Dr. Fauci troubled by political divide over Covid science, says it's hampered pandemic response "Sometimes, when you listen to people speak, it's almost that the enemy is each other," Fauci told Frist, a Republican who represented Tennessee in the Senate. "And we have public health decisions that are based on [ideological] considerations. You should never have that." Fauci, without mentioning political party affiliations or the names of his two most recent bosses, then referred to markedly higher Covid-19 vaccination rates among people who live in counties that voted for President Joe Biden, a Democrat, than people who live in counties which former Republican President Donald Trump won in the 2020 election. "You should never have, looking at a map, and seeing that people who are vaccinated fall heavily into one group and people who are unvaccinated fall heavily into another group," Fauci said. "That is so antithetical with what public health should be, which should be a concerted effort on the part of the entire population."
Counterpoint... Dr. Scott Atlas unloads on Fauci, Birx, Redfield in forthcoming memoir: 'I was disgusted' Atlas says he presented data and studies showing that schools should be reopened and that children are not significant spreaders of the coronavirus but was virtually ignored by Fauci and others on the team. Atlas said that Birx told him his opinion was "out of the mainstream" and said he was part of a "fringe" group of people who believed schools should be opened. "Meanwhile she insisted that all experts agreed with her," Atlas wrote. "I shook my head, thinking of some of the world-class epidemiologists who agreed with me—John Ioannidis and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford—and wondered if she or Fauci had ever read a single publication by them."
Not a very weighted counterpoint though. Atlas is a dipshit narcissist and he was wrong, unvaccinated schoolkids are a great reservoir for covid, just like they sustain influenza year after year.
Of course, any reasonable person would ignore such a ridiculous statement. At the time Atlas made that idiotic statement , children were not often catching the virus because they were not in school. Schools were closed! The counter argument that kids don't get very sick from Covid so why not let them go to school is equally stupid. Kids are an efficient vector of the virus both to other kids, a few of whom will die if they catch Covid, and to adults who will often get very ill and many will die (That was before vaccine appeared, now just those stupid people who don't get vaccinated die.) The fewer hosts, the lower the odds of variants appearing! Very important to nip these serious viral threats in the bud. We could have done a good job of that. We didn't because we had a JACKASS as president when the virus was on the way.
The reality... Study: Children spread COVID-19 more than previously thought If school is a potential source of COVID-19 transmission, vaccinating young kids is even more important to protect the adults they love, researchers say https://www.dallasnews.com/news/202...spread-covid-19-more-than-previously-thought/
So if vaccinating adults doesn't protect them, how is vaccinating children going to protect vaccinated adults?
The Covid vaccinated breakthrough rate is under 0.5% --- which is much better than the expected 3% rate. Note that ALL vaccines have vaccinated breakthrough cases in a population where the disease is highly prevalent. For example the vaccinated breakthrough rate for measles is above 3%.
So if the breakthrough rate is so low, why do vaccinated parents require children to be vaccinated in order to protect them?
Because -- as seen in many in-depth studies -- schools are a high-risk environment for spreading Covid among the children and then back into the households and communities.