FAUCI DISMISSES VIRUS MODELS BUT URGES NATIONWIDE LOCKDOWN
WND Staff
April 3, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci (CNN video screenshot)
What is the basis for Dr. Anthony Fauci's recommendation that all 50 states issue economy-killing, stay-at-home ordersto combat the coronavirus?
It's the models created by epidemiologists. But what if those models are wrong?
Fauci himself, in fact, according to the Washington Post, said at a coronavirus task force meeting this week that there are "too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable."
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci said, according to two unnamed officials: "I've looked at all the models. I’ve spent a lot of time on the models. They don't tell you anything. You can't really rely upon models."
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Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh tried to sort out the confusion raised in the April 2 Post story, headlined "Experts, Trump's Advisers Doubt White House’s 240,000 Coronavirus Death Estimate."
Limbaugh reminded his listeners Fridayof the importance of the information on which decisions have been made that have wiped out all the stock market gains of Trump's presidency and put millions out of work.
"[T]here is a big part of me, and a growing part of me, that says much of what we’re doing — not all, but much of what we’re doing — is, I don’t want to say not necessary. But the damage that we are purposely inflicting on the people of this country is ripping me apart," Limbaugh said.
"It is the people who make this country work, and we have turned off their livelihoods, and we have told them they cannot do what they want to do when it comes to their careers and to their work."
Limbaugh reacted to the reported remarks by Fauci.
"We have spent the whole week being told what the models say," said Limbaugh, "we gotta rely on ’em, and now Fauci’s out saying: Well, there’s so much input going in there, there’s so much output coming out of there and 'there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable.' So all these numbers are worthless now? What does this mean? Dr. Fauci.
"What? Relying on models is all we’ve done! Relying on models is why we've shut down the economy! What the hell is going on?"
Limbaugh said the coronavirus models are "just as bad and just as unreliable as climate change models."
"Nobody knows. So they want to put data into a model, come out with a number, and then use that," he said.
At CNN's coronavirus town hall Thursday, Fauci said every state should issue a shelter-in-place order.
"I don't understand why that's not happening," he told Anderson Cooper.
Fauci: No worse than 'severe seasonal influenza'
Fauci co-authored an article published March 26 in the New England Journal of Medicinepredicting the fatality rate for the coronavirus will turn out to be like that of a "severe seasonal influenza."
In an exceptionally bad flu season, the case fatality rate is about one-tenth of 1 percent, the authors wrote.
That assessment was a signicant downgrade from the figure he cited in testimony to the House of Representatives on March 11in which he called for a cancellation of any large gatherings.
Fauci estimated at the time – prior to the current shutdown – that the true mortality rate of the coronavirus outbreak, taking into account unreported cases, was "somewhere around 1%, which means it is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu."
In a Jan. 21 interview, Fauci said the coronavirus was "not a major threat" to the U.S.
Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly asked: "Bottom line. We don't have to worry about this one, right?"
"Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing," Fauci replied.
"But, this not a major threat for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.
In January, Dr Tony Fauci was on my show telling America not to worry about the Coronavirus—that it wasn’t a major threat to the people. January 21, 2020, 20 seconds:
SEE VIDEO