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NIAID Director Fauci carefully and deliberately misled Senator Burr, who asked a direct question about Ebola transmission via fomites. Dr. Fauci did not say he didn't know, or couldn't answer. His credibility is gone, and so is that of the NIAID while he is in office.

I have professional expertise here. I once broke a defense psychiatrist on the witness stand in cross-examination, and did the research which destroyed Carl Sagan's scientific career over the radiological part of the Nuclear Winter hoax. S.Fred Singer did the deed based on my research. I spotted Sagan's fraud the instant I read it - this is in my FREEP posting history.

The MSDConline (Canadian) website description of Ebola states at:

http://www.msdsonline.com/resources/msds-resources/free-safety-data-sheet-index/ebola-virus.aspx

"SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days"

and referenced a footnote 23 for this which has since conveniently disappeared from that website.

Dark Wing was entirely correct. Dr. Fauci misled Senator Burr more from reflex PR than for any and all policy reasons. But this will kill far more Americans from fully justified distrust of the federal government concerning Ebola, should there be more than a few cases of it here, than any good which Dr. Fauci's lie here might do.

NIAID Director Fauci carefully and deliberately misled Senator Burr, who asked a direct question about Ebola transmission via fomites. Dr. Fauci did not say he didn't know, or couldn't answer.

I know exactly where Dr. Fauci is coming from--he does what many scientists do when asked a question they cannot answer. What I do in that exact same situation is "think out loud" while talking about related matters, to try to come to a logical answer. Then I might eventually arrive at an answer that is close to being the answer to the question, but does not actually answer the question. This is not an attempt at being deceitful or trying to mislead--rather, it is the scientists' attempt at giving a layperson the scientists' perspective on the question.

I happen to be extremely good at talking a lot without ever, in some cases, answering the specific question asked. But, to my thinking, giving an answer on a related subject is nearly as good. I've let my audience know what I know, and hopefully left them with the same shortfalls of knowledge on the subject that I have. I do sometimes preface an answer with "That's a very good question!" which means, "I have no clue what the answer is, but I'm going to talk your ears off anyway." But that's the only hint I ever give that I don't know.

There really are not answers to transmissibility in fomites. The experiments have not been done, for the most part, and the few that *have* been done were inadequate in some very important ways. There is an updated version of that MSDS at http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php; from a quick skimming of the document, I would say that its author(s) came up with the same problems that everyone else who reads the literature comes up with. There are no answers, the experiments have not been done.