Today Bob Somerby happened to quote something Lisa Boothe said on Fox News yesterday:
Joe Biden took a stage at the end of July [2021], CNN Town Hall, telling Americans that if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus. So we were lied to the entire time, and Dr. Fauci is corrupt and evil and was the person spearheading a lot of those lies.
My interest in this is a little different than Bob's. I'm increasingly perplexed by memories of the pandemic that don't gibe with what I remember happening at the time. Now, my memory is no great shakes, but I have the advantage of being able to use the internet to check myself.
So: Were we, in fact, lied to the whole time? The answer is plainly no. As early as December 2020, a few days before the vaccine was first distributed, Fauci said very clearly on CNN:
Just because you're protected, so-called protected, by the vaccine, you should need to remember that you could be prevented from getting clinical disease, and still have the virus that is in your nasopharynx because you could get infected.
We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected. We know for sure it's very, very good, 94 percent, 95 percent in protecting you against clinically recognizable disease, and almost a 100 percent in protecting you for severe disease.
Fauci and others said this over and over and over. Eventually test results were available that allowed this question to be answered definitively, and it turned out the vaccine protects against severe disease but doesn't protect against infection or against spread of the virus (though it reduces it).
But even in the early days of vaccine distribution Fauci's comments were being deliberately misconstrued. A viral Instagram video in March 2021 went like this:
After Fauci says, “We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected,” the edited Instagram clip plays a record scratch sound effect and a voiceover asks in disbelief, “We’re not sure? At this point? That the vaccine protects you against getting infected?”
This was all part of the anti-vax movement, and was meant to imply that Fauci had admitted we didn't know if the vaccine even worked. This, needless to say, was not at all what he said.
But three years later Boothe is still misconstruing Fauci. In her case, it's not clear if this is deliberate or if her MAGA sentiments have simply warped her memory and she really believes what she said.
(But how about Biden? Did he say that "if you got the vaccine, you wouldn't get the virus"? Yes he did. He was urging people to get vaccinated and generally sticking to the facts, but then blurted out, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” This was a typical Biden gaffe; he should have said "serious COVID." It was hardly a big deal, but years later it's still part of conservative mythology.)
More generally, my recollection is that the "experts misled us" crowd is almost always referring to things that were genuinely unknown at the time. Recommendations changed when the evidence changed, as it has to. For example:
- The reason the CDC initially recommended against wearing masks was because they thought you could just avoid people who were sick, so it was best to reserve limited supplies for doctors, who couldn't avoid sick people. When researchers discovered that COVID could be asymptomatic—which meant you couldn't tell if someone was sick—they changed their advice.
- The CDC never recommended that kids not be allowed to play outside due to the risk of infected playground surfaces. This was something put in place by local officials who were being urged by parents to be ultra cautious.
- The CDC didn't recommend that schools remain closed. Quite the opposite. Closure decisions were made locally, usually with the strong support of parents.
- In any case, it's unlikely that school closures caused much harm. Test scores generally fell about the same in states that kept schools open.
- Businesses were not shut down for an entire year. Shutdowns were ordered in both red and blue states and generally lasted only about three months.
- Nobody ever said the lab leak theory for the origin of the virus was impossible. Every scientist who looked at the question said we couldn't know for sure but the evidence pointed strongly to a natural origin. They said this because it was true.
- A lot of public health experts did say it was OK to join the George Floyd protests because they were more important than stopping the spread of COVID. This was stupid.
- That said, this is an example of health experts considering the social impacts of their recommendations. It's just not true that they never considered tradeoffs. They considered them constantly.
- Epidemiologists initially said that COVID was spread by droplets. That's because the evidence pointed that way. When evidence piled up that aerosol transmission was also important, they changed their public statements. But their safety guidance didn't change, because in most cases it didn't matter how the virus was spread. Standard epidemic hygiene was mostly the same either way.
- Dr. Fauci did not admit recently that the CDC just made up its social distancing rule. He said only that he wasn't sure where the specific six-foot guidance came from. As it turns out, six feet was probably too stringent, but at the time there was no research to provide a firm number and advice varied across the globe:
The World Health Organization recommends a distance of “at least one meter.” China, France, Denmark and Hong Kong went with one meter. South Korea opted for 1.4 meters; Germany, Italy and Australia for 1.5 meters. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended “at least six feet,” or 1.8 meters. [Britain, Canada, and Spain recommended two meters.]
Are there some I'm missing? Probably. I told you my memory was so-so. Feel free to add to this list in comments.
OK "good" is pretty vague, but given most people thought the purpose of a vaccine was to prevent infection, it's a reasonable interpretation that Trump was claiming "his" vaccines were very, very effective at preventing infections.
So if Americans were being lied to, the once and future president was one of the enthusiastic liars.
Where were the media when Trump said that HE came up with a vaccine? To paraphrase Mark Twain, "There are lies, damn lies, and Trump lies." I guess the reason they didn't call bullshit on this particular lie is that it was so hilarious that they didn't think it necessary. Or is it because, as the chief editor of the New York Times once said, "We cannot be the arbiters of truth"?
Donald F Trump did not "come up with" any damn thing. Scientists who hardly anyone has ever heard of (their pictures never showed up on the front page of National Enquirer) spent years developing mRNA vaccines before COVID ever appeared.
Trump signed an order that allowed 6 different companies to bypass clinical trials in order to start PRODUCING vaccines, some of which worked. That also fueled vaccine skepticism from people who worried that the vaccines might have serious side effects. But somehow the Trump crowd managed to manipulate the media into blaming Democrats for that. And the media just parroted it as usual.
Because they cannot be the "arbiters of truth."
Did the companies "bypass" clinical trials?
What I read about was that they overlapped the normal 4 stage test and approval processes. So they did not wait for all of the evaluation and reports in stage 1 to be completed before starting up stage 2, starting stage 3 before final reports were in from stage 2, etc.
They did not leave out any tests and evaluations IIRC. What they did was take a calculated risk that if something was found in the previous stage evaluation after the next stage started they would have to restart the previous stage to figure out what had gone wrong, then redo the subsequent stage. Fortunately, the process went smoothly for the most part
I believe what was compressed is that each stage of a clinical trial takes time to screen the appropriate people and also for the manufacture of the vaccine. That typically money isn't spent on subsequent stages until they know they've cleared the current stage.
So they jumpstarted the screening process so that they could immediately go to the next phase if the current phase checked out.
I hadn't read about the front end screening of candidates, but I wouldn't be surprised if that also made it into the jumpstart/overlap.
The protests didn't become super spreader events so no, allowing them wasn't stupid.
What is stupid is assuming your relative privilege allows you to make a clear headed choice that police brutality and injustice doesn't outweigh pandemic risk.
You are not someone without a father, mother, sister, brother, son, or daughter because of this violence,
I’m more concerned with criminal brutality. There’s a lot more of that every day.
If we had fewer criminals we’d have less need for police!
This is why you're not a serious person, but a troll.
We have less criminals than ever before in my life but more police officers. And barely fewer people are killed or killed in officers' care than any time in my life.
Why are you here to lie to me? I lost my father to a wrongful shooting by an officer.
There was no science that said the risks of police killing of unarmed Black people outweighed the risk of COVID from outdoor exposure (at a time, by the way, when beaches were still closed and public gatherings restricted). The letter that said that made a claim for which there was no evidence, and did a great deal of harm to the public image of science.
And seriously, anyone who actually knows about the statistics of police killings of unarmed Black people would never say that. They are very rare. They do happen-- and to be clear, even one is too many. But the numbers are tiny. And they are so small that the probability that any anti-police protest would actually reduce the number is infinitesmal.
In other words, this was all the Left at its absolute worst. Putting ideology over science, lying, and grossly overstating the impact of racism. Everything we do bad, we did there, and we are still paying the costs for it.
Nice list of reality and actual facts. Ahhhh the loser "libtard" world, always stuck in the world of actual reality.
But what is reality? Reality is that the liars won the election - and they KNOW that they won by lying. They KNOW that their deliberate misinformation brainwashed a huge part of the country into hating Democrats, Fauci, vaccines, the fake, fake, fake news sources backing the "lying liberals" trying to spread their "reality".
Reality is whatever RepubliQans say it is. And that pile of actual facts you listed above will be thoroughly countered by non-stop, deliberate lying across the MAGAverse.
Most Americans aren't interested in what actually happened a few years ago. They weren't that interested in what was real while it was happening.
Just another symptom, just like last months election results. Americans have other interests, other priorities......
Speak for yourself, Justin.
I could tell you about Virginia cops as criminals and enablers. Others here i have only read about: cops profiting from protecting from the trafficking of women, state troopers assaulting women, and "constitution" sheriffs who declare themselves to be the law.
No good deed goes unpunished. My mother died of Covid before the vaccine was available, but she was very old, frail, and wasn’t going to last much longer anyway. My only regret is not being able to see her for those last many months in 2020.
Anyone paying actual attention or “doing their own research” would have known early on that the vaccine prevented serious illness. So these people who claim otherwise are just terrible human beings.
How are those microchips working out?
Your only regret is not killing her sooner?
Gross, dude.
Fauci and others said this over and over and over.
And there was in any event layperson-accessible reporting on the MRNA trials as early as the summer of 2020 that absolutely made it clear that sterilizing immunity was not probable. I have absolutely crystal memories of this because international travel was paralyzed by the pandemic, and—being stranded far from home—I was eagerly reading everything I could get my hands on about what seemed to be the most likely path out of the crisis—vaccines.
The whole "we were lied to" meme on this point is just so bizarre. In the first place, OWS was a Trump initiative, so any miscommunication on this score should be laid at Trump's feet.
But secondly, what would the incentive have been for officials to deliberately mislead the public about this? They wanted to open up the economy more quickly? But the people accusing health officials of "lying" on vaccine efficacy are the same crowd bemoaning the slowness of the return to normalcy, and the lingering use of NPIs.
None of it makes a lick of sense.
The reason the CDC initially recommended against wearing masks was because they thought you could just avoid people who were sick, so it was best to reserve limited supplies for doctors, who couldn't avoid sick people. When researchers discovered that COVID could be asymptomatic—which meant you couldn't tell if someone was sick—they changed their advice.
Quite right. And also: Fauci in particular has frequently been accused of "gaslighting" the public on this (ie, dishonestly downplaying the danger of masking to preserve masks for health officials). But I've watched the smoking gun 60 Minutes interview multiple times. And Fauci quite openly tells the interviewer he would prefer that the general public not mask because of the need to preserve them for healthcare workers. He says (I quote): "It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need them."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI&ab_channel=60Minutes
And again, this was very early days, so the fear that widespread masking might be counterproductive—by encouraging more people to congregate or go out in public (because they erroneously felt sufficiently protected) was a legitimate concern. Had such advisories dominated US public health advice for months and months I could understand some biting criticism. But we're talking at most three weeks or so! Relatedly, there was also conflicting, early research at the time (March, 2020) on the question of virus spread. WHO, for instance, didn't change its guidance on masking until June. Fauci and the CDC changed theirs at the beginning of April. So they beat the WHO by at least a couple of months.
The scurrilous attacks on our healthcare officials—most egregiously Dr. Fauci—truly constitute one of the very ugliest aspects of the recent pandemic.
I remember that all masks in Whatcom county disappeared within about 3 days of the news of the pandemic spread coming out. And I do mean ALL masks - carpenters, painting, etc. So Fauci's concern was warranted.
Our local HW stores immediately sent all their masks to the local hospitals and clinics. Also garbage bags to be turned into makeshift PPE suits. It turned out all the hospitals and larger clinics were reliant on regular and frequent delivery of PPE. A cottage industry sprang up to make multilayer cloth masks (later upgraded with pockets to take N95 grade inserts), local distilleries created 195 proof alcohol and diluted it to make sanitizing solutions for hands and surfaces, etc.
And I do mean ALL masks - carpenters, painting, etc. So Fauci's concern was warranted.
Absolutely. And it was even earlier online. I was in China until mid January, 2020, and I knew what might be coming, so, as I was headed to the States, I went on Amazon to buy high quality masks and have them shipped to family in Boston. Needless to say 3M was already completely sold out of their classic fitted model (again, in January!). Mostly likely a lot of the ordering was coming from China.
And in any event I don't think the early guidance on masking had much effect. CDC changed it to "wear a mask" at the beginning of April, but in California, at least, masking was generally required in March at all the major chains (Trader Joe's, Walgreens, Safeway, etc).
The masking thing is just a complete, political nothingburger ginned up by people who, let's be honest, were in any event the biggest fucking crybabies in the world about being required to mask, when the time came. Basically, they (1) hate masking mandates but (2) are also trying to criticize Fauci for a 3 week delay in recommending masks! You can't make it up.
And the only reason masks didn't run out was that there were a lot of people, like my wife, who spent a whole bunch of time in the early days working on ways to make sure the masks didn't run out. Among these is that they started having personnel turn in their masks, hanging them in a room, and running for 24 hours hydrogen peroxide misters that were normally used to disinfect lab facilities, and then handing the disinfected masks back.
They never got too close to running out of masks, but would have if there hadn't been a lot of warnings and a lot of behind the scenes work to keep the supply up and running.
Actually they DID run out of medical grade PPE up here in Whatcom for a while, especially for "civilian" use until local production started up, especially for masks and sanitizer.
At this point these issues have been litigated and relitigated enough that the actual evidence has been fully disclosed.
People making the argument that they were lied to have had:
- access to the evidence otherwise
- been presented with the evidence otherwise
- have heard discussions such as yours multiple times
So I must conclude that at this point these statements are no longer due to lack of understanding but are indeed deliberate..
There is group, primarily on the right, working hard to build a society and government based on lies. Unfortunately reality does not care about your lies, and reality eventually exacts harsh punishment to those who ignore it.
I have a relative who believes that vaccines are a plot by the health industry to make money. He is partly correct about that. A lot of Christians believed that closing down churches because of Covid was discriminatory; the SCOTUS agreed.
You don't need to be completely right to feel justified in your beliefs. Belief perseverance and confirmation bias are ...endemic.
When the next public health emergency arrives -- it won't be long -- buckle in.
I have a relative who believes that vaccines are a plot by the health industry to make money. He is partly correct about that.
No, he's not even partly right that vaccines are a "plot" to make money. C'mon! They're a life-saving medical technology that dates back a couple of hundred years. Like nearly all important technologies, we do rely on private firms to provide them, though.
So yes, someone often ends up making a profit from vaccines. But that's an artifact of our market economy, not a "plot" by anyone.
Yup - the first inoculation technique was called "variolation". In China the technique goes back to the 16th century. Other independent discoverers were reported on, including Edward Jenner in England. Searching on the internet will take you on a world tour of variolation!
If companies weren't in it to make money from the COVID vaccine, then why did they get bent all out of shape that some foreign source was getting access to their proprietary vaccine research? Wouldn't you want to share that knowledge with the rest of the world?
If companies weren't in it to make money
They are in it to make money. Who's claiming otherwise? The OP's claim was that vaccines were a "plot" — which is wrong.
For better or worse most places in this world rely heavily on profit-seeking firms for the provision of most goods and services, including healthcare products.
"I have a relative who believes that vaccines are a plot by the health industry to make money.'
and roads are a plot by the auto industry to "make a profit". Tell your relative about https://theconversation.com/if-the-first-solar-entrepreneur-hadnt-been-kidnapped-would-fossil-fuels-have-dominated-the-20th-century-the-way-they-did-215300 and then ask how the fossil fuel industry is doing.
Haha!
+1
Sweet Ceiling Cat!
Closing churches wasn't discriminatory because it applied equally to all indoor gatherings.
SCOTUS was nonsense.
I had a dear older relative, otherwise healthy, who passed away from COVID in late 2021, after vaccines were widely available. He was pretty mild politically, but he never got vaccinated because of of all of the misinformation flying around. So I take this topic very, very seriously. People who spread vaccine misinformation have his death on their hands. And he's far from the only one.
As a parent if elementary-aged kids at the time, I can say that the " no playground" advice was being spread by a lot of doctors, but not epidemiologiststs.
All I can say is covid made (still makes) a lot of people unhinged. I had a work-from-home job, school was closed, and the spouse got vaccinated early because his job (while 100% at home) was associated with a hospital. So I chose to wait until vaccines appointments were abundant before getting my shot. I thought it was ridiculous for me to get a shot when the elderly, sick, and people in public-facing jobs were struggling to find vaccine appointments. People I know acted like I was anti-vaxx.
I can't imagine how insane it will be if bird flu starts spreading significantly between humans. I'm watching very closely, and already told my kids there is a chance I could remove them from school if the worst scenario happens. There is no way Trump will let schools close, and if this is like 1918, youth deaths could be extensive.
Technically, you getting the vaccine would've protected your spouse.
I think families living together of those in high risk populations were triaged higher anyway.
Not just him. Many governors will resist. All of them will cite lessons learned from COVID, believing that all pandemics are alike. This country is primed to be ground zero for a future case study for epidemiology.
And with AI, it'll be a doozy. /s
I think that's actually part of the problem: so much information so quickly, our little ape minds couldn't take it. So what does a confused person do? Bravado? Be conservative? Run amok? Hide? We saw it all.
Expert says something with nuance; right-wing media lies about it.
In other news, today is a day with a name that ends in "y".
+1
Corollary: This is why Democrats can't communicate. They're too fixated by "nuance" and "accuracy" and "the whole story" and all that boring crap. Plus, often they use those weird ivory tower words.
Democrats seems to have a problem patting themselves on their own backs, something Republicans do all the time, even to lying about it. The American public demands no accountability for such, like Jr. owning guns while drugged out.
But let Hunter Biden do it, and it's a felonious felony requiring a Special Counsel/Prosecutor and the full weight of the Federal government to investigate, try, and punish, punish, punish!!
Why the media seems to demand this double standard and the public tolerates it is a bad sign for our democracy.
A majority of the American public are too stupid to understand a nuanced statement, so a lie was necessary to try to get some of these morons to role up their sleeves and save their lives.
Of course when Trump Tweeted in 2018 after returning from a visit with one of his beloved dictators that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
that was either a boldface lie or completely delusional thinking.
The anti-vaxxers, without exception, should be identified, grabbed by the hair, dragged in front of a podium, allowed to recant their murderous bullshit, and if they refuse, spanked publicly until they do. That is where we are. Children burning ants with a magnifying glass. Unless this is confronted and treated as a failure of maturity, not of freedom, not of philosophy of science or truth, not even as fault of education or ability to discern fact, but one where we must supplant the worst intentions with the best.
Is someone preventing Boothe from using the Internet to check her memory? No? So she’s just another lying sack of shit.
There's a common right wing complaint that someone is being vilified by being quoted. This is the converse where someone is vilified by not being quoted.
Fox's main business is propaganda. Lisa Boothe is an awake person only pretending to be asleep.
The important thing to note here is that these people aren't actually concerned about public health, the whole thing is an exercise in harnessing peoples' ignorance for political gain.