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Lukas Fierz's avatar

I write, because I "remember that funny white-haired guy who used to appear so often on their screens, the one who said “I represent science”?"

I think that your take on COVID is really not fair.

I had COVID after the third vaccination (with 81). I was extremely ill during two weeks and weak and sleepy for many weeks. During these weeks I was unable to mount one flight of stairs. Only once in my life had I been equally ill, when I got measles at the age of 26 (its more severe in adults). Its quite possible that I would not have survived COVID without these vaccinations (mortality without vaccination being 20 percent in this age group if I remember correctly, and very low with vaccination).

COVID was a novel infectious agent, - its effect - especially in Northern Italy and Russia were devastating. In the uncertainty of the epidemic many things were tried and perhaps in retrospect (but only in retrospect) one can be less certain about the necessity of masks and lockdowns. Anyway life continued and if harm prevented might have been small, so was any damage from these measures.

The evidence of a beneficial effect of vaccines remains however good. The problem here are the very rare adverse effects, e.g. triggering of multiple sclerosis. I saw such a case and in the light of such observations I would reserve the vaccination to elderly people and the immunologically compromised where advantages must surpass the disadvantages.

Now for the funny white-haired guy: He is of Italian descent like you and one of the most respected immunologists and infectiologists of the world. During almost fifty years he made many landmark contributions especially in autoimmune disease and AIDS. He acted to the best of his knowledge and judgment with courage and decency in the hostile environment of the abominable Trump administration.

That effective vaccines give rise to profits is part of our system and probably one cause for innovation. Planned and dictatorial regimes were and are notoriously inefficient in this respect.

That the status of science is compromised has nothing to do with COVID. Trump decried global warming as a hoax even before. Democracy has the inherent risk to become the government by the less intelligent and decent 51 percent. That they cannot transform it into a dictatorship is only a hope, not a certainty, as exemplified by history.

JustPlainBill's avatar

Interesting (and gratifying!) to see that the COVID debate rages on, even in these Comment pages. I'll avoid the well-trodden ground regarding the shots themselves, and settle for offering the opinion that Dr. Anthony Fauci is, at a minimum, the worst kind of self-promoting government bureaucrat.

Among other readings, as a look into Fauci's past, I'd especially recommend "Inventing the AIDS Virus" by Dr. Peter Duesberg (1992). Fauci and "Doctor" Robert Gallo (who stole Dr. Luc Montagnier's HIV virus discovery) likely killed far more AIDS patients with their repurposed AZT "cure" than they saved, and spiked Dr. Duesberg's career to pay him back for his dissent. Many who survived HIV never forgot what Fauci did; at the time, in the late 70s/early 80s, many of them were on the streets calling for his head. Too long ago, so very few still remembered by the time Fauci pulled an essentially repeat performance when COVID came along. He pushed the repurposing of another leftover drug, Remdesivir, that like AZT, is so toxic it often harms the patient it is trying to cure.

It is not well known that both AZT and Remdesivir were drugs developed for different diseases that they originally failed to cure, and were later pulled off the shelf to "try out" on something else. AZT is so nasty it actually has poison markings on the vials.

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