Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addresses his remarks at a roundtable on donating plasma Thursday, July 30, 2020, at the American Red Cross-National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)
As many Americans brace for further lockdowns in response to the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci has a word for them: "Now is the time to do what you’re told."
Fauci was speaking Thursday at Washington National Cathedral with other top health experts on the pandemic, CNBC reported.
The White House coronavirus adviser, who has clashed with President Trump on policy, said the U.S. coronavirus response shouldn't be compared with other countries, because it's not an island with 5 million people that can easily be shut down.
"I was talking with my U.K. colleagues who are saying the U.K. is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit," he said.
"I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you're told."
Fauci noted that during the pandemic, the public has perceived scientists as "authoritarian," lamenting it's unfortunate that science "has been lumped into politics."
Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito warned Thursday night in a Federalist Society speech in Washington that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to unimaginable curbs on individual liberty and "rule by experts."
"We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020," he said.
"The COVID crisis has served as sort of a constitutional stress test."
Citing a Supreme Court case, he noted Nevada "was unable to provide any justification for treating casinos more favorably than other houses of worship," but the court "still deferred to the governor who favored the state’s biggest industry."
'Great Reset'
At a conference at Yale University last month, Fauci was asked when the nation could go back to normal. He said Americans won't be wearing masks "forever" but probably would need to continue with masks and social distancing measures through 2021.
We can't just go "wherever we want," he said.
Fauci said the United States needed to increase "international engagement."
He elaborated on his views in the scientific journal Cell, calling for "radical changes" in the "infrastructures of human existence."
That idea has been furthered in the "Great Reset" plan presented in June by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. He wrote that the COVID-19 lockdowns "may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world's social and economic prospects is only intensifying," warning a "sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s."
"To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions," Klaus said.
"Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a 'Great Reset' of capitalism."
The United States, however, has acheived the "V-shaped recovery" in Gross Domestic Product promised by President Trump, with a record 33.1% GDP increase in the third quarter, at an annualized rate, after a 32.8% dive in the second.
Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who has extensively researched the coronravirus pandemic and the government reponse, commented on the "Great Reset" plan Thursday in an interview with Fox News's Laura Ingraham.
"I can't believe that people would fall for the idea that we need to remake society for an epidemic that right now -- if you believe the high end numbers that are being pushed out -- that has killed about 2% of the people who will die in the world this year," he said.
Berenson noted that most of the people who died of COVID-19 are "very old and very sick."
The pandemic has barely touched Africa, he noted, which has a relatively young population.
"This is a problem of advanced societies and advanced age and very sick people," he said. "And the idea that we need to remake society for it is just insane."
Berenson has self-published two booklets on the pandemic, "Unreported Truths about COVID-19" and "Lockdowns: Part 2: Update and Examination of Lockdowns as a Strategy."
In August, a Danish professor published a country-by-country comparison concluding the evidence shows the spring 2020 lockdowns had no effect on death rates.
Further, wrote Professor Christian Bjørnskov of Aarhus University, the unprecedented shutdown policies "appear to be substantial long-run government failures."
In October, an analysis of a dozen graphs charting the number of COVID-19 cases in countries and U.S. states confirmed the conclusions of recent studies that mask mandates have no effect on the spread of the disease.
See Alex Berenson's interview:
Alex Berenson: It would be insane to 'remake society' over COVID-19.#IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/4dCKD7dhDH
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) November 13, 2020
The Centers for Disease Control estimates a 99.997% survival rate for those from birth to age 19 who contract COVID-19. It's 99.98% for ages 20-49, 99.5% for 50-69 and 94.6% for those over 70.
Those who died of coronavirus, according to the CDC, had an average of 2.6 comorbidities, meaning more than two chronic diseases along with COVID-19. Overall, the CDC says, just 6% of the people counted as COVID-19 deaths died of COVID-19 alone.
The World Health Organization said in early October it estimated 10% of the world's population has been infected, meaning that by the U.N. body's own account, the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 is only 0.13%. That's a little more than one-tenth of 1%, which the WHO says is the rate for the seasonal flu.
The WHO's estimate in March of a death rate of 3.4% sparked panic worldwide, fueling the catastrophic lockdowns.
In August, the New York Times found in an analysis of data that up to 90% of people testing positive carried barely any virus.
Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli summarized her story on Twitter: "NEW: All these months into the pandemic, we may have been testing the wrong way. Data from some state labs suggest up to 90% (!!) of people who get a positive result are no longer contagious and don't need to isolate."
Biden 'lockdown' adviser was against them in March
On Wednesday, WND reported the coronavirus adviser to Joe Biden who is advocating a national lockdown of four to six weeks had a very different view of lockdowns in March, when he argued in a Washington Post op-ed that the economic and social costs are enormous and the science points to better alternatives.
Michael T. Osterholm, a professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview Wednesday with Yahoo Finance that Biden's coronavirus taskforce is preparing to "hit the ground running January 20th."
He contended that nationwide lockdown would curb the number of new cases and hospitalizations to manageable levels until a vaccine is widely distributed.
"We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that," he said. "If we did that, then we could lockdown for four-to-six weeks."
However, in a March 21 op-ed for the Washington Post, Osterhom, along with writer Mark Olshaker, warned of the high economic and social costs of "the near-draconian lockdowns" in effect at the time in China and Italy, which ultimately don't reduce the number of cases, only stretching them out over time.
The strategy he advocated in March is now promoted by epidemiologists at Stanford and Oxford advising Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: With a 99% survival rate for most, let the healthy go about their business while protecting the vulnerable, the people over 70 with multiple life-threatening diseases.
Osterholm wrote in his Washington Post piece that "the best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work, keep business and manufacturing operating, and 'run' society, while at the same time advising higher-risk individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as aggressively as possible."
"With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the financial structure on which our lives are based," he said.
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