Posted on 03/28/2022 8:17:08 AM PDT by lightman
Dr. Anthony Fauci flagged an article in an email to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), highlighting portions that said the CDC’s guidance to impose 6-foot social distancing in schools was not based on science.
Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sent a STAT News op-ed to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, on Feb. 20, 2021.
“You probably have already seen this. But just in case, you should be aware of it,” Fauci wrote.
Fauci highlighted several paragraphs from the article, penned by Dr. Vinay Prasad and political science professor Vladimir Kogan, including a line that says the social distancing guidance was “not supported by science.”
The authors wrote that the distancing recommendation seemed to be based on “decades-old research,” pointing to an analysis by experts published by the British Medical Journal.
In contrast with authorities in the United States and some other countries, the World Health Organization and other health bodies advised distancing of one meter, or about 3 feet.
Walensky herself, before being appointed to head the CDC, told her local school district that distancing in schools of 3 feet was “quite safe.”
Walensky defended the 2020 opinion in 2021, arguing the science had shown distancing rules should be more strict, but the op-ed authors asserted the evidence that had developed “actually seems to argue against requiring strict adherence to a 6-foot rule,” including a growing body of knowledge that transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19 not stemming from the spreading of droplets.
The op-ed was in reaction to CDC school opening guidelines released by the CDC about a week prior.
The agency said schools could safely reopen, but should mandate masks and implement other measures aimed at reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, or the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
Some school officials later said they were unable to fully reopen schools because of the distancing guidance, since only a certain number of students could fit into a classroom if the guidance was followed.
Another portion of the op-ed highlighted by Fauci asserted the guidelines did not promote President Joe Biden’s goal of getting schools reopened as soon as possible. Instead, the authors said, the guidelines “will work to provide political cover for interest groups and districts that want to delay in-person school.”
Missives previously made public showed the CDC adopted last-minute changes to the guidance pushed by top teachers unions, including tightening masking guidance.
Just one day after Fauci wrote to Walensky, he appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and advised schools to follow the CDC guidance.
“If you do the four or five things that the CDC recommends, the bottom-line goal that I think people need to remember is that—and I have said this way before the CDC guidelines came out—that the default position is to do whatever you can, as best as you can, to get the children back to school, with safety concerns for the children and for the teachers and the educational personnel,” he said.
The CDC about a month later updated its guidance to say distancing between students could be as little as 3 feet, provided community transmission of COVID-19 wasn’t high in the community where the school was located.
Fauci’s message, like those missives, was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The message was obtained by Americans for Public Trust and published by Fox News.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) shared the Fox article containing the message and others from the FOIA request and said it was “unacceptable for the CDC to be this careless.”
“I’m entirely committed to investigating Fauci because of the panic and harm he’s inflicted on our children, citizens, and economy during this ‘pandemic,'” Paul wrote on Twitter.
A number of Republican members of Congress have vowed to launch investigations into Fauci and other top U.S. health officials over the federal government’s pandemic response, provided the GOP gains control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.
Walensky and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr Fauci says masks are ineffective
May 15, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcBFs4o0VYk
“not supported by science.”
The authors wrote that the distancing recommendation seemed to be based on “decades-old research,”
Ridiculous.
Does science support that distance reduces the chances of contracting an airborne contagious disease? Yes, yes it does.
So now we’re just quibbling about how much distancing to put in a guideline.
Is 6’ better than 3’. Yes, yes it is.
Is 9’ better than 6’. Yes, yes it is. But at some point the distancing becomes impractical. The lines become too long to manage. Businesses can’t survive allowing so few constomers into their facility.
6’ seems to me to be a reasonable compromise. It’s not perfect protection. Just like masks aren’t perfect protection. Just like any of the other measures aren’t perfect protection.
The EU determined that one meter was adequate...which roughly would translate to 3 feet.
It’s all bullshit. In the early days we were told 6’. Then you went to a big box store or grocery store and all bets were off...of course, the mom and pop stores were all closed.
If you’re frightened...stay home and remember to where a mask in your car when you are by yourself.
Most masks can not stop the microscopic virus material, and therefor useless as protection.
However elementary physics tells us that if you cough or sneeze while wearing a mask, a lot of virus contained in mucous will get trapped inside the mask and thus not be released in air. Which simply means masks can protect OTHERS from you, not you from others.
As for 6 feet social distancing, it is just elementary common sense, that the further you are from an infected person exuding virus material, less virus material will be inhaled by you. Quantity (size) matters!
In short, all the fools who I see wearing cheap ass cloth masks (often the same mask for days) are just that fools. People who walk into a restaurant and wear cheap cloth mask for 30 seconds, then take off for 90 minutes to eat, really need to reconsider reproducing their idiocy.
The 6 foot thing was a big deal and the “main reason” that in CA during the 2020-21 school year that almost all schools remained 100% remote the whole year. Some schools finally went to “hybrid” (two days a week in person), late in the year, after splitting the classes so that each student could be six feet apart.
It’s depressing to me that the 6 foot thing turned out to be just a hoax. I had two teens in high school at the time: one I pulled from public to private so she could be at least hybrid (the private schools managed to figure out a hybrid plan early in the fall instead of late in the spring), the other I pulled from public to homeschooling because he was flunking out of “remote learning.”
The 6 foot thing was the sticking point (other than the teachers unions of course). Depressing.
Once we get this worked out interested parties can resume debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Come on people we have immune systems, we have nose hairs that trap particles. Do you want to share utensils with some one who is sick, kiss them etc? No, common sense comes into play.
If people do not have symptoms I take my chances. That helps me keep a strong immune system, get very few colds, never taken a flu shot & never will. Wore a mask for less 30 min in these two years to sign a will in the presence of a nervous lawyer. Do your research and forget about what Fauci & the CDC say, they are political animals whose grasp of science is nonexistent.
Is Routine Use of a Face Mask Necessary in the Operating Room?
Eva Sellden, M.D., Ph.D.; Hugh C. Hemmings, M.D., Ph.D.
Author and Article Information
Anesthesiology December 2010, Vol. 113, 1447.
https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0b013e3181fcf122
Supermarkets were all open from the start to now. I’m waiting for the bombshell report describing all the workers who died. So far I’ve hear of just ... zero. I suppose there were some. But for an economy wrecking response I have to imagine that something like 50% of them selflessly gave their lives so we might have our Captain Crunch. Because if not, it was indeed all bullshit.
Hey what if we all just lived totally isolated from each other? How did that work out for Native Americans at keeping their immune systems well rested so that small pox was no trouble for them?
I have posted on here in the past about the podcast by Dr. Vinay Prasad; title is Plenary Session. He does some very accessible (to the non-doctor) stuff on medical trials, etc.
However, it seems he thinks that there is a benefit from getting the clot-shots. But he also admits that the supposed “benefit” wanes (i.e., the efficacy declines sharply over a few months).
I think he is adamantly opposed to the masking of children - based on science available to date. BUT he decries the fact that no studies have been done on masking. Also, he points out that a mask is not a parachute. (e.g. It would be suicide to exit an airborne plane without a properly functioning parachute.)
I expect Prasad will further modify his stance on vaccine effectiveness in the upcoming months.
In conclusion, I highly recommend that FReepers listen to his Plenary Session podcasts; just be warned that he tilts to the left politically.
Suppose you sneeze into a mask, which catches the droplets. What happens to the droplets after that?
Do they get pushed out with subsequent exhalations?
So now we’re just quibbling about how much distancing to put in a guideline.
It gets Clintonian very quickly. What do you mean by "airborne", what do you mean by "distance"? How much actual, repeatable science was actually performed in the testing of each distance?
If the virus molecules are carried by droplets in the air, it's much different than them being virulent in aeresolized vapor.
IIRC, the "science" that was used to justify the 6 foot rule, which had a huge impact on life in America for a year or more, was based on a paperwork assessment of a single Korean airplane flight in 1994 (if that wasn't exactly it, it was something similarly limited and untestable). The 3 foot rules that the WHO and Europe went by were developed around the same time after studying SARS, but it also assumed SARS and Covid 19 acted the same (and considering Covid variants didn't act the same as each other, that's probably ok to start with, but not a great assessment to stick with) The thing about public health is that it is supposed to be a balancing act. Fauci made a career by being a chicken little, and this was his masterpiece.
You completely ignore any other variables. How does the mask fit? How does the mask move when you move, talk, or cough? Does the mask prevent or promote aerosol generation.
You don’t know the answers to these questions because nobody does. Actual mask research became verboten once the fascists made their dictates.
Businesses still have the stickers on the floor six feet apart.
Maybe so, but I haven't caught even a cold in more than two years. I'm going to keep wearing a mask.
Wearing a cheap ass filthy cloth mask and claiming it prevented you from getting sick is like a peasant in the Middle Ages claiming carrying a carving of a cross prevented them from getting the bubonic plague. It’s an amulet with no proof of working. Again, feel free to wear your amulet, listen to Fauci, vote Dem, etc. Just don’t force the rest of us to adopt your superstition. Please don’t also be one of those retards who wears their mask outdoors or when alone in the car or who walks into a restaurant only to take it off - as your will be the butt of jokes for the rest of us. BTW: will you ever take your face diaper off or is this a lifetime commitment? ;)
I haven’t caught a cold or anything else in 2 years, and I’ve only bothered with a mask when I’m required to wear one, which is extremely rare.
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