples.  Kristian Anderson and five virologists, noted "unusual features" in the virus and added "one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered." 

Anderson also noted in his email to Dr. Fauci that he and his team "all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from an evolutionary theory."  The team's initial impression later flip-flopped, but they offered no evidence to support their new claim the laboratory scenario was no longer plausible.

The emails were publicly disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Judicial Watch.  The duplicity of Dr. Fauci was further exposed when another FOIA request uncovered U.S. tax-payer funding of the Wuhan lab, in spite of the virologist's earlier denials in a Senate hearing.

Pressed  again on the matter, Dr. Fauci told lawmakers the government granted $600,000 in funding over a five year period.  But documents furnished by the Health and Human Services divulged that between 2014 and 2019, the U.S. provided $826,277 in taxpayer funds. 

The money came from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) directed by Dr. Fauci.  Documents show the funds were provided over a six-year period for "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." NIAID funneled the money through a third party, EcoHealth Alliance.

Perhaps, it was just a coincidence that the Wuhan lab was conducting studies on bats and Coronavirus at the time of the outbreak.  The U.S. State Department raised eyebrows in January when it released a bombshell fact sheet that was generally ignored by a partisan media.

The fact sheet confirmed Wuhan was conducting experiments on a bat virus, including "gain of function" research on the engineering of "chimeric viruses" or man-made pathogens.

Gain of function is used to describe a process that alters an organism or a disease in a way that increases its pathogenesis, transmission or the types of hosts it can infect. Done ethically, this type of research is useful because it allows scientists to develop vaccines and medicines for treatment.

In the wrong hands, this research could be used to engineer an existing virus for rapid transmission or to cause a pandemic pathogen to replicate more quickly, increasing the spread to humans.  Research groups in the EU and US both regulate the oversight of this process in most labs to ensure safety.

In its document, the State Department insisted it had "reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV (Wuhan lab) became sick in the autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."

Vanity Fair reported some officials at the State Department were explicitly told not to explore the Wuhan lab's "gain of function" research because it would bring what the publication described as "unwelcome" attention on U.S. government funding of the research. It would open "a can of worms" the outlet said.

The State Department claims triggered questions about the credibility of Wuhan lab's senior researcher Shi Zhengli who said there were "zero infections" among the WIV staff.  Denials from Chinese officials escalated in the face of a Wall Street Journal investigative report that fueled renewed speculation.

NBC News, quoting U.S. intelligence officials, followed with a broadcast revealing that a database of more than 22,000 virus samples at the Wuhan lab were removed from public view for so-called security reasons.  The disclosure cast a shadow over the probe by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Peter B. Embark, the head of the WHO group that investigated the origins, admitted in late February that his group "didn't do an audit of any of these labs, so we don't really have hard facts or detailed data done at the Wuhan lab." Yet he still contended it was "extremely unlikely" the virus originated at the lab.

That explanation did not satisfy some virologists.  Last month, 18 virologists published a letter in Science criticizing WHO 's joint investigation with China.  "Although there were no finding in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident...the two theories were not given balanced consideration."

Even the WHO director general conceded the joint investigation's report lacked data to support its findings. The State Department backed by 13 countries said the WHO probe was "significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data samples."  

With interest heating up, Republicans are calling for President Biden to declassify all U.S. intelligence related to the Wuhan lab and the COVID-19 pandemic, so the American people can get answers they deserve.  Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan initially balked at releasing the intel.

This is the moment for politicians to put aside their differences and use the full resources of the government  to investigate the lab leak theory.  There has been too much government foot-dragging, failed probes derailed by China and a lack of transparency on this critical matter. 

What's maddening is why it has taken so long for the country's chief pandemic expert Dr. Fauci to unequivocally determine the origin of a deadly virus that killed nearly 600,000 Americans. The media has been complicit by its lazy reporting of the standard, approved version of the origin.

Why was it so critical for Dr. Fauci and other scientist to cling to the wet market theory?  Why did it take 18 months for the circumstantial evidence to appear in the public domain?  Was scientific curiosity shelved until after a presidential election because Coronavirus was the Democrats' campaign gift?

Don't expect answers to those questions from the administration, the media or the party in power. The opinion here is the wet market thesis will never be overturned.  The lab leak scenario will be swept under the Oval Office carpet after a "show" investigation.  There is no appetite to rattle relations with China.

Covid 19: The Facts The Media Won't Report

Americans grappling with the Coronavirus need facts instead of half-baked worst case scenarios.  The news media in collusion with politicians continue to sow seeds of fear, paralyzing the nation, promoting hoarding of food and condemning anyone voicing optimism instead of gloom.

The disinformation avalanche among dubious scientists, politically active doctors, past administration officials, uninformed journalists and the World Health Organization (WHO) has overwhelmed the public with a dizzying array of conflicting reports and dire projections.

In point of fact, the head of WHO has warned of a massive "infodemic", an overabundance of data and information, some accurate and most inaccurate, that makes it difficult for "people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when we need it."  Amen.

Most worst case scenarios are based on models that assume minimal government intervention, hospital bed shortages, doctors too sick to treat patients, lack of a strict quarantine and no school closures.  Using this model, a European journalist projected 100 million cases.  This is not credible.  

The news media is the most unreliable source of unbiased, scientific information and data.  My advice is tune it out.  Turn to the experts in infectious diseases.  Those include Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Using the data from those three sources, here are facts the mainstream media, including Fox News, have not reported in their haste to dish up around-the-clock, audience boosting, Apocalyptic  perspectives on COVID-19. Note: All data below is as of March 21 from CDC, Johns Hopkins and NIH.

•  83% of all the deaths reported have been in just four countries: China, Italy, Spain and Iran.
• 57% of all the cases worldwide have been reported in those same four countries.
• 94,176 individuals globally have recovered from the virus without complications.
• The fatality rate worldwide is 0.4%, one of the least lethal viruses in recent times.
• The worldwide death rate for those 80+ is 14.8%.
• Infected patients over age 65 account for 80% of U.S. deaths.
• The current fatality rate in the U.S. is .01%, identical to the seasonal flu deaths (.01%).

Those highest risk of infection are elderly, especially those with with preexisting conditions.  Here are the death rates for those seniors, calculated by Worldometer a respected reference website. The stats are fatality rates for those infected with the virus with the following preexisting conditions:

• Cardiovascular Disease  13.2%
• Diabetes 9.2%
• Hypertension  8.4%
• Chronic Respiratory Disease 8.0%
• Cancer 7.6%

These are facts not hyperbole.  The numbers cited above clearly indicate most Americans are not at a high risk even if that contract the virus. That fact has been absent from most news articles and from many medical experts rhapsodizing on television.

Yet alarmists persist, in spite of the statistics, claiming this virus is more deadly than any we have faced.  This is patently false.  The SARS death rate was 9.6% and MERS was 34%.  Even though COVID 19 rates are in flux, credible sources put the worldwide fatality rate at 0.4%. 

In an effort to make the current crisis appear likely to escalate, some health officials are warning this could be another 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed 50 million people worldwide and infected 500 million individuals.  About 675,000 Americans died of complications from the Spanish Flu.

Certainly, those are frightening numbers.  However, what the experts do not tell you is that comparing the health care in 1918 to today is akin to the comparing automobiles from that era to the present. To being with, there were no vaccines and no antibiotics to fight the infection in 1918.

Health care was limited to non-pharmaceutical intervention.  In other words, people sheltered in place.  That was the only available tool to fight the spread of the disease.  The number of hospitals in the U.S. in 1918 is dwarfed by the modern facilities we have today in the country.

Any "expert" using the 1918 virus as a predictor of what will happen in America today is an irresponsible charlatan.  

The view of many politically motivated journalists and those who have lobbied for a Draconian lockdown of America can be summarized in this opinion piece from Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan who penned the following:

"Is all this an overreaction?  If it is, we'll recover.  If we're too cautions we'll realize after a while and we'll all get angry at the economic cost of it and have big arguments and fights.  But we'll be here to argue and fight."

This tortured logic, which has been repeated often by politicians, exhibits a callous disregard for the millions of Americans who will be laid off, unable to feed their families, suffer economic hardships, forfeit their life savings in the stock market, lose their homes or be forced on welfare.

These average Americans are viewed by the media as collateral damage. But isn't it interesting that every sports superstar or Hollywood celebrity who contracts the virus becomes "breaking news."  These folks have fortunes to sustain them whatever the adversity.  Others have no safety net. 

While the media and critics continue to complain about the lack of a vaccine, here is a sobering observation from Johns Hopkins.  "A new vaccines might be at least 12 to 18 months away though new drug treatments will likely come sooner," the School of Public Health reported on its website.

The good news is that Johns Hopkins is leading a pioneering effort using plasma recovered from survivors of the Coronavirus as a treatment for those infected as well as a prevention of infection.  With cooperation from the FDA, the plasma treatment could be rolled out in three to four weeks.

This strategy is already being used in China, which has shipped plasma to Italy. Johns Hopkins experts say the plasma is very safe because it is screened for bloodborne pathogens.  Blood transfusions are some of the most regulated industries in the U.S. and one of the safest.

Early results also show that a common drug used to treat malaria offers promise in arresting he Coronavirus.  The drug has the advantage of already being approved by the FDA and supplies are readily available throughout the country.  Testing and trails have begun in earnest.  

These examples are evidence that America is not standing still waiting for some miracle to spare us from the Coronavirus.  The entire scientific community, pharmaceutical companies and global healthcare institutions are actively racing to find a treatment and a vaccine.

Americans need to be informed that once this epidemic subsides that the risk of future pandemics is mushrooming every year with global business and pleasure travel, worldwide supply chains where medicines and health products and other goods are regularly transported across borders.

The incidence of infectious disease calamities has more than doubled from the 1940's to the 1960's, according to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York based nonprofit research group.  The rates of such incidents surged in the 1980's with the advent of HIV and is escalating, the group reports.

This century alone the world has confronted a legion of viral scares, including SARS in 2002 and 2003, the swine flu (H1N1) in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014 to 2016, Zika in 2015 and Dengue fever in 2016. The United States survived these outbreaks without a nationwide lockdown.

America and the world needs a post mortem after the Coronavirus subsides to assess how we dealt with the pandemic without playing the blame game.  What can we do next time to minimize economic and social disruption and still protect people?  That should be the objective of any plan.      

If there is a beacon of hope in this current panic, it has been the response of average Americans.  Teachers are preparing lunches for school children who depend on this meal. One Texas school teacher is hosting a Facebook video to teach homebound kids to play chess.

Restaurants are offering take-out food to keep their businesses running and provide employment for their hourly wage workers.  Students in a small Nebraska community are making get well cards for those with the virus.  Pharmacies are open, dispensing critical medications to sick people.  

The Food Bank and extraordinary volunteers are distributing groceries to shut-ins and the elderly.  Churches are conducting online services.  I have observed kindnesses of complete strangers who share their food, toilet paper and disinfectants.  This should make everyone proud to be an American.

And let's not forget the real heroes--those doctors, nurses, medical assistants, hospital emergency room personnel and other healthcare workers who are on the frontlines in the battle against this virus. They have put their own health at risk to save others.  There is no more noble sacrifice.    

Our resilient nation will survive this emergency just as we always have.  Put your faith in God and not in the government to end this trauma.  He remains our eternal hope. This trial too shall pass. After it does, let a grateful nation bend its knees in praise of our Creator.