My Response to the Collins-Fauci e-mail Controversy.

Edward, I’m going raise my response to one of last comments here as I’m afraid it will get lost in the comment section.

So, you raise the question of the emails between Fauci and Francis Collins in 2020 when they discussed “shutting down” the published statement paper known as the “Great Barrington Declaration.”

I will be honest and say that I did not give this the amount of study it deserves as I don’t have the time today. So, what I will write will be my surface impressions after about 30 minutes of reading.

Yes, you are correct, the e-mails are real. I will also concede, with a casual reading, that I’m a bit disappointed in Fauci and Collins’ personal conversation about this. The issue at the time (2020) was worthy of a fair debate. I don’t know who the signers are of the Barrington Declaration, but their credentials do appear worthy.

With that said, I think two things. On behalf of the signers, I think they are correct to state that Fauci and Collins mis-characterized their position as just “letting the virus rip.”

On the side of Fauci and Collins, I think history has proven they were probably mostly correct. It would have been very difficult for our societies to have achieve a natural herd immunity with such a rapidly evolving virus. I know several, including my daughter-in-law, who are in their second natural infection. Millions would have died with no mitigation such as social distancing and masking.

Then it gets into the political discussion of “Shutting Down the Economy” which is mischaracterization itself. Mask wearing and social distancing along with vaccinations does nothing to the economy. But I digress.

So, while I’m disappointed in the e-mails (without knowing the full context) I will state that when I researched this topic, the web was full of the vaccine deniers spouting that this e-mail exchange was the “smoking gun” that there is a grand conspiracy to market a dangerous vaccine that is ineffective just so “Big Pharma” including Fauci and Collins can make money by killing you and your family. That is a bold-faced lie. But there is a wholesale effort going on by the vaccine liars on the far right (Fox News/ Joe Rogan) and on the far left (Robert Kennedy, Jr.) to make themselves feel important, and rich. When someone uses false data, they are evil and up to no good. When someone compares mask wearing to the holocaust they have some emotional motive that is far beyond telling the truth. By the way, you may know that Robert Kennedy Jr. and his wife required everyone that attended their home Christmas party last year to be COVID vaccinated. Factual. But I digress again.

While disappointed in they way they handled this, based on their life’s work, I have complete confidence that Collins and Fauci were acting on what they thought would cause the least suffering of our people. I will repost your link to Collins defending himself. and people can take it for what’s its worth.

Fauci and Collins, while fallible, are not the devil. The devil are those who intentionally lie for profit, at the expense of our health. You can add the Purdue Pharm (Sackler family) to that list.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Mike

4 responses to “My Response to the Collins-Fauci e-mail Controversy.”

  1. eyhopkins Avatar
    eyhopkins

    I don’t think the emails are evidence of a grand conspiracy. But it was so very disappointing to me to see Francis Collins misrepresent the position of the GBD. Good science doesn’t stifle dissenting opinions. Like you, I want to see truth prevail. It seems clear to me that Fauci and Collins have beenl ying about much of what’s been going on in these matters. Thanks for looking into it.

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    1. J. Michael Jones Avatar
      J. Michael Jones

      What have they lied about? Can you be very specific?

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      1. eyhopkins Avatar
        eyhopkins

        Mike: I think a fair interpretation of the Francis Collins statements in October 2020, then again a year later when the emails are revealed, show Collins is probably intentionally misrepresenting the intentions of the Great Barrington Declaration (he calls it a “let it rip” strategy). and misrepresents the academic and professional qualifications of the original authors, and by implication, the thousands of other scientists and medical professionals who had, by late 2021 when he spoke in that clip, signed the document. To call professors and research scientists at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, along with another Nobel Prize winning endorser, “fringe” is not honest and is quite clearly designed to defame and marginalize these men and women. In 2020, perhaps Collins is mistaken, but in late 2021 this is no mistake, or if it was, is unforgivably irresponsible. I’m glad he resigned. Before this, I was a Francis Collins fan; after those revelations, I am profoundly disillusioned.
        As I’m sure you are aware, in early 2019, Fauci told the public that the masks we could then buy were ineffective–masks don’t work to mitigate transmission of viruses he said. A few months later he is saying everyone should wear some sort of mask, and the wearing of masks was an essential part of mitigation strategy. Which is the truth? Was he lying in the first instance or in the second? Now we are told the cloth masks don’t work, only the N95, worn properly (almost impossible to do for 6-8 hours a day) is the only effective mask. If you want to argue Fauci’s lies were “noble lies” I suppose that’s acceptable to some folks, yet it is still a lie, and I don’t want public officials lying to us based on what they “think” is best for me. Fauci also told us if we take the vaccine, we won’t need to worry about catching Covid, and that the vaccinated can’t transmit the virus. Both of these turned out to be false. Was he lying simply to boost vaccination rates, or did he really believe what he said? Its possible he didn’t know, so maybe that’s not a lie. I think it is clear that he lied about the possibility of the virus accidentally escaping from the lab in Wuhan. (There are other emails released that indicate he recognized the likelihood of lab leak and then worked to discredit that idea). He also was deceptive about the funding of gain of function research.
        I believe some digging, if you don’t automatically discredit certain news sites and opinion writers, could reveal other statements from Collins, Fauci, and other highly placed members of the current and former administrations and the governmental medical bureaucracy that are, if not outright lies, intentionally misrepresenting the facts and intended to sustain a preferred narrative and stifle dissenting scientific opinion. And that is dangerous, and does not bode well for the future of freedom and scientific progress.

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        1. J. Michael Jones Avatar
          J. Michael Jones

          I’m not going to try and to address each of these statements. If lies are where someone knows the truth, but then deliberately misleads someone, I suspect that most of the things you mentioned were not lies but the fact we didn’t fully understand the virus and still don’t. Our knowledge is continuing to evolve. For one the masks. I understood from day one that the major issue about mask, at the beginning, was taking them away from medical care workers but you will also see (I will post a link below) that Fauci said they didn’t understand in the beginning how the virus spreads. So it is not intentionally lying. But I want to raise a bigger question that baffles me and then I’m going to take this down. Why are people being told to hate the scientists? Why are people being told that there is a grand conspiracy by us in medicine, who want nothing more than to know the truth an to protect people from harm, but are being told we are corrupt and are intentionally making people sick so we can get rich. I feel that we are on the cusp of a new (smaller) dark ages where we get our “truth” from big mouth people, like stand-up comics and the like, who lie for a living and have no data, no facts, but then shun the ideas of smart people who have devoted their entire lives in the study of a topic. What’s going on? Fox News is like a cult now. I used to watch it. But they found out that there is money in lying, where Tucker Carlson is on TV night after night screaming “They’re lying to you!” or “Fauci is a liar,” “Wuhan Lab, yada yada yada” It is becoming a “Fox Religion” because I hear the exact statements coming from virtually every evangelical I know and those unreligious on the right. Others on the left that follow Kennedy the same way. I am not one to say if you want to believe lies and die that’s okay with me. Fortunately most people will have mild illness. I don’t want anyone to die. But what’s next? Are we going to start turning over the cockpit of major commercial aircraft to stand up comedians who have never studied how to fly a plane just because they are screaming “Pilots are all idiots and liars.” Is this the age of the death of the expert just because those who want to profit off an alternative, false, reality pump out a narrative that all the scientists, those who are tying to point to truth, have a grand conspiracy to hurt you? The internet and cable TV have greatly contributed to this problem by allowing anyone to have a platform to speak those with the biggest mouths, best personas win, and the only way the uneducated (in a particular matter) can compete with the educated is to created these conspiracy theories. You may remember one of the first to do this on late-night cable TV was Kevin Trudeau who’s mantra was “Natural Cures to all Diseases that your Doctor Doesn’t Want You to Know About.” He made a 100 million dollars before being arrested on fraud in a related matter. But his narrative was the same, modern medicine has a grand conspiracy to make people sick so that we can make money. But, he claimed (just buy his book) he had a receipt with lemons and pepper that would cure your cancer. But I digress. Here is that Fauci defense on why he changed his opinion on masks. Believe what you want to believe brother, but please know that my greatest concern is your good health. So many suffering needlessly breaks my heart. Speaking of which, my life is too short now to waste time in arguments that dead end, so I’m done with this and will hopefully never post on COVID again. Peace

          https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8735-4022-a1f5-1580bc732c45

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