Tis the season for jolly folly

Last update: Saturday 11/27/21

Dr. Fauci has often complained about being misquoted. Well, the sad fact is that Dr. Fauci and too many other prominent public health officials are eminently "misquotable". The sudden emergence of the Omicron variant will greatly exacerbate this problem as our public health experts are pressed once again to address questions for which science has not yet determined reliable answers, thereby providing countless opportunities for new misunderstandings.

Politicians and other professionals who are under public scrutiny learn early in their careers to deploy carefully worded, carefully edited, carefully vetted press releases that contain the exact words they want the media to quote and that address all of the points they want the media to cover. Then they stay "on point" during interviews, i.e., they repeat the same words "spontaneously" that are printed in their press releases; they make sure to cover all of the points listed in their press releases; and they "walk back" erroneous comments or comments that elicit  backlash that clearly indicates that substantial portions of their intended audiences did not understand what they were trying to say. If necessary they revise their press releases and talking points. They don't blame their audiences or the media for these misunderstandings ... 

... but not so for Dr. Fauci and not so for too many of his public health colleagues who appear on radio/TV talk shows and give on-the-record interviews to print media. Being experts in their fields, they want to appear to speak sincerely and spontaneously to the non-experts in their audience in the simplest terms; so they disdain the discipline of prepared notes. They speak informally ... conversationally ... using non-technical words that lend themselves to multiple interpretations and misinterpretations, thereby sowing confusion that feeds public doubt and mistrust.

Halloween 2021

For example, last month Dr. Fauci wanted the kiddies have a good time on Halloween. "Go out there and enjoy Halloween", he said, "It’s a very important part of the year for children.” According to the NY Times, he also said that the ability for parents to get vaccinated, combined with the low risk of the virus spreading outdoors, offered some reassurance. The Neoskeptics blog responsed as follows:

• "Yes, kids love Halloween, even kids who live in apartment buildings love Halloween, kids who knock on every apartment door, indoors not outdoors, crying "Trick or Treat!" ... kids who live in urban neighborhoods where every "house" is an apartment building, knocking on every door until someone opens the door ... not wearing a mask ... breathing on the kids in the hallway outside their apartment ... where aerosols float freely throughout the night ... Happy Halloween!!! ... One piece of advice for every child in every kind of neighborhood -- suburban, rural and, oh yes, urban -- because, as per so many previous guidelines from the nation's pandemic pundits, one size fits all, right??? ... Now that's scary, really scary... :-("
  
  -- " 'Go out there and enjoy Halloween', says Dr. Fauci ... Oh, really???"

Does the editor of this blog really believe that Dr. Fauci doesn't give a damn about the safety of urban children? No way. But the editor does believe that Dr. Fauci should have taken a lot more time to choose his words more carefully.

Thanksgiving 2021

Another example was provided by Dr. Fauci's comments in a tidal wave of interviews a few days before Thanksgiving. Links to a few of these interviews appear below:

• "Dr. Fauci on the holidays, boosters and pandemic’s future", Jonathan Wolfe and Adam Pasick, NY Times, 11/24/21
  
  
• "Could Thanksgiving turn into a superspreader? We'll ask Dr. Fauci", NPR, 11/22/21
  
  
• "Fauci has a message for vaccinated Americans ahead of Thanksgiving: ‘Enjoy the holiday’", Christina Prignano , Boston Globe, 11/22/21
  
  
• "Fully vaccinated family members can celebrate the holidays without masks, Fauci says", Jacqueline Howard and Dakin Andone, CNN, 11/21/21 ... no masks
  

The last headline captures the essence of his message ==> Fully vaccinated family members can celebrate the holidays without masks. Once again one has to ask: Oh really???

 

The notion that fully vaccinated persons cannot spread Delta is flatly contradicted by the substantial number of breakthrough cases generated by Delta, i.e., cases wherein fully vaccinated persons have become infected. These breakthroughs can also spread the virus to others. Indeed the rising number of breakthrough cases is one Dr. Fauci's favorite rationales for providing boosters for everyone, his preferred explanation of breakthroughs being a decline in the effectiveness of vaccines after around six months.

Yes, some vaccinations may lose their effectiveness as time passes, but waning vaccinations do not account for the fact that 700 out of the 900 infections detected in the Provincetown, Massachusetts resort community after the July 4th 2021 celebrations were breakthrough infections. By July 4th, the vast majority of U.S. residents had been vaccinated at most three months earlier. The large cluster of recently vaccinated breakthroughs in Provincetown was the wake-up call that caused the CDC to reverse its prior guidance that vaccinated persons did not have to wear masks in most public indoor spaces.

Nevertheless Dr. Fauci and other coronavirus pundits continue to ignore the massive breakthroughs among recently vaccinated persons in Provincetown, and to "explain" all breakthroughs as due to the declining efficacy of vaccinations after six months.

• "How Provincetown, Mass., stress-tested the coronavirus vaccine with summer partying and delta", Hannah Knowles and Randy Dotinga, Washington Post, 8/5/21
  
  
• "Why Provincetown’s Response to Its Covid Outbreak Was So Effective", William Hanage and K.J. Seung, NY Times, 8/27/21

As for Thanksgiving, even if all adults in a family had been recently vaccinated, some of them might have been asymptomatic breakthroughs who could have infected recently vaccinated guests around the family dinner table. This might have had catastrophic consequences if the infected guests were older members of the family who had not yet received their booster shots. 

Ironically, the chances of the infected guests becoming severely ill would have been very, very small if the infected guests had been unvaccinated children. Indeed, out of the 700,000 U.S. residents who died in the previous 12 months only 66 were children, despite the fact that none of 27 million younger children in the U.S. had been vaccinated. (Note: causes of children's deaths obtained from slide 17 of a CDC presentation.)

Once again, one wishes that Dr. Fauci had been less folksy in his holiday cheer, i.e., that he had explicitly identified the risks implied by undetected breakthrough infections among the vaccinated members of a family.

If the Omicron variant proves to be anywhere near as troublesome as some experts now fear, our public health pundits will have to drop their unrehearsed informality and offer prescriptions that are as detailed and specific as those given by responsible doctors when prescribing medications for their patients. Otherwise we may be facing another year of misunderstandings, lockdowns, mistrust, and covid fatigue.

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Related notes on this blog:

• "Vaccinating our young children will not accelerate our return to normal living", Last update: 11/7/21
  
  
• "Let's stop repeating COVID myths", Last update: 11/1/21