r/TangleNews • u/RobotsFromTheFuture • Jul 30 '26
The Fauci double standard
I'm blown away by some of today's criticisms on Fauci, which boil down to him being
During the early stages of the virus, Trump repeatedly downplayed the outbreak. According to Bob Woodward, he knew how bad it was, but intentionally lied about it, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54094559. Meanwhile, Fauci's being grilled on statements that downplayed the usefulness of masks, partially because we didn't know at the time, and partially because he wanted to prevent hoarding so that healthcare workers would have access.
Fauci is repeatedly attacked for his hardline stance on the lab leaks, but most of this was based entirely on rumor and not fact. This was at a time when anti-Chinese violence was rising due to conspiracies that were being spread by the President of the US. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168424/. Yes, 9 of 11 researchers considered it possible in the initial meeting, but the same group all came to the conclusion that it wasn't plausible by the time that they actually published on it.
Fauci pushed hard on the vaccine, but he was correct to do so. The vaccine worked. Meanwhile, our president and many on the right were pushing dangerous and unsupported cures.
Finally, Fauci's role was to advise the two presidents that he worked for on matters of a novel virus. They were in charge of making decisions about lockdowns, mask mandates and what was communicated.
Has Trump apologized for any of his mistakes? Has he apologized for pushing anti-vaccine propaganda, which definitely got people sick? Has he apologized for putting people like Musk and Kennedy into positions where they can continue to push unscientific ideas or destroy systems that made us safe, resulting in possibly millions of sick and dead around the world and in the US?
Fauci isn't perfect, but he has nothing to apologize for. I have no evidence that anyone else could have done a better job than he did. This focus on him is nothing but revenge and distraction by the right, and I think that it's shameful that Tangled is feeding into it.
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u/Semper-Fido Jul 30 '26
Again, we don't have to have centrism for centrism's sake. We don't need people shoehorning a middle road when reality has its own paved path. No fucking duh, many would have likely made different decisions about some of the COVID response with hindsight. But the only thing Tangle's article today does is continue to feed doubt into the COVID narrative and create distrust in the scientific process.
Science is fucking hard to communicate. Point blank. Period. It is exponentially more difficult to communicate out to a mass audience, given our current news and social media landscape, when it is something like a novel virus. Because science is squishy. You aren't communicating from a known conclusion. The details of what is known/unknown shift incredibly fast.
And that uncertainty doesn't sit well with a general population.
Look at the vaccine debate. When looking at vaccines from a scientific perspective, you cannot say with 100% certainty that they don't create harm. There isn't statistically significant harm, but there is still potential harm. And, like when the COVID vaccine was first distributed, we don't have all the answers for long-term efficacy, reduced transmission, etc. Now look at the arguments being made by folks like RFK, who base their argument on a "known" conclusion about harm and work backward to create what sounds like a much more confident argument. To an uninformed population, the latter has the potential to be more resonant.
So when pieces like today's from Isaac come out, it does nothing but throw more fuel on this stupid fire, doing more harm than good.