Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, has just suggested Americans don’t believe science.
Anthony Fauci: Americans ‘Don’t Believe Science and They Don’t Believe Authority’
JOSHUA CAPLAN 18 Jun 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, served up harsh criticism of Americans on Thursday, asserting that the country suffers from what he described as an “anti-science bias” problem.
“One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable — they just don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority,” Fauci told the Learning Curve podcast, which is produced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who’s talking about science, that there are some people who just don’t believe that — and that’s unfortunate because, you know, science is truth,” Fauci continued, referring to the White House coronavirus task force’s once-daily briefings.
“It’s amazing sometimes the denial there is, it’s the same thing that gets people who are anti-vaxxers, who don’t want people to get vaccinated, even though the data clearly indicate the safety of vaccines,” he added. “That’s really a problem.”
…
Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/18/anthony-fauci-americans-dont-believe-science-and-they-dont-believe-authority/
The words were spoken in an episode of “Learning Curve”, hosted by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The “don’t believe science” comments are made around the 15 minute mark.
The following is a short excerpt from the full interview of Dr. Fauci speaking the quoted words:
Fauci also said people should believe him and trust him, because of his long track record of always speaking the truth, through six administrations.
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I’m sure that none of this will ever get to Fauci, and if it did, wouldn’t sink in. But, suggestions for him:
Never lie using science as a club. It’s too easy to catch you up.
If new information causes you to update or change your position, find a simple method to document the reasons/data. Even we conservative “scientists” have a low tolerance for long-winded explanations. Referring to one’s homepage is not a bad way…
When you see total balderdash, like a EUA that only allows hydroxychloriquine in a clinical/hospital setting (too late!) and ignores the proven efficacy of zinc addition and zpac, administered early, POINT IT OUT. There are some many ways you could have aided the cause of science, but you tried to sound like an Authority, not a problem solver.
A coherent explanation of actual transmission data would be nice.
The Fauci/CDC propaganda about HCQ is interesting since the data doesn’t support it. The same is the case for CAGW propaganda – the empirical data doesn’t support that either.
The climateers may just find that the bat crud crisis will accidentally bury their climate non-crisis.
I want a poll on Americans:
Its better to watch people’s behavior to see what they believe.
do they act like they believe in science?
https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article243376046.html
house parties, churches,
Facts.
In Korea they trace down every outbreak without a few small exceptions ( noted recently)
ALL of the transmissions happen in the same way.
1. A GROUP of people
2. in an ENCLOSED SPACE
3. with POOR ventilation
4. For a LONG time
5. without MASKs.
recently we had our FIRST EVER cases from a few restaurants. The numbers are tiny (3-4 or cluster)
this really isn’t that hard people.
weddings, funerals, parties, conferences,workplaces, Gyms, nightclubs, bars,
hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, markets,
The list is simple and consistent. Its the same country to country.
Note: no parks, no beaches, no outside dining places
It’s not even science that people don’t believe in, it’s common [snip] sense they refuse to practice.
I went to the beach this past week, and I had no fear, no mask, and no sympathy for the pod people I saw in their fashionable face masks that they have no clue how to use properly.
Stopped at a Subway, where I was told that the women’s bathroom had a ripped off toilet seat, toilet tissue all over the place, in total violation of any health code that should have shut the place down, and yet the employees were wearing face masks …………….. INCORRECTLY.
Stopped at a McDonald’s, and there again employees were in masks, INCORRECTLY — one guy had his mask under his lip, another under his nose, another under his neck. Everybody looked pissed off and stressed out. But, oh, this is all for our health.
Such a joke!
I went to a healthcare center in Paris and receptionists were wearing masks incorrectly.
Also, there was a video looped on the TV of the waiting room explaining the importance of wearing masks correctly.
I appreciate The good Doctor’s frustration. When the President won’t wear a mask it might be hard for some people to believe in the Science but I have seen a recent poll that showed 80%of people surveyed wear a mask whenever they go out.
Many are very concerned about Covid 19. I for one miss the updates from the Science community.
The Bible describes these days as being critical and hard to deal with.
Without Science To find a vaccine or at least medication that treats the condition.. without Science we will see the numbers that happened a century ago.
Don’t get discouraged I believe there are more that believe in Science then don’t.
Expert flip flopper??
“they just don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority,”
has to be one of the dumbest take, ever.
“There will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases.’ — Watch Dr. Anthony Fauci predict a pandemic under the Trump admin back in 2017”
Pretty clear – the mistake made by even geniuses is not looking beyond borders, and trying to go it alone.
Besides Dr. Fauci, US Army studies forecast outbreaks.
So the only way to defeat this beast, COVID19, is cooperation with China, to start.
bonbon China want no part in cooperation or even any kind of communication, they don’t care. They want total power, they want to own us. Do some research on China and Australia. They take control by stealth, to begin with at least.
Sez you.
I do not believe you.
Then you are ignorant bonbon. We have a Chinese friend of more than 45 years and you could not meet a more generous person. We were the sole witnesses at his wedding, my husband MC’d the funeral when his wife passed away. He invited us to his home in mainland China for tomb sweeping.
Our friend, like most people is a kind and caring person. The Chinese government is nothing like our friend. They are powerful, dangerous and ruthless.
They own large swathes of Australian property, they also own rights to water and have bought into our dairy and agricultural industry. They built and own a military grade airport in Western Australia. They have a ninety nine year lease on on a port in Darwin and the state of Victoria have signed onto a Belts and Roads agreement against the wishes of the Federal Government. This state refuses to disclose the nature of the agreement. Typically a large loan is involved an if you can’t pay up, they own you.
Our government (along with others) have requested an inquiry into the origin and spread of the Wuhan virus and now they are making trade and cyber threats against us.
Don’t mock me bonbon, do some of your own research.
I second your opinion. If bonbon had done some simple research about what is being reported in Australian media (simple in this day and age of the Internet) he would have discovered that you are right. “There is none so blind as he who will not see.”
bonbon’s hatred of the English and capitalism in general causes him/her/it to treat any opponent to either of those as a bosom buddy.
“So the only way to defeat this beast, COVID19, is cooperation with China, to start.”
That would only be true if China were to have manufactured the virus and already had in their possession a vaccine or the ideal drug to fight it.
I can’t see how we get any advantage from cooperating with China, especially considering the lies they have told and the underhanded ways they have already used with the rest of the world.
“This site exists solely to host Plandemic – a video that YouTube and other media giants have deemed inappropriate for you to view. We will not say whether or not we believe the video’s allegations. We will say that there isn’t a single corporation or government on this planet that has the right to decide what information we are allowed to receive.”
https://plandemicvideo.com/
I don’t ‘believe’ any science.
I either understand it, or I don’t.
And if I don’t understand it (and it interests/impacts me), I try to find information that helps me understand it.
“I don’t ‘believe’ any science.”
I don’t “believe in” any science. I prefer to know when I’ve been wrong all along. I have had prior beliefs that have turned out to not be the case. Is it right to question the Big Bang theory? Of course, it is done all the time. Is it right to question the standard particle theory? Done all the time. Is there inheritance of acquired characteristics? See epigenetics.
With more and more people able to access higher education, there’s 374 doctors per 100,000 people (in Australia) in 2014, that’s only 267 per doctor , that’s about 1 a day if you exclude weekends, No wounder they have to charge so much. Can any one else see, the way to a prosperous economic future is paved with chronic disease and allergies. The best way to create chronic diseases and allergies is to inject crap straight into the body and bypass our natural immune defences as Dr Judy Mikovits talks about in her book Plandemic . And that’s why Dr Fraudci can predict the future.
Interesting that Dr. Fauci uses those words.
Its because what is underway in the US right now is a color revolution.
The Gene Sharp methods are here nicely itemized per revolution:
http://themillenniumreport.com/2015/05/the-cia-ngos-and-color-revolutions/
See the reference to Authority, patriarchal memes.
It could be that the White House, taking the assault head on, sees something that Dr. Fauci is referring to.
The Russiagate hoax, the Flynn railroad, and now the China-did-it hoax, are all failing. London’s Chatham House will not tolerate another Trump admin. A color revolution is in full swing. The pink one was only a warmup.
Municipality: Girdwood gatherings lead to 5 positive COVID cases, more with symptoms
https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Municipality-Girdwood-gatherings-lead-to-5-positive-cases-more-with-symptoms-571379711.html
ANCHORAGE (KTUU) – The Municipality of Anchorage Health Department is monitoring 42 people as close contacts of five people who have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending two private gatherings in Girdwood. The Municipality is reiterating the importance for residents to continue wearing masks and practice physical distancing.
The Girdwood events were a combination of indoors and outdoors, though were mostly outdoors, Pineda said.
Deciding not to be tested
Pineda says some of the people identified through contact tracing relating to the Girdwood events have begun to show symptoms of COVID-19, and some have decided not to get tested. The city can’t force people to be tested, but is recommending anyone showing symptoms to act as though they have received a positive test
“There’s nothing older in the history of mankind than the idea that wisdom resides in the few, the elite, and they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us….the ugliest parts of human history are explained by that kind of phenomenon – where people think that they have the right to control the lives of other people” Walter E. Williams @12:03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgnrUz8lAiQ
Dr Fauci lost all credibility when he simultaneously proclaimed that masks were useless for the general public, but masks were desperately needed by medical professionals. Masks either work or they don’t. To proclaim they don’t work for the layperson, but when a doctor or nurse wears a mask, then the magic happens and they work… well, that’s unethical and violates the Hippocratic Oath to “above all, do no harm.”
What he means is people are not listening to him.
We now know that healthy people will not die from the virus and we also know people do not like to be locked up and restricted without jobs and income. He has not lost a paycheck so he is not talking from experience.
We also know the country cannot be shut down and survive as a nation. And we know Fauci is not the president of the US. And he should not presume to know what I believe.
I have to wonder: does Dr. Fauci practice medicine anymore? Does he examine patients? Does he do any hospital rounds or surgery? Does he prescribe any medicines? I think these questions should be asked of all “doctors” within our health care bureaucracy. But I think I know the answers: “no” to all the above. Their trip through medical school grants them a title, and working for the government means a guaranteed 6-figure (or more) salary, benefits, pension, etc. without the need to be around sick people. And you can complain when people ask questions you don’t like. Nice job, if you can get it.
Fauci’s proven himself to be a political animal.
What he says is what the liberal elites believe of America. They think we are all uneducated rubes who just don’t believe what they say and that we really know nothing. It is beyond them to consider we are educated, many of us having degrees in science and having worked in a technical field(like a reactor operator) who want to see the evidence and make a determination for ourselves. They think we are uneducated and should blindly believe our superiors.
I think the comments show that most commenters on this site are anti-expertise, think that the Internet conspiracies that they can google make them as smart or smarter than real experts like Dr Fauci who has years of real-world expertise in disease control.
Also the most worrying thing is the belief that all facts are not objective, but a part of some narrative created by a shadowy cabal secretly controlling people.
This all chimes in perfectly with their support for the most anti-expertise, anti-intellectual, lazy corrupt slimeball ever to be elected as President. No-one on this blog dares call Trump for recommending hydroxychloroquine which Dr Fauci warned might not be effective, which turned out surprise surprise, to be completely ineffective. Or his claims that what was needed was lots of light into the body combined with bleach to combat the virus. Or his claims that HIV has a vaccine. Or the flood of lies he tells every day.
Of course, its the experts’ fault for being so “high and mighty” with their degrees and learnin’ when all they need is Google.
“We now know that healthy people will not die from the virus and we also know people do not like to be locked up and restricted without jobs and income. He has not lost a paycheck so he is not talking from experience”
This perfectly encapsulates this sort of thinking. Plenty of previously healthy people have died from COVID-19. The virus’ ability to kill people who are older or have compromised immune systems in no way invalidates the fact that catching the virus for even for healthy people can have long term serious consequences even if they recover. Things like lung transplants or severe and permanent heart, liver or kidney damage because the virus thickens the blood so much.
The most disturbing thing about this blog is how many subscribe to this cult of anti-expertise, ignoring their own mistakes and failings while criticizing harshly the difficult task of working out how the disease will spread in a population that thinks it has some divine right to be uninconvenienced by things out of their or the government’s control. I mean, don’t they pay taxes to keep foreign viruses from killing people like themselves so that they don’t have to be inconvenienced by changing their own behavior?
Of course, the anti-expert’s anti-expert is Willis Eschenbach, a person beguiled by his own lack of knowledge to make all sorts of false claims, including most recently that the COVID-19 epidemic was over and the lockdown was a waste of time. The data on the spread of the disease show that its not so, and the states which locked down most effectively are the ones where the virus spread is declining like New York and the New England states and the ones most lax are the ones where the virus spread is accelerating like Arizona, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and North Carolina.
How many people will die of this false confidence in the power of anti-expertise? Will Willis break the rule of a lifetime and admit he was completely wrong? I suspect that like his President, he will take no responsibility at all. But that’s the advantage of being an anti-expert –
People are queueing right now in Tulsa, OK to see an out-of-depth President who is desperate for adulation, having been beaten up many times by reality, from people who credulously believe like him that masks and social distancing are a political statement and that being in an enclosed environment for several hours to hear the Orange One will not catch a virus which has so far killed 120,000 people and infected 2.3 million. Because they’re patriots, or think they are immune or that its all a Democratic hoax.
The real hoax is the false confidence that the virus only affects the weak or the impious or impure. And they are willing to literally die for that belief. And also the people they infect when they get home. Because viruses don’t care about your religiosity or your patriotism.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic has not gone away, and in the absence of a useful vaccine, the only protection is screening, contact and trace and most of all, changes to people’s behavior whether they’re healthy or not.
I suspect that, in the absence of an effective vaccine there is, like HIV, no effective control until people change their behavior. There is no herd immunity without a vaccine and people will die of ignorance whether they’re righteous before God or not or believe in Trump or not or vote Republican or not.
Don’t you have a bridge to haunt somewhere?
I doubt he’s self aware enough to even notice how trollish he is.
Wow. Thanks for proving the point I made earlier.
Wow, thanks for proving my point that you are immune to facts.
Standard socialist dross.
Anyone who disagrees with people I consider to be experts, are anti-experts.
No attempt to show that your experts are right and other people’s experts are wrong. Just an assumption that yours must be right.
Then continuing on to insult anyone who doesn’t worship at the house of government authority with it’s gifts of free stuff to the annointed.
Standard Trumpian responses will get the response they deserve.
You’re proof that basic science research in the United States SHOULDN’T be publicly funded. Americans are different than other people, we judge based on results instead of credentials. There has been way too much credentialing going on since public universities dropped their standards during the Vietnam war to enable draft dodging of a war that they didn’t like against communists.
You’re proof that basic scientific understanding is not taught in schools. Dr Fauci is an expert, not simply credentialled.
You think you know better than him, but you don’t.
Fauci is a lie spewing political hack, just like you.
An ADMITTED lie spewing person at that of the ‘ends justify the means’ variety.
He did not look aside or blush as he, again, looked at the camera and lied.
No scientist “believes” in science. None. That goes against the most basic principle of science: always be skeptical and look for reasons that your current judgement may be wrong.
The correct phrase might be: I understand the current scientific knowledge about [topic], and make use of this knowledge, but I recognize that new information may change this knowledge about [topic].
No scientist would say “I believe in the periodic law of the elements” or “I believe that plants convert CO2 to carbohydrates to grow”.
Are there any other major parts of the Federal government run by someone as old as Dr. Fauci? Does he remain in office to stay out of prison? After all, the best way to keep someone from rifling through your desk is to remain seated at it.
The Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts is 65.
Can I remind him that the W.H.O. scientists they do not believe can be verified as having put climate change and obesity as more of a threat to world health than a pandemic which took merely third place. The parent organisation, the UN put up this :-
as proof of man made climate change produced by scientists when there clearly is no correlation at all between heated areas and fossil fuel use ones, or heat flow paths instead to account for cause and effect. It appear scientists no longer have the thinking capacity of a ten year old.
Verified science is truth and in the words of Richard Feynman reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. It would appear that increasingly nor can the public.
I am not a scientist, nor have I played one on TV. Fauci is not much of a scientist, but he does play one on TV.
Alchemy was once considered “science”. Phlogiston theory was once considered “science”. Fauci, a Globalist Democrat, has been repeatedly wrong in his predictions and prognostications, yet constantly repeats the new Democrat mantra of “Science” in order to control the masses with pseudo-science.
No, Dr. Fauci, I do believe in Science. I do not believe snake oil salesmen like you.
Really? Dr Fauci has forgotten more science and epidemiology than you will ever know.
He’s not the snake-oil salesman selling ineffective drugs, Trump is. And you believe in Trump whatever he says.