In Part Five of this editorial series, I mentioned that I’d watched a YouTube film trailer featuring virus researcher Judy Mikovits, only to find that the video had been removed, a few hours later, for “violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
YouTube claims that, due to ‘stay at home’ requirements for its (reduced?) human workforce, the company is allowing computer algorithms to automatically remove videos that might — or might not — violate its Community Guidelines. Video creators who have seen their videos removed usually have the ability to appeal removal decisions to human reviewers… but due to COVID… well, maybe those appeal processes aren’t working like they should.
It’s still possible to view the Judy Mikovits interview, however, on the website that’s promoting the Plandemic film produced by filmmaker Mikki Willis. Ms. Mikovits tells a rather frightening story about her fellow scientists and the industry they work in, and she has some interesting theories about why the current pandemic has unfolded the way it has.
You can also read a thoughtful essay about Ms. Mikovits, written by reporter Jessica McBride, on the Heavy.com website.
Regardless of whether you believe Ms. Mikovits’ story or not… or whether you believe Ms. McBride’s background story… you will be reminded that scientists, even rather famous scientists, are just like the rest of us: mostly trustworthy, but willing to bend the truth when financial security or personal reputations are at stake.
Some of our readers may have listened to, or watched, Tuesday’s Senate hearing, where four Trump administration health experts fielded questions from a panel of politicians. (You can view the entire 3-hour hearing here, plus some introductory commentary by CBS News reporters.) One of the scientists testifying was Anthony Fauci — a person Ms. Mikovits soundly criticized in the Plandemic interview.
Anthony Fauci has served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, and has become a controversial player in a very difficult situation.
People have different impressions of Dr. Fauci. He strikes me as a straight-shooter, willing to tell us what we didn’t want to hear, consistently urging a cautious approach to reopening communities during the pandemic.
During Tuesday’s hearing, he continued that cautious tone, referring to an ambitious but uncertain vaccine development process that might bear fruit, at the earliest, in “late fall or early winter.”
“There are some important issues, however, in COVID-19 vaccine development. We have many candidates, and hope to have multiple winners. In other words, it’s multiple shots on goal. This will be important, because this will be good for global availability if he have more than one successful candidate. We will also, as the Chairman mentioned, be producing vaccine ‘at risk’. Which means we will be investing considerable resources into developing doses, even before we know if any given candidates work.
“I must warn, there is also the possibility of negative consequences, where certain vaccines can actually enhance the negative effect of the infection.”
We discussed that very real danger, of negative consequences, in Part Two. Previous attempts to develop vaccines for various coronavirus strains have been failures, in some cases making symptoms even worse. From the ABCNewsAustralia web article titled, “We’ve never made a successful vaccine for a coronavirus before. This is why it’s so difficult”:
“One of the problems with corona vaccines in the past has been that when the immune response does cross over to where the virus-infected cells are, it actually increases the pathology rather than reducing it,” Professor Frazer said. “So that immunization with [experimental] SARS corona vaccine caused, in animals, inflammation in the lungs which wouldn’t otherwise have been there if the vaccine hadn’t been given.”
When asked by Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander what advice he would give a university chancellor or school principal hoping to convince students to return to school in the fall, Dr. Fauci replied:
“Well, I would be very realistic with the Chancellor and I would tell her that, in this case, the chances of having treatments available, or a vaccine, to facilitate the re-entry of students into the fall term, would be something of a bridge too far. As I mentioned, the drug that has shown some degree of efficacy, was modest, and it was [tested only on] hospitalized patients… not yet, and maybe never, to be used as prophylaxis or treatment…
“But we’re not necessarily talking about a student who gets ill, but how the student will feel safe in going back to school. If this were a situation where we had a vaccine, that would really be the end of that issue, in a positive way. But as I mentioned in my opening remarks, even at the top speed we’re going, we don’t see a vaccine playing into the ability of individuals to get back to school. What they really want is to know if they are safe. And that’s a question that has to do with what we said earlier, about testing.”
He later commented:
“What I’ve said many times publicly, what we have worked out is a guideline framework, of how to safely open America again, and there are several checkpoints in that, with a gateway first of showing — depending on the dynamics of an outbreak in a particular region, state, city or area — that would determine the speed, and pace, with which one does reopen. So my word has been — and I’ve been very consistent in this — that I get concerned if you have a situation where the dynamics of an outbreak in an area, such that you are not seeing that gradual ‘over-14-days decrease’ that would allow you to go to Phase One. And then if you pass the checkpoints of Phase One, go to Phase Two and Phase Three.”
The White House published an abbreviated version of the CDC’s three-phased reopening plan, titled “Opening Up America Again.” You can download it here. Moving into each successive phase depends upon showing that reports of symptoms (of both COVID and influenza) are on a downward trend for 14 days, that new confirmed cases are on a 14-day downward trend, and that hospitals are able to treat all patients “without crisis care.”
Once Phase One is reached, it will presumably take a minimum of 28 days — two 14-day periods — to reach Phase Three of the guidelines, when the economy would be allowed to function in a more-or-less ‘normal’ manner. The White House document does not mention vaccines as part of the reopening plans.
I assume that many people will hesitate to fully engage in ‘normal’ life until a proven and tested vaccine is available. What so many of us really want, is to know we are safe.
Many of us do not feel safe around vaccines.