8 ms·

Covid Subcommittee Releases Dr. Fauci's Transcript, Highlights Key Takeaways

32 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

Jimmc414 2y ago
It seems that the policies of maintaining a 6-foot distance and masking for children were not based on scientific data. Please correct me if I am misinterpreting this testimony.
- b0sk 2y ago
  Given that there were absolutely no widespread studies at that point, they had to go on priors. And the 6 ft guidelines was based on the belief that if COVID spread mainly through droplets (which was the most likely theory at that point). The children aspect was again based on limited information available at that point. With all the data now, we see that COVID affected older and less healthier population. They had no idea at that point, conclusively so always erred on the side of caution. All this house investigation is a Republican witch-hunt.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    > With all the data now, we see that COVID affected older and less healthier population. That was always going to be the case. Less old and healthy people were carriers.
  - Jimmc414 2y ago
    This is not a political topic. We have a right to have questions answered about a significant event.
    - nevermore24 2y ago
      As long as you're asking those questions in good faith, sure.
      - TMWNN 2y ago
        Whether a question is valid and worthy of exploration has nothing to do with whether the listener deems the intention behind it to be "correct". The preposterous notion that certain questions are part of a sinister "'Just asking questions' rhetorical device" and must be ignored long ago became, like "dogwhistle", the first resort of those that don't want the statement/question dealt with at all.
    - stahtops 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - b0sk 2y ago
    And what the general population doesn't get about public health officials is they are only concerned with "how to save lives", "how to stop the spread" and "how to not overwhelm the health system". Given the choice of widespread admittance of children to hospitals vs inconveniencing them with masks, they'd always choose the latter option. With the benefit of hindsight, there are always things to blame but this investigation is a hackjob.
  - coding123 2y ago
    Yes yes don't ask questions. It's not gain of function it's mess with function or whatever Fauci barfs up for the day.
  - someuser2345 2y ago
    He should not be punished for the 6ft guidelines or the mask mandates (I agree that it's better to be safe than sorry). However, Fauci did promote the idea that the lab leak theory was a racist conspiracy theory, and he denied that the NIH was funding gain of function research in China.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  There are plenty of studies that provide evidence that distance reduces the spread of COVID-like diseases. There is not '6 feet is safe, 5 feet is not' because it is about probabilistic particle movement in air.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  The 6-foot distance was revealed as a fiction several years ago. [1] The rules for child masking in other countries demonstrates fairly well that there was not a strong scientific basis. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/19/cdcs-six-foot-social-distancing-rule-was-arbitrary-says-former-fda-commissioner/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/19/cdcs-s...
  - b0sk 2y ago
    The article doesn't conflict with what I stated. It's a probabilistic estimate based on the prior that COVID spread like flu. The further you go the less your chances of catching. Because you can't convey probability effectively to public (you confuse them), you convey an arbitrary number.
- stahtops 2y ago
  Just curious, if you had to estimate- about how many decisions do you make each day where you reference a scientific study? The primary takeaway from this transcript is that republicans decided to waste another 14 hours of Fauci’s time.
  - gnicholas 2y ago
    People are free to make their own decisions on the basis of unscientific thinking. The issue is when decisions are made for you, and you’re told there is a scientific basis, and there isn’t.
    - stahtops 2y ago
      So 4 years later you’re going to tell me that you believe we would have reduced covid infections by gathering closely together indoors with no masks?
      - gnicholas 2y ago
        Terrific false dichotomy — bravo. The post I was responding to was critiquing the prior post on the grounds that people make decisions without a scientific basis all the time. My point was that people are free to make these decisions, but that governmental mandates should be held to a higher standard. I of course would not have said that we could have reduced covid infections by following the steps you suggest. But governmental mandates need to take into account both sides of the ledger. If having kids in school could have prevented massive learning loss and not resulted in significant additional deaths/hospitalizations, then that's something worth considering.
        stahtops 2y ago
        Ok so you admit that social distancing and masks help reduce the spread of covid-19. That’s great to hear. What do you and Jim expect to learn from a scientific study? That 12 feet is better than 6 feet? I’d like to hear from each of you what you hope to learn, and why you think it would have been worth intentionally infecting people with covid-19, as that’s what would be required for a conclusive scientific study.
- burkaman 2y ago
  I don't think you're misinterpreting the testimony but I do think you're drawing too strong of a conclusion. The fact that one official couldn't remember a scientific basis during a 14 hour interview doesn't mean there wasn't one.
- veidr 2y ago
  You are. When there's an active pandemic killing thousands (would become a million, just in this (outlier bad at responding to it) country), "science" doesn't require having a peer-reviewed ten-year old study that has been published in Nature and survived challenges. In such circumstances, just being familiar with the latest related science, and the fundamental concept of science, qualifies you to take your best (informed) guess. Making kids wear masks made sense in absence of data that showed it wasn't effective, because it's been so effective with other, similarly airborne-transmissible diseases. > The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation forced on Americans by federal health officials was arbitrary and not based on science. Again, "we could wait to conduct studies whether 4 feet is good enough, or 9 feet is required; or we could take our best shot since thousands of people are dying each day", and base our decisions on scientific data previously collected, in extremely similar pandemic/transmissible-disease contexts, even if it might imperfectly match the present scenario.
  - insickness 2y ago
    This is a slippery slope. These policies had a vast affect on the lives of millions of people. Business were shut down. Schools were closed. People were instructed to stay in their homes for years. Simply saying, "Well, we made our best guess," is absolutely not acceptable. When the government curbs human rights, they have an obligation to weigh and justify the costs with scientific evidence.
    - blackbear_ 2y ago
      What is your suggested approach when there is no (reliable) scientific evidence for any course of action and not enough time to gather such (reliable) evidence? Note that not taking any action is also a decision that, in your framework, requires supporting evidence.
      - mike_hearn 2y ago
        Not taking action doesn't require supporting evidence, and insickness didn't propose a framework in which it does. There is at any moment an infinite number of things you could choose to not be doing. You can't collect evidence for not doing those things, as the amount of evidence required would also be infinite.
apsec112 2y ago
The response to COVID should be thoroughly investigated, but this page just seems like a partisan hackjob. The framing is clearly intended to get maximum partisan impact, not to find the truth.
- Jimmc414 2y ago
  > but this page just seems like a partisan hackjob. Please explain. This page is a link to the actual testimony.
  - apsec112 2y ago
    This page is a summary of the testimony which is clearly trying to pick quotes and/or frame things to make Fauci and Democrats look bad. FWIW I agree that eg. children shouldn't have been required to wear masks in school, but I don't trust whoever wrote this to write a neutral or fair summary from the full set of facts we know (which no one will read directly because it would be thousands of pages).
    - Retric 2y ago
      > children shouldn't have been required to wear masks in school Historically children were required to get vaccinated before attending public schools. Having large groups in close proximity for long periods is a serious disease transmission risk. With COVID the children themselves had minimal risk but the community was at risk from them. ~1,220,000 people died with the precautions we took. That doesn’t mean 1,220,000 people would have died with fewer precautions or that more couldn’t dramatically lower that number. Public heath is complicated, but we traded roughly a million American lives for freedom. Suggesting we should have done less is a difficult stance for me to support even as doing dramatically more would have been extremely painful.
      - apsec112 2y ago
        Prior to vaccines, there was no difference in COVID death rates between red and blue states https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-policy https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-...
Agathos 2y ago
"Dr. Fauci admitted that vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future." Or, paraphrased: Look what you made me do.
Jimmc414 2y ago
[flagged]
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  I'll upvote a link to the actual testimony rather than a partisan editorialized summary.
  - Jimmc414 2y ago
    Please provide a better unbiased link to this testimony and I will request that it is replaced.
- hnpolicestate 2y ago
  You have to understand how bad COVID posts make HN users look . I've saved quite a few screenshots over the past 4 years. They don't want to be reminded of how badly they got the phenomenon wrong and how much damage it caused millions of people. Here's a good one from 11/20 discussing preprint data on Pfizers shot. "Good + 90% of individuals achieve immunity. + No significant side effects " These folks fell for a conspiracy.
  - Gualdrapo 2y ago
    > how much damage it caused millions of people. I always see this kind of claims here from time to time without any data from reputable, verifiable sources to back it up. But whatever.
    - bun_terminator 2y ago
      The problem is that that kind of data is not being recorded, and certainly not published. My country purposefully did chose not to record official numbers of the actual vax state of death. No one properly collects data on myocarditis etc. Selective science (just like selective moderation) is a plague
    - bitcoin_anon 2y ago
nevermore24 2y ago
[dead]
_fat_santa 2y ago
None of the findings here are surprising. Covid was a real special time in politics because you could see politics impacting decisions on a daily basis. It seems that basically across all aspects of Covid (masking, social distancing, biz closures, school closures, lockdowns, etc...) you got one answer if you listened to mainstream media and the govt but a completely different answer if you looked at the underlying evidence. Probably my "favorite" (ie the one that drove me the most crazy) was the school closures. From the very start you could skim the daily case numbers and see that worldwide, kids made up a small percentage of those infected and an even smaller percentage of those that died. Nevertheless though you always got the same narrative from leaders about the dangers of Covid to kids. Any pushback on the official narrative and the usual response was "well you're not a doctor so what do you know" which drove many people insane because for things like school closures, you didn't need anything above a basic understanding of statistics to see that the official narrative was complete BS. I'm honestly really glad that moment in time is behind us.
- ryathal 2y ago
  The school decisions were absolutely some of the worst decisions, especially with the number of professionals dedicated to child health and welfare begging for the exact opposite.
  - archagon 2y ago
    Kids might not get very sick from COVID, but they can still spread it. Teachers were getting sick all the time.
reify 2y ago
[flagged]

32 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

It seems that the policies of maintaining a 6-foot distance and masking for children were not based on scientific data. Please correct me if I am misinterpreting this testimony.

b0sk 2y ago
Given that there were absolutely no widespread studies at that point, they had to go on priors. And the 6 ft guidelines was based on the belief that if COVID spread mainly through droplets (which was the most likely theory at that point). The children aspect was again based on limited information available at that point. With all the data now, we see that COVID affected older and less healthier population. They had no idea at that point, conclusively so always erred on the side of caution. All this house investigation is a Republican witch-hunt.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  > With all the data now, we see that COVID affected older and less healthier population. That was always going to be the case. Less old and healthy people were carriers.
- Jimmc414 2y ago
  This is not a political topic. We have a right to have questions answered about a significant event.
  - nevermore24 2y ago
    As long as you're asking those questions in good faith, sure.
    - TMWNN 2y ago
      Whether a question is valid and worthy of exploration has nothing to do with whether the listener deems the intention behind it to be "correct". The preposterous notion that certain questions are part of a sinister "'Just asking questions' rhetorical device" and must be ignored long ago became, like "dogwhistle", the first resort of those that don't want the statement/question dealt with at all.
  - stahtops 2y ago
    [flagged]
- b0sk 2y ago
  And what the general population doesn't get about public health officials is they are only concerned with "how to save lives", "how to stop the spread" and "how to not overwhelm the health system". Given the choice of widespread admittance of children to hospitals vs inconveniencing them with masks, they'd always choose the latter option. With the benefit of hindsight, there are always things to blame but this investigation is a hackjob.
- coding123 2y ago
  Yes yes don't ask questions. It's not gain of function it's mess with function or whatever Fauci barfs up for the day.
- someuser2345 2y ago
  He should not be punished for the 6ft guidelines or the mask mandates (I agree that it's better to be safe than sorry). However, Fauci did promote the idea that the lab leak theory was a racist conspiracy theory, and he denied that the NIH was funding gain of function research in China.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
There are plenty of studies that provide evidence that distance reduces the spread of COVID-like diseases. There is not '6 feet is safe, 5 feet is not' because it is about probabilistic particle movement in air.
gnicholas 2y ago
The 6-foot distance was revealed as a fiction several years ago. [1] The rules for child masking in other countries demonstrates fairly well that there was not a strong scientific basis. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/19/cdcs-six-foot-social-distancing-rule-was-arbitrary-says-former-fda-commissioner/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/09/19/cdcs-s...
- b0sk 2y ago
  The article doesn't conflict with what I stated. It's a probabilistic estimate based on the prior that COVID spread like flu. The further you go the less your chances of catching. Because you can't convey probability effectively to public (you confuse them), you convey an arbitrary number.
stahtops 2y ago
Just curious, if you had to estimate- about how many decisions do you make each day where you reference a scientific study? The primary takeaway from this transcript is that republicans decided to waste another 14 hours of Fauci’s time.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  People are free to make their own decisions on the basis of unscientific thinking. The issue is when decisions are made for you, and you’re told there is a scientific basis, and there isn’t.
  - stahtops 2y ago
    So 4 years later you’re going to tell me that you believe we would have reduced covid infections by gathering closely together indoors with no masks?
    - gnicholas 2y ago
      Terrific false dichotomy — bravo. The post I was responding to was critiquing the prior post on the grounds that people make decisions without a scientific basis all the time. My point was that people are free to make these decisions, but that governmental mandates should be held to a higher standard. I of course would not have said that we could have reduced covid infections by following the steps you suggest. But governmental mandates need to take into account both sides of the ledger. If having kids in school could have prevented massive learning loss and not resulted in significant additional deaths/hospitalizations, then that's something worth considering.
      - stahtops 2y ago
        Ok so you admit that social distancing and masks help reduce the spread of covid-19. That’s great to hear. What do you and Jim expect to learn from a scientific study? That 12 feet is better than 6 feet? I’d like to hear from each of you what you hope to learn, and why you think it would have been worth intentionally infecting people with covid-19, as that’s what would be required for a conclusive scientific study.
burkaman 2y ago
I don't think you're misinterpreting the testimony but I do think you're drawing too strong of a conclusion. The fact that one official couldn't remember a scientific basis during a 14 hour interview doesn't mean there wasn't one.
veidr 2y ago
You are. When there's an active pandemic killing thousands (would become a million, just in this (outlier bad at responding to it) country), "science" doesn't require having a peer-reviewed ten-year old study that has been published in Nature and survived challenges. In such circumstances, just being familiar with the latest related science, and the fundamental concept of science, qualifies you to take your best (informed) guess. Making kids wear masks made sense in absence of data that showed it wasn't effective, because it's been so effective with other, similarly airborne-transmissible diseases. > The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation forced on Americans by federal health officials was arbitrary and not based on science. Again, "we could wait to conduct studies whether 4 feet is good enough, or 9 feet is required; or we could take our best shot since thousands of people are dying each day", and base our decisions on scientific data previously collected, in extremely similar pandemic/transmissible-disease contexts, even if it might imperfectly match the present scenario.
- insickness 2y ago
  This is a slippery slope. These policies had a vast affect on the lives of millions of people. Business were shut down. Schools were closed. People were instructed to stay in their homes for years. Simply saying, "Well, we made our best guess," is absolutely not acceptable. When the government curbs human rights, they have an obligation to weigh and justify the costs with scientific evidence.
  - blackbear_ 2y ago
    What is your suggested approach when there is no (reliable) scientific evidence for any course of action and not enough time to gather such (reliable) evidence? Note that not taking any action is also a decision that, in your framework, requires supporting evidence.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      Not taking action doesn't require supporting evidence, and insickness didn't propose a framework in which it does. There is at any moment an infinite number of things you could choose to not be doing. You can't collect evidence for not doing those things, as the amount of evidence required would also be infinite.

apsec112 2y ago

The response to COVID should be thoroughly investigated, but this page just seems like a partisan hackjob. The framing is clearly intended to get maximum partisan impact, not to find the truth.

Jimmc414 2y ago
> but this page just seems like a partisan hackjob. Please explain. This page is a link to the actual testimony.
- apsec112 2y ago
  This page is a summary of the testimony which is clearly trying to pick quotes and/or frame things to make Fauci and Democrats look bad. FWIW I agree that eg. children shouldn't have been required to wear masks in school, but I don't trust whoever wrote this to write a neutral or fair summary from the full set of facts we know (which no one will read directly because it would be thousands of pages).
  - Retric 2y ago
    > children shouldn't have been required to wear masks in school Historically children were required to get vaccinated before attending public schools. Having large groups in close proximity for long periods is a serious disease transmission risk. With COVID the children themselves had minimal risk but the community was at risk from them. ~1,220,000 people died with the precautions we took. That doesn’t mean 1,220,000 people would have died with fewer precautions or that more couldn’t dramatically lower that number. Public heath is complicated, but we traded roughly a million American lives for freedom. Suggesting we should have done less is a difficult stance for me to support even as doing dramatically more would have been extremely painful.
    - apsec112 2y ago
      Prior to vaccines, there was no difference in COVID death rates between red and blue states https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-policy https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-...

Agathos 2y ago

"Dr. Fauci admitted that vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future." Or, paraphrased: Look what you made me do.

Jimmc414 2y ago

[flagged]

bryanlarsen 2y ago
I'll upvote a link to the actual testimony rather than a partisan editorialized summary.
- Jimmc414 2y ago
  Please provide a better unbiased link to this testimony and I will request that it is replaced.
hnpolicestate 2y ago
You have to understand how bad COVID posts make HN users look . I've saved quite a few screenshots over the past 4 years. They don't want to be reminded of how badly they got the phenomenon wrong and how much damage it caused millions of people. Here's a good one from 11/20 discussing preprint data on Pfizers shot. "Good + 90% of individuals achieve immunity. + No significant side effects " These folks fell for a conspiracy.
- Gualdrapo 2y ago
  > how much damage it caused millions of people. I always see this kind of claims here from time to time without any data from reputable, verifiable sources to back it up. But whatever.
  - bun_terminator 2y ago
    The problem is that that kind of data is not being recorded, and certainly not published. My country purposefully did chose not to record official numbers of the actual vax state of death. No one properly collects data on myocarditis etc. Selective science (just like selective moderation) is a plague
  - bitcoin_anon 2y ago

nevermore24 2y ago

[dead]

_fat_santa 2y ago

None of the findings here are surprising. Covid was a real special time in politics because you could see politics impacting decisions on a daily basis. It seems that basically across all aspects of Covid (masking, social distancing, biz closures, school closures, lockdowns, etc...) you got one answer if you listened to mainstream media and the govt but a completely different answer if you looked at the underlying evidence. Probably my "favorite" (ie the one that drove me the most crazy) was the school closures. From the very start you could skim the daily case numbers and see that worldwide, kids made up a small percentage of those infected and an even smaller percentage of those that died. Nevertheless though you always got the same narrative from leaders about the dangers of Covid to kids. Any pushback on the official narrative and the usual response was "well you're not a doctor so what do you know" which drove many people insane because for things like school closures, you didn't need anything above a basic understanding of statistics to see that the official narrative was complete BS. I'm honestly really glad that moment in time is behind us.

ryathal 2y ago
The school decisions were absolutely some of the worst decisions, especially with the number of professionals dedicated to child health and welfare begging for the exact opposite.
- archagon 2y ago
  Kids might not get very sick from COVID, but they can still spread it. Teachers were getting sick all the time.

reify 2y ago

[flagged]