Anthony Fauci on Lockdowns - Now and Then

This recent opinion piece in Newsweek:

...reminded me of many of the "missteps" that one of the lead characters in the COVID-19 soap opera has created for himself over the past year.

Way back in 2014 when there was an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, Dr. Anthony Fauci, long-term Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases weighed in on the forced quarantining of medical personnel returning from the frontlines of the outbreak.

  

The 2014 to 2016 outbreak of Ebola was the largest Ebola outbreak in history.  The initial case (index patient) was reported in December 2013; an 18-month-old boy from Guinea was believed to have been infected by bats.  An official medical alert was issued on January 24, 2014 and with 49 confirmed cases and 29 deaths, the World Health Organization officially declared an outbreak of Ebolva Virus Disease.  The disease continued to spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone and on August 8, 2014, the World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a designation used only for events that either require a co-ordinated international response or have a risk of spreading internationally.  Over the entire duration of the epidemic, EVD eventually spread to Italy, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

 

Here is a table showing the nations involved in the epidemic, the number of total cases, laborator confirmed cases and total deaths:

 

Here is a graph showing the frequency of new cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone over the duration of the Ebola outbreak:

 

 

In total, there were 28,652 suspected, probable and confirmed cases with 11,325 deaths for an case fatality rate of 39.5 percent.  By way of comparison, the case fatality rate for the COVID-19 pandemic looks like this:

 

Ebola did spread to the United States as shown in this quote from the CDC's website:

  

"Overall, eleven people were treated for Ebola in the United States during the 2014-2016 epidemic. On September 30, 2014, CDC confirmed the first travel-associated case of EVD diagnosed in the United States in a man who traveled from West Africa to Dallas, Texas. The patient (the index case) died on October 8, 2014. Two healthcare workers who cared for him in Dallas tested positive for EVD. Both recovered.

 

On October 23, 2014, a medical aid worker who had volunteered in Guinea was hospitalized in New York City with suspected EVD. The diagnosis was confirmed by the CDC the next day. The patient recovered.

 

Seven other people were cared for in the United States after they were exposed to the virus and became ill while in West Africa, the majority of whom were medical workers. They were transported by chartered aircraft from West Africa to hospitals in the United States. Six of these patients recovered, one died."

  

With that background, let's look at what Dr. Fauci, the COVID-19 pandemic's chief public relations officer in the United States had to say about how the United States responded to the appearance of Ebola in the United States among people who had either travelled to the West Africa or volunteered as medical aides in West Africa during the epidemic:

 

Here are some quotes:

  

"A top health official helping to coordinate the government’s response to Ebola says quarantining healthcare workers returning from West Africa would be a “draconian” response to the crisis.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday those returning healthcare workers should be treated like “heroes.”

  

“We need to treat returning people with respect ... they’re really heroes,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

 

“We’re being a little bit draconian,” he added….

 

His comments come after officials in New York, New Jersey and Illinois announced quarantines for healthcare workers returning from West Africa after a doctor tested positive for the deadly virus.

 

Fauci warned that overly aggressive quarantines could make healthcare workers "very, very uncomfortable” and discourage them from volunteering.

 

"The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those healthcare workers,” Fauci said on "Fox News Sunday.” "So we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go."

 

So, in other words, in Anthony Fauci's world, a disease that had a case fatality rate of 39.5 percent did not warrant a quarantine of the infected but a disease with a case fatality rate of less than 5 percent (and an infection fatality rate of 0.2 percent) requires the lockdown of entire nations.  But, then again, given his flip-flopping on wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, why should we be surprised?

Let's close with this 2009 interview with Fauci where he discusses 2009 H1N1 pandemic (start at the 5 minute 27 second mark):

Here's the key quote:

"You can't isolate yourself from the rest of the world for the whole flu season".  

 

We really are living in an age of stupid.