Tag: dr anthony fauci
Donald Trump

Trump Promised 20 Million Vaccinated By Now — And Isn’t Even Close To Target

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that Donald Trump's administration has fallen far short of its projected goal for number of vaccines administered by the end of the year — about 18 million short, in fact.

The administration had previously promised to deliver and administer 20 million vaccines by the end of the year. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID Data Tracker, only about 2.1 million Americans had received the first dose of the vaccine as of Tuesday morning.

Fauci said on CNN Tuesday that such a rate was "certainly not at the numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December."

"Even if you undercount, 2 million as an undercount, how much undercount could it be?" Fauci added. "So, we are below where we want to be."

Trump officials responsible for vaccine rollout have admitted Operation Warp Speed failed in its goal to vaccinate 20 million by year's end.

"Exactly how fast the ramp-up of immunizations, shots in arms, is slower than we thought it would be," Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the Trump official helming distribution, said in a press conference last week. "And as I told you earlier, we're here to help the states to accelerate appropriately."

Army Gen. Gustave Perna, in charge of logistics of Operation Warp Speed, blamed delays on lag time between production and shipment.

"We all made the error or mistake of assuming that vaccine that's actually produced and being released is already available for shipment, when, in fact, there is a two-days lag between the time at which we generate a lot of data that shows this vaccine vial is actually safe and right and the time we can ship it," Slaoui said to CNN.

State officials have criticized Trump for his delay in signing the latest COVID relief bill — which he ultimately signed on Sunday — which, by extension, reportedly held up billions of dollars intended for vaccine distribution.

But Fauci said hope was on the horizon. "I believe that as we get into January, we are going to see an increase in the momentum," he said. "I hope allows us to catch up to the projected pace that we had spoken about a month or two ago when we were talking about the planned rollout of the vaccinations."

President-elect Joe Biden has faulted Trump for the delay on vaccine rollout as well. According to his pandemic advisory team, Biden intends to invoke the Defense Production Act to exponentially increase the rate of vaccine production once he takes office in January.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Dr. Anthony Fauci Speaking at White House.

As Virus Crushes Hospitals, Republicans Still Attacking Fauci

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

This week, Republicans in Congress are slamming the COVID-19 safety guidelines recommended by top infectious diseases specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci — even as COVID positivity rates soar and hospitals nationwide face dangerous overcrowding.

On Sunday night, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) attacked Fauci on Twitter, saying his "fantasies" have led to "the extinction of all our freedoms."

"Almost everything Fauci has said this year has been exaggerated, misleading, and/or flat-out wrong. He is not to be trusted under any circumstances," tweeted Biggs, linking to aNew York Timesinterview with Fauci about required herd immunity rates. "Americans must reject his doctrine of destruction before his fantasies lead to the extinction of all of our freedoms."

In the interview, Fauci said that while he has previously stated that 60 percent to 70 percent of the American population required vaccination in order for the country to achieve herd immunity, he really thinks that number could be as high as 90 percent.

The Times reported that Fauci has been adjusting the figure over time based on the latest scientific findings and also his concern at how the public would react to the numbers.

"We need to have some humility here," Fauci told the Times. "We really don't know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I'm not going to say 90 percent."

But, he said, he's increased the goal vaccination rate incrementally, since he now feels the American public is ready to hear the fuller picture — that the safest route to eradicating coronavirus is for a higher number of Americans to be vaccinated.

His comments drew more ire from his frequent critics on the right.

Biggs, for one, lashed out at Fauci and the science surrounding coronavirus in general. Demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of herd immunity, on Monday he denied the existence of asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

"Many of the COVID-19 testing policies revolve around the notion that asymptomatic people are unknowingly spreading COVID-19 to many others," he wrote on the platform. "Or maybe most of them aren't. Maybe the asymptomatic 'doctrine' wasn't everything the 'experts' told you it was.

But recent studies have repeatedly shown that 40 to 50 percent of those testing positive for COVID-19 have no symptoms, and leading experts have noted that this has played a huge role in the pandemic's spread.

And Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio also came under fire this weekend for criticizing the science underlying COVID guidelines and vaccine protocols, as well as for claiming Fauci "lied" to Americans and was "distorting" information about vaccines.

"Dr. Fauci lied about masks in March," Rubio tweeted. "Dr. Fauci has been distorting the level of vaccination needed for herd immunity. It isn't just him. Many in elite bubbles believe the American public doesn't know 'what's good for them' so they need to be tricked into 'doing the right thing'."

Critics were swift to note that Rubio's remarks undercutting the importance of vaccines in achieving herd immunity came after the senator was among the first to receive the coronavirus vaccine.

And while Fauci did recommend against the wearing of masks in March, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommending mask-wearing were not implemented until April as experts came to understand more about the disease.

And Biggs and Rubio's remarks undermining the importance of vaccines and other safety protocols are ill-timed, coming as American hospitals face overcrowding of epic proportions due to the pandemic.

In parts of California, including Los Angeles County, doctors have warned that they will soon have no room for other patients because they are so inundated by COVID-19 patients.

"I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We are getting crushed," said Dr. Brad Spellberg, LAC and USC Medical Center's chief medical officer.

Earlier this month, hospitals in eastern Tennessee had only 8 of their 284 ICU hospital beds unoccupied.

A December report by The Atlantic noted that patients in Laredo, Texas, were being sent to San Antonio hospitals and other Texans sent to Oklahoma as their own hospitals filled up; and that in South Dakota, 37 hospitals reported sending patients home with oxygen tanks because they ran out of room in the hospital for the most desperate cases.

"Calamity is no longer imminent; it is here," the outlet noted.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Steve Bannon

Watch: Bannon Calls For Beheading Of Fauci And FBI Director

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci.

Now I actually want to go a step farther but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone -- time to stop playing games. blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right.

JACK MAXEY (CO-HOST): You know what Steve, just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia, these were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated if you will with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors.

BANNON: That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war.

Update: The transcript has been updated for clarity

herd immunity, masked crowd

Trump’s Insistence On ‘Herd Immunity' Means Mass Murder

Let us examine the Great Barrington Declaration with the respect it deserves, which is very little. The advocates, who include Dr. Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump's preferred pandemic expert, argue that all these shutdowns are causing economic and psychological havoc that's worse than the disease. Better to let the coronavirus infect the young and healthy, thus building immunity in numbers large enough to nearly stop the virus' spread. The elderly and other vulnerable Americans can lock themselves away.

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