Covid: The First Three Months (1 Viewer)

[Allan]

Anthony Fauci details the early days of the Covid pandemic.

In the first few days of 2020, the word coming out of Wuhan—a city of more than 11 million—suggested that the virus did not spread easily from human to human. Bob Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was already in contact with George Gao, his counterpart in China. During an early-January phone call, Bob reported that Gao had assured him that the situation was under control. A subsequent phone call was very different. Gao was clearly upset, Bob said, and told him that it was bad—much, much worse than people imagined.

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

www.theatlantic.com

 

[phoenix2020]

Anthony Fauci details the early days of the Covid pandemic.

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

www.theatlantic.com

Paywall / account wall?

 

[Allan]

Paywall / account wall?

Usually The Atlantic allows a few articles for free.

 

[The Stars Tremble]

Usually The Atlantic allows a few articles for free.

It doesn't for me, and it's been a few months at least since I tried to read an article there.

It's sad. I remember when The Atlantic was free for everyone. Why couldn't they make this particular article free, since it's about Covid? I think there's a moral duty of all publishers, to go free on this subject which there still is a lot of misinformation about.

 

[phoenix2020]

Usually The Atlantic allows a few articles for free.

Unfortunately I am not able to access it, and I am not aware of having read their articles in some time.

As an aside I do have an Apple News subscription and The Atlantic is included, however their July issue isn’t yet posted.

 

[The Stars Tremble]

Unfortunately I am not able to access it, and I am not aware of having read their articles in some time.

As an aside I do have an Apple News subscription and The Atlantic is included, however their July issue isn’t yet posted.

That's a shame. I would be good to hear Anthony Fauci's side of the story.

 

[Ginger Ale]

Do the ole' copy and paste, at least some of the good parts!

 

[Allan]

Do the ole' copy and paste, at least some of the good parts!

Then, in one Oval Office meeting, I mentioned to Trump that we were in the early stages of developing a COVID vaccine. This got his attention, and he quickly arranged a trip to the NIH. During his visit, Barney Graham told the president that within a couple of weeks, a Phase 1 trial would likely begin. The president asked, “Why can’t we just use the flu vaccine for this virus?” It was not the first or the last time that he seemed to conflate COVID with influenza.

What I came to realize is that our country is more profoundly divided than I’d ever understood. I remember a time when people expected diverse political opinions. You didn’t have to agree, but you respected one another enough to listen. Now the partisanship is so intense that people refuse to even try. They ignore facts in favor of tribal politics. That’s how you wind up with dangerous conspiracy theories. The controversy over masks illustrates a fundamental misperception of how science works. In reality, our understanding of COVID continually evolved, and our medical advice had to change to reflect this.

Trump began hearing from the Fox News star Laura Ingraham and others who were promoting the drug as a COVID treatment. People have long taken hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat malaria. It is also used to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Soon Trump began touting it to millions of worried Americans at our now-daily press briefings. But there were no clinical studies proving that this antimalarial drug would alleviate COVID. And it might even hurt people. The president seemed unable to grasp that anecdotes of how hydroxychloroquine might have helped some people with COVID did not translate into solid medical advice. This is when I realized that eventually, I would have to refute him publicly.

“Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work,” I told reporters. After that, they would inevitably ask me if I agreed with something Trump had said, such as the idea that COVID would disappear “like a miracle.” I would then have to respond with the truth: “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

 

[Ginger Ale]

!!!! I can't imagine what a nightmare Fauci faced trying to work with that guy!

 

[Allan]

!!!! I can't imagine what a nightmare Fauci faced trying to work with that guy!

I can't imagine either. The US has some of the best scientists and research institutions in the world and their nitwit boss is talking about injecting bleach.

 

[instagramsci]

Paywall / account wall?

It doesn't for me, and it's been a few months at least since I tried to read an article there.

It's sad. I remember when The Atlantic was free for everyone. Why couldn't they make this particular article free, since it's about Covid? I think there's a moral duty of all publishers, to go free on this subject which there still is a lot of misinformation about.

Do the ole' copy and paste, at least some of the good parts!

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

web.archive.org

when in doubt use the wayback machine

 

[Allan]

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

web.archive.org

when in doubt use the wayback machine

Thanks!

 

[Pyrite]

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

web.archive.org

when in doubt use the wayback machine

Thank you!

...Among those present was Barney Graham, a gentle giant of a man at 6 feet 5 inches tall, and one of the world’s foremost vaccinologists. For years, Barney had been leading a group of scientists trying to develop the optimal immunogens for vaccines injected into the body. (An immunogen refers to the crucial part of any vaccine that generates the immune response.) They had been working with Moderna on a vaccine platform called mRNA, the result of groundbreaking research conducted over many years by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who would win the Nobel Prize in 2023. “Get me the viral genomic sequence,” Barney said, “and we’ll get working on a vaccine in days.”

At this point, an FDA-approved vaccine had never before been made using mRNA technology, and although a lot of skepticism remained, my colleagues and I were very optimistic about it. Compared with other vaccines, the mRNA process is faster and more precise....

``````````````````

We were very, very lucky that Kariko and Weissman had the foresight - and the obstinance - to pursue their research into what for years seemed an unpromising line of work.

 

[Allan]

Dr Fauci is on Stephen Colbert tonight plugging his new book.

 

[Lovebug]

Usually The Atlantic allows a few articles for free.

Nope, a few paragraphs in it cuts me off, just when it gets interesting.

 

[Lovebug]

!!!! I can't imagine what a nightmare Fauci faced trying to work with that guy!

The man is brilliant and brave.

 

[Lovebug]

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

web.archive.org

when in doubt use the wayback machine

Thank you.
What an interesting read.

Now my family and I were barraged by emails, texts, and phone calls. I was outraged that my wife, Christine, and our daughters were harassed with foul language and sexually explicit messages, and threatened with violence and even death. I was angry and wanted to lash out. But these direct expressions of hatred did not distract or frighten me. I did not have time for fear. I had a job to do.

Think about that for a minute.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

In the second month of 2020 I lay on my sofa with oxygen saturation levels in the low 70's, a level at which most doctors would rush a patient to intensive care.
I could not breathe and I could not sleep. My throat and lungs were making noises one normally hears in a horror film.
My body was on fire.
It took three weeks to return to something where I could manage more than a minute or two of sleep without feeling like I was drowning.
By that point my O2 levels had crept up to somewhere in the mid-eighties.
It was another month before it got back to the low nineties.

By April 2021 my status as my wife's official VA caregiver allowed me early access to the Pfizer vaccine, and I finally felt like I might survive.



I did not expect another three years of idiots yelling and threatening me for wearing a mask and demanding I inject bleach up my butt.



Lucky to still be here.

 

[Pyrite]

Anthony Fauci details the early days of the Covid pandemic.

The First Three Months

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

www.theatlantic.com

Fauci Speaks His Mind on Trump’s Rages and Their ‘Complicated’ Relationship

In a new book, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci recounts a career advising seven presidents. The chapter about Donald J. Trump is titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.”

www.nytimes.com

...Dr. Fauci’s first encounter with Mr. Trump was before the coronavirus pandemic, at a White House ceremony where the president signed an executive order that called for improvements in the manufacturing and distribution of flu vaccines. After the event, Mr. Trump remarked to Dr. Fauci that he had never had a flu shot.

“When I asked him why, he answered, ‘Well, I’ve never gotten the flu. Why did I need a flu shot?’ I did not respond,” Dr. Fauci wrote. The implication was clear: The doctor was flabbergasted to discover that Mr. Trump knew so little about the purpose of vaccines....

 

[Peter]

I remember going for walks in the middle of the lockdowns (I was allowed out once a day for exercise as I live with people in the highest risk)
and I live near one of the busiest roads in the country (The A1) and it was just empty.
It's never going to be that way again, it was shocking and sobering.

 

[Napoleon]

“That’s how you wind up with dangerous conspiracy theories.”

Dangerous conspiracy theories like what Fauci was responsible for in the 80s when he did media rounds and falsely claimed people could get AIDS just by being in the same room and through ordinary, non-sexual, interaction with HIV-positive people?