Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci debacle reflects our own state of disarray| Latest News Headlines

Perhaps Tuesday’s Senate hearing on COVID was intended to allay the confusion and frustration most people feel. But, if anything, it ended up confusing many Americans even more.

It was quite disturbing to hear that the rapid home tests that many people are looking for are still stuck in warehouses. And that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, an expert in infectious diseases and public health, was still not able to fully clarify the question of who should be isolated and for how long. But there was also a verbal brawl between Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

THE OMICRON COVID-19 VARIANT COULD FALL RAPIDLY IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

Tuesday’s debacle involving Senator Paul and Dr Fauci struck me as more emblematic of a state of disarray in our society than any of their previous arguments at a Senate hearing. On the one hand, Dr Fauci linked the story of a madman who was allegedly en route to Washington, DC with an AR-15 before being apprehended, with the derision and accusations he suffered from the Senator Paul.

This made it all personal to viewers, and it was hard not to reflect that despite all of his shortcomings, Dr Fauci remains an excellent immunologist and vaccinologist who deeply understands SARS VOC 2. Although his public health decisions regarding blockages, masks and other strategies have been rightly questioned. I have interviewed Dr Fauci on several occasions and have always found him to be caring, sincere, respectful and kind. He deserves kindness and respect in return.

On the flip side, the point made by Senator Paul (who is himself an accomplished ophthalmologist and emergency physician) about NIH leaders possibly trying to eliminate experimental or “fringe” treatments early in the pandemic deserves to be taken into consideration. Sometimes the marginal treatments of today are the remedies of tomorrow. And hydroxychloroquine, for its part, was too politicized and studied too late in the clinical course at a time when we had little else to offer patients.

Of course, it’s also true that an excessive fascination with an unproven and potentially harmful treatment, as appears to be the case with ivermectin, for example, can do more harm than good. And his promotion may therefore violate the Hippocratic Oath. Despite this, I am against the suppression of investigation and against any censorship.

Dr Fauci discussed the elaborate process involved in drug development, including for Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s Mulnupiravir, but I couldn’t help but feel that all of the bureaucratic slowdown was preventing needed real-world drugs. . There is also the failure of the Biden administration to take a chance and pay for the treatments up front to start the process so that the production was already ready at the time of approval, much like the The Trump administration has taken action on vaccines.

The massive failure of the Biden administration here was the elephant in the room. Paxlovid has already been well studied and appears to be extremely effective when given early. The same goes for monoclonal antibodies, especially Sotrovimab for the Omicron variant. We are missing some of the main tools we need to emerge from the pandemic.

The Biden administration has been a one-ride pony with the only tool given to it: the vaccine. Dr Fauci pointed out yesterday that the vaccine, especially when boosted, significantly reduced the risk of infection, hospitalization and death – although the former is clearly less true with Omicron. That’s not to say we shouldn’t take it.

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Everyone should have as much immunity as possible to this delicate virus, whether it is a maximized vaccine or a previous infection. It would be up to the Biden team to focus on new vaccines in development while recognizing the importance of immunity against previous infection. At the same time, they should embrace the idea that the massive outbreak will soon subside as Omicron will run out like it did in South Africa and appear to be in the UK.

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Biden, for his part, should offer hope rather than fan the flames of fear.

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