Monday, May 18, 2020

'The public health service rewards people who are grotesquely wrong.'

Michael Fumento sees echoes of the 1980s AIDS crisis in the current coronavirus pandemic.
Michael Fumento sees echoes of the 1980s AIDS crisis in the current coronavirus pandemic.

Not because the two diseases are similar in their pathologies. Rather, the author notes that the public health responses to both outbreaks have striking similarities: Namely, that public health officials have resorted to grim predictions of sky-high body counts and once-in-a-generation public health crises, even when the truth is obviously less dire than that.

Fumento, an author and journalist, became known for his work in the late 1980s and early 1990s in which he pushed back against the growing claims that AIDS would soon be a crisis for average heterosexual men and women. Public health officials and media outlets at the time predicted that, as one headline put it, "The disease of them is suddenly the disease of us."

"AIDS never shifted," Fumento said in a podcast interview for John Solomon Reports. "It was always a disease, essentially, of gay men, of IV drug users, and initially people who received blood transfusions or hemophiliacs."

Yet "public opinion, the media, the public health services, they all did shift," Fumento said. "They were all desperate to convince us that ‘AIDS doesn’t discriminate.'"

AIDS at its peak in the United States was largely a disease confined to a narrow range of demographics, though the illness has been notably more prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. Health researchers suggest that the region's more lax attitudes toward multiple sexual partners have likely played a role in its significant spread there.

Yet those patterns never really came to bear in the U.S., even as health officials in the 1980s and 1990s warned that AIDS was on the verge of breaking out among the general population.

“There are echoes of that with COVID-19," Fumento said.

Despite its being "a disease that overwhelmingly discriminates" against "really old people, often 80 and above, who have comorbid conditions," Fumento continued, "we’re told, ‘We’re all in this together.’ It’s really bringing back flashbacks of AIDS going back to 1987."

Fumento said that Robert Redfield, now the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once estimated that the chance of getting aids between a male and a female having sex could be 50% per contact.

"I don’t think it’s coincidence that that totally irresponsible guy later was promoted to the head of the Centers for Disease Control," Fumento said. "That’s how he got promoted — through being an alarmist. That’s basically how you move up the ladder in today’s public health system."

For the article on which the podcast interview with Michael Fumento was based, Fumento sought comment from the CDC through its media office, but never received a substantive response.

One scientist at the time of the AIDS crisis made a grim prediction that individuals could give each other AIDS simply by casual contact in households. That scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now heads the White House's coronavirus task force.

"The rewards really are in one direction," Fumento said of the public health sector. He cited Neil Ferguson, the British scientist famous for his estimate in March of this year that millions of people could die from the coronavirus in the U.K. and the United States.

"It helps to know," Fumento said, "that Ferguson, decades earlier, also predicted as many as 50,000 deaths from mad cow disease. There were about 200. And he predicted of couple of million deaths from avian flu, and there were 400."

Remarking on alternatives to the doomsday models that have saturated the official response to the coronavirus pandemic, Fumento pointed to Farr's Law. That law, named after 19th century British epidemiologist William Farr, "dictates that any epidemic — smallpox, SARS, COVID — starts out at a steep rate, and then it slows, and then it peaks, and then it declines. It’s more or less a symmetrical bell curve. It’s been going on throughout human history."

Yet Fumento expressed pessimism about the future of public health experts and their ability to appropriately inform the public about outbreaks such as this one.

"The public health service rewards people who are grotesquely wrong, so long as they are grotesquely wrong in the right direction — that is, alarmism, scaring the crap out of innocent human beings,"
he said.

24 comments:

Dervish Sanders said...

Homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny and now ageism. Gay people, non-Whites and women are all allowed to vote, you know. How do you think the "GOP" can win going forward when they keep identifying more people they hate (even with massive cheating)?

btw, multiple sexual partners is GREAT if you're a White male. Then you're a stud and an "alpha male". If you're a woman you're a slut and a whore. If you're non-White then you get compared to animals who breed prolifically and have litters.

Joe Conservative said...

lol! Don't project your prejudices on others. You've made enough strawmen arguments at this blog to last a lifetime.

Dervish Sanders said...

I was referring to your prejudices. You're the one who is hopeful the Supreme Court will roll back gay rights. You're the one who wants an expensive and ineffective wall to keep out brown people. You're the one who thinks men are the victims of "lying whores". And you're the one agreeing with the "strategy" of sacrificing old people in order to achieve "herd immunity". I don't agree with any of that.

And it isn't a "strawman" that I've accurately identified your orange cult leader as an incompetent racist, misogynist and a narcissistic moron. It's obvious to tens of millions of Americans. All you have to do is pay attention and not be of a similar mindset (like you).

Joe Conservative said...

I can't help it if SCOTUS legalized previously universally illegal activity. And I want a wall that keeps out ALL people.

So who's really got the "moral high ground"? The person who extolls Kantian moral imperatives? Or the cynic who demeans his own race to "appear" to hold a more universal moral position?

lol!

Dervish Sanders said...

I can't help it if your hate for people not like you causes you to love (straight) White Identity politics. fyi, the State has no business saying consensual sex involving adults is "illegal". And a wall that keeps out "all" people (most of whom are non White) is an impossibility and a stupid waste of money.

Joe Conservative said...

the State has no business saying consensual sex involving adults is "illegal".

Except for a few of the last 2000 years... they've ALL been saying it.

Dervish Sanders said...

LOL. Being a mega-fan of ancient Greek philosophers, I'd have guessed you would know "men could also seek adolescent boys as partners as shown by some of the earliest documents concerning same-sex pederastic relationships, which come from Ancient Greece. Though slave boys could be bought, free boys had to be courted, and ancient materials suggest that the father also had to consent to the relationship. Such relationships did not replace marriage between man and woman, but occurred before and during the marriage. A mature man would not usually have a mature male mate, but there were exceptions (among whom Alexander the Great). He would be the erastes (lover) to a young eromenos (loved one)".

Joe Conservative said...

You're right. It's 3,100 years, not 2,000...

The Middle Assyrian Law Codes (1075 BC) state: If a man has intercourse with his brother-in-arms, they shall turn him into a eunuch. This is the earliest known law condemning the act of male-to-male intercourse in the military .

In the Roman Republic, the Lex Scantinia imposed penalties on those who committed a sex crime (stuprum) against a freeborn male minor. The law may also have been used to prosecute male citizens who willingly played the passive role in same-sex acts.[9] The law was mentioned in literary sources but enforced infrequently; Domitian revived it during his program of judicial and moral reform. t is unclear whether the penalty was death or a fine. For adult male citizens to experience and act on homoerotic desire was considered natural and permissible, as long as their partner was a male of lower social standing.[11] Pederasty in ancient Rome was acceptable only when the younger partner was a prostitute or slave.

Most sodomy related laws in Western civilization originated from the growth of Christianity during Late Antiquity.[12] Note that today some Christian denominations allow gay marriage and the ordination of gay clergy.[13]
Starting in the 1200s, the Roman Catholic Church launched a massive campaign against sodomites, especially homosexuals.[14] Between the years 1250 and 1300, homosexual activity was radically criminalized in most of Europe, even punishable by death.


Joe Conservative said...

In other words... it's been illegal since the invention of "law" itself. Just read Leviticus.

Dervish Sanders said...

You aren't a Christian according to YOU. So what do you care about Leviticus? Or are you in agreement with "the radical redneck" who wants to bring back slavery (and put Michelle Obama up for auction)? Slavery is sanctioned in the Christian Bible, after all.

Joe Conservative said...

Are all Jews Christian, too? Who knew?

Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name is derived from the Latin Liber Leviticus and the Greek (το) Λευιτικόν. In Jewish writings it is customary to cite the book by its first word, Vayikra, "and He called.".

Joe Conservative said...

btw - I'm more closely what you could call a Deist/ Platonist.

Wasn't Socrates thought to be the erastes to his eromeno Alcibiades?

Didn't Alcibiades deface the herms of Athens before heading off to defend Syracuse? I suppose he wanted to castrate the old goat, don't you?

Joe Conservative said...

Perhaps those nasty rumours about Socrates originated with Xenophon. After all, he spent all that time on his Anabasis cavorting with the Spartans. And we all know how he admired their Lord of the Flies styled agoges. He even sent his own sons to Sparta as trophimoi.

Dervish Sanders said...

That is a very convincing argument for outlawing homosexuality. I'm totally convinced. I'm with you in bringing back slavery too.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

That wasn't an argument for outlawing homosexuality. Homosexuality is an advantage in WAR until, like Sparta, you eventually, over a prolonged war period, RUN OUT OF MEN.

As for slavery, who needs it?

Dervish Sanders said...

We don't need slavery any longer because the masters came up with something better. Wage slavery. A slave was a valuable investment. A wage slave is disposable. If a wage slave dies there are thousands more.

As for your hatred of gay people -- now you're saying it's a self hate? Because your sexuality is fluid -- and you could go either way depending on whether women are around or not?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I don't hate gay people. I'm just. a proponent of minimizing societies exposure to disease vectors like STDs and AIDS. And no, sheltering in place does little to slow transmission down.

Dervish Sanders said...

You're in favor of outlaw sexual contact between all persons residing within the United States? With an exception for pro-creating, I guess. As long as the pro-creators get a license. Does "The Handmaid's Tale" represent your idea of a Utopian society (one we should aspire to)?

Thersites said...

I don't believe in war brides like Andromache.

Dervish Sanders said...

Just war-necessitated homosexuality?

Joe Conservative said...

Why do male lions banished from their respective prides band together to kill the alpha male of a pride? Why did the Theban "Sacred Band" defeat their enemies?

Dervish Sanders said...

Do "male lions banished from their respective prides banding together to kill the alpha male of a pride" explain the Lincoln Project? LOL. Seems their ads are REALLY getting under Dotard's skin.

Joe Conservative said...

You mean the Log Cabin Republicans? Or are they gay, too?

Dervish Sanders said...

Too? You think Kellyanne Conway's husband is gay?