The Faucian Bargain

Many countries unfortunately handed the decision-making mantle to so-called public health “experts” re “COVID management” even though we were setting out on uncharted waters, extrapolating from “untested” models, going back on decades of public health wisdom, an experiment now demonstrably absurd. 

The UK still suffers from that, here in Lanka, our leaders have fortunately stopped deputizing well intentioned public health professionals as if they were the Oracle of Delphi, when we are dealing with grossly inaccurate (in terms of false positives) PCR tests, unproven “asymptomatic spread” allegations, and a mass disconnect between the “casedemic” and actual mortality numbers. 

In Lanka, no meaningful mortality spikes over multiple holidays and months of virtually normal commercial activity. So we’ve migrated past much of the bosh, and still have to get our paradigms straight re tourism and travel and a few other elements, and the costs being imposed “testing for phantoms” in the various commercial sectors, but we are very much moving in the right direction.

The number one bestseller on Amazon this last week, and therefore the number one book in the US, is entitled ‘The Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful Bureaucrat in American History’. The author Steve Deace is a web commentator and produces discussions and commentary on Blaze TV. His dedication to truth and exposing the Covidian charade in the US has been exemplary. It is a sign of the times that the book catapulted to number one and has hovered near there all week – truly ecumenical acknowledgement.

The premise Deace begins with is hard to contest. Democracies and Republics (as the US is) insist that all rights not delegated to the government, remain with the people. Certainly, these are the concluding sentiments of the US Bill of Rights and it is a remarkable anthem to meaningful human autonomy.

The US Founding Fathers divided government so no one branch could gain tyrannical status.  Cato urged this philosophy, so did Lord Acton: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Accountability benefits our souls, and humility to defer to such accountability, befits them. That template now expansively modelled (at least in theory), is edified by the folk wisdom of The Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” 

Unaccountable bureaucracy has been a sinister force in history, henchmen of rogues run riot and run amok, seduced by their own star power. So, let’s see, here in Sri Lanka, what lessons and portents we might extract from the Fauci carnival that has so held US pandemic responses hostage. How did it happen, that the world’s foremost economy and sole superpower, instead of leading us out of this maelstrom, became the epicentre of disaster, with the worst COVID stats virtually in the world?

And how did a nation priding itself on freedom, and to which we all turned for inspiration, and flocked to for opportunity, become a place where local businesses have been devastated, record unemployment logged, local churches and places of worship that served their communities shuttered and life milestones annulled (graduations, weddings, business plans)? And with the power and 24/7 omnipresence of US media being streamed incessantly, they have almost taken the whole planet along with them.

Faucian contortionism

Steve reports Fauci in January 2020 regaling us with this assessment re C-19: “It is a very low risk to the US. It isn’t something the American people need to be frightened of.” Later that month, Fauci reaffirmed what was, and technically still is, the overwhelming medical consensus re asymptomatic spread: “Even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks has always been a symptomatic person.” 

JAMA medical meta-analysis of thousands subsequently, a 10-million-person strong study from Wuhan, assessments from the British Medical Journal, all today still corroborate this. Fauci of course has long moved on to the panic parade.

On 28 February 2020, writing in perhaps the English-speaking world’s most prestigious medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci compared C-19 to the flu (specifically, severe seasonal influenza). 

On 8 March, Fauci told CBS news, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”

And then, the world shifted. What new study suddenly “landed” that upended all global understanding of virology, epidemiology, immunity, pathogens, transmissibility? Surely, it must be the most read, the most referred to, the most deferred to, document in the world? Well, we know of no such revelation, and it is the best kept secret along with the lost predictions of Nostradamus. 

But without benefit of any such thunderbolt of illumination, on 11 March 2020, Fauci suddenly testified to Congress that C-19 could be “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” And he meant 10 times more so than severe seasonal influenza, and that was before “doctoring” death certificates and juggling “with” COVID (there a supporting cast member in a mortality lineup of decisive comorbidities) versus “from” (the prime cause of death).

So, what changed in eleven days? Where is the secret scroll?

Then we went from 15 days to “flatten the curve” to another 30 days “to stop the spread” to perpetuity, a new religion, and a new way of (non)life. By this time, reinforcements were arriving from the fevered fallacies of the Imperial College modelling in the UK and the perennially inaccurate prognostications of the Institute for Health Metrics (IHME) (called by Harvard and their own past committee members “a travesty”). 

Deace lives in Iowa. As an example, IHME forecasted 1,300 deaths by 30 April. By mid May 2020, they had 271 deaths. Georgia’s peak was to be 21 April, when 24 people sadly left us (forecast was six times as many). At any rate, when practicing theology, facts don’t really matter.

The owner of Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy erupted on behalf of more than one sane citizen and beleaguered business owner: “So the economy is just shut down?” “You can’t just make everyone stay inside and basically start over. It’s insane.” “You can’t decimate an entire economy.” As I’ve written before, economy IS lives.  It’s how we stay alive, and provide care, and only unelected officials guaranteed a paycheck don’t understand that viscerally.

Less than six weeks after Fauci had confirmed asymptomatic spread is not a driver of respiratory outbreaks, he then took the lead in a national policy premised on the precise opposite conclusion. Again, what science changed in that time? None!

The only justification to make non-symptomatic people have their lives invaded and persecuted was the claim they were inadvertently “vectors of transmission.” But even the US CDC claimed only 15% of all C-19 infections were asymptomatic (even that high is controversial and since contradicted, but let’s work with it for illustration). If so, it cannot on the sheer mathematical merits of the assertion be a lead driver of transmission. But then if that is not the main driver, then how do you justify shutting the whole country down? 

Mysteriously, a peer reviewed paper showing the overwhelming benefits (recently reconfirmed by WHO which “still” refuses to recommend it, lest all the pharma funding fizzle out perhaps?) of hydroxychloroquine (a prophylactic widely and safely used around the world), was “lost” and only “resurfaced” in January. This remedy had been panned and mocked by Fauci, he has never addressed the clear rebuttal to his assertions this paper represents, nor indeed the recent WHO study on that front. Fauci, emperor of COVID, simply skirts around inconsistencies of this type, and trusts amnesia in his fan base to see him through.

So, did Fauci only show his growing, glaring ineptitude through all this, or has he purposefully been manipulating viral narratives for some other aim? 

Which experts?

Of course, the usual piffle is heard, “trust the experts.” Yes, which ones? And when a seismic disruption is being foisted upon a country, a continent, a planet, surely a robust debate of options is the only sane thing leaders would want. No censoring of medical views was evident as we battled polio, typhus, smallpox, AIDS, why would there be?

Well, today that question has to be asked. Early on, Dr. David Katz of Yale urged that we consider an approach that minimized “total harm” by looking after the vulnerable, as it was by now evident C-19 was not an equal opportunity offender, and the median age of those passing “with” or “from” it was above 80. 

Dr. Katz wrote, “I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life – schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned – will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself.” He pointed out the unemployment, impoverishment, and despair would mushroom and multiply, and indeed they have.

Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford, justly esteemed for his research, penned a peer reviewed study on the “harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures” on the same day that Fauci was delivering his Congressional doomsday testimony. Everything Dr. Ioannidis predicted came to pass: fake data, withdrawn papers touting political talking points later “unmasked” themselves, outlandish case fatality rates that were equivalent to medical dementia, exponential harms from extreme measures, misapplied resources, fevered comparisons to “epochal” pandemics that don’t hold water statistically at all and particularly not in terms of tracking normal lifespan.

Then came the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which gave us a living case study, demonstrating Ioannidis and others were right in terms of infectiousness, lethality and spread. This was documented, written up, and duly ignored. Other such environments followed, and the clear deductions that should have followed, didn’t, and drums of doom continued to beat.

Wesley Pegden, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon, pointed out that data simulations of mass lockdowns had a poison pill: “As long as the majority of the population remains uninfected, lifting containment measures will lead to an epidemic almost as large as would happen without having mitigations in place.” So, the efficacy, beyond the inhumanity of the approach, is indicted. Again, a chorus of discussion? Deafening silence.

As Pedgen wrote this, we have just to watch New Zealand, Australia, Israel, the UK, slaloming back and forth from one lockdown to another, experiencing “waves”. Without natural immunity or vaccine immunity (which the current vaccines are not necessarily claiming they endow, but rather symptom suppression), you are only “between waves”. 

A famous infectious disease expert pointed this out about Ebola, which has a shudderingly high case fatality rate of 50%. This expert opposed locking down Africa from the rest of the world or quarantining health care workers. He urged “sending people over there”. This expert by the way, was none other than a saner Anthony Fauci in 2014.

The Great Barrington Declaration was written by a dizzyingly illustrious group of medical scientists from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard, it was signed by tens of thousands of other doctors and scientists, and hundreds of thousands otherwise, advocating an approach of “focused protection”. It has been shunned and lampooned, and if there is any proper debate in the mainstream press, or major networks, I have yet to find it. But these eminent epidemiologists are finding themselves censored on Twitter, because some “fact checker” thinks they have the scientific credentials to disallow their views? Or more likely, they have been given propaganda taboos, and science be damned.

Towards the end of Trump’s Presidency, he brought in Dr. Scott Atlas, savaged since by the orthodoxy, also for sheer “association” with Trump. As he pointed out, “When you do a lockdown…you do not eliminate the virus. All you do is delay the infection.”

Some of the collateral damage he cites: 46% of the most six most common cancers were not diagnosed, 85% of living organ donor transplants were not done. Two-thirds of cancer screenings were not done. Half of the 650,000 on chemotherapy didn’t come in. Half of immunizations needed weren’t done. UN says 1.3 million will die from starvation because food couldn’t be sent to them due to shutdowns. 400,000 more will die from Tuberculosis because of resources being diverted. And this over a virus 99.6% recover from below 70, 95% above 70, and most people don’t even know they had. 

All this done with magisterial arrogance, life and death en masse from a flu panic, because Fauci and co “say so.”

The control group, the lab and the cult

Somehow, despite all the peer pressure and smear pressure, Sweden remained unbowed and refused to play the “COVID porn” game. It became a control group, a factual refutation of the orthodoxy (no masking, no lockdowns, districts in Sweden have ordered people “not” to mask, schools largely open). 

And Swedish investigative media groups found a closed Facebook group of two hundred plus academics and researchers who conspired to see how they could propagate their disdain for Sweden’s defiance of the orthodoxy. Of course, needing to declare an intifada undermines any claim you actually believe you have a better argument. It is a terror of the truth.

If Sweden had failed, had been overrun with mortality, was at the bottom of the European or global league tables, “plague riddled” then these naysayers could just smirk in peace. But Sweden’s cardinal sin was they disproved the hypochondria. As per WHO, Sweden’s daily deaths peaked three months ago, and have been declining since. They’ve had a recent “positive test spike” which sent France scurrying into yet another lockdown. But Sweden stays largely undeterred, as ICU admissions and number of deaths remain flat or declining.

From 11 July to 26 October, Sweden failed to reach double figures in daily deaths, though modelling forecasted 80,000 deaths compared to roughly 12,000 at the time. A “peak high” for Sweden in December was a mere 121 daily deaths, and half that by end January and back into single digits in February. Still, no pervasive lockdowns, no “masking.” Overall, Sweden has done better than Italy, UK, Portugal, US, Spain, Mexico, Peru and France in deaths per million.

And while they had a huge death surge from nursing homes, evaded happily by Denmark, Finland, Norway, they still were at the EU average, without destructive, life leeching policies. In terms of “cases” (positive tests for what they’re worth) and deaths, Sweden has outperformed the Fauci-led delirium of the US. 

And now States following that model, Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, Texas and more are emulating similar results, with none of the predicted “meltdown.” Sweden’s mild economic contraction also is 151% less than the average economic decline seen throughout the EU! Their society is functioning, and again, US States reading from a similar hymnal are following suit.

We also know the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Anthony Fauci funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for “gain of function research on bat coronaviruses.” 

Steve Hilton, the reporter who investigated this, says, “To swallow the natural transmission theory you have to believe the bat or other animal…would have to travel 1,000 miles from its habitat without infecting anybody until it reached Wuhan, where it was already 10-20 times more infectious than any previous virus occurring in nature, and it just happened to arrive in the only lab in China working on that very virus.”

Hence the recent WHO “whitewash” into the origins of the coronavirus has been justly excoriated by virtually every credible observer who has come across it. It reeks of pseudo investigation writ large.

Ongoing investigations into Fauci’s murky embrace of the Chinese authorities, and the funding trail, is enough to make us seriously consider the nature and extent of the grift and gaslighting on display here.

And we are firmly facing a cult…dismissive of critical thinking, urging isolation (72% of Americans claim they will continue “masking”), claiming special status for the pathogen (which is really a coronavirus and T-cell and other immunity from those not infected but who have “crossover immunity” confirm that), pledging loyalty to the “leader” (coffee mugs, Fauci t-shirts, anointed “sexiest man alive” and more stomach turning vacuity), seeking to separate you from your family (holidays become part of the “gift” of the State, hugs can be lethal even post-vaccination so say the swindlers), undermining religious and other gatherings (Walmart can stay open, but not a Church or Synagogue?), “faith” has to go to the “nonscience.” 

Let’s turn the page

Let us leave Faucism in the dust. Let’s be subversive enough to continue to open up, savour holding hands with those we care for, breathe free air, embrace the beauty of creation. Let us study established science and form our views from those specialists not on payrolls benefiting from our derangement or gullibility.

Who said liberties and life can be suspended if someone “declares” a crisis or if there is a bad disease? Not in wars, not during terrorism or pandemics, have we ever had personal freedom so undermined.

As Deace says, “…with clapping seals surrounding us on every side – as their rights, and their freedoms, and their virtue are obviously eroding with no end in sight – is simply stunning to behold.”

This remarkable book reminds us that unaccountable bureaucrats, “experts” with vested interests in prospering from our dismay, personally flourishing while society languishes, cannot be the basis of our decisions or our norms or our thresholds in facing pathogens and challenges. Steve writes “The lockdowns were the dumbest management decision in human history.” And asymptomatic carriers zombifying the rest of us is flat earth nonsense.

Surely, enough! Robust debate, real data, accountability, a demand for consistency and coherence. It’s finally not Fauci, but our desire not to think or confront accountability, one snake oil vendor or another will appear. As Steve Deace says, our fear has become our idol, and that has to go.

Sri Lanka has evaded Fauci, we now need to firmly escape Faucism and reclaim a sustained rational commitment to recovered progress and renewed prosperity.