RFK Jr's Attack on Science. Chapter One of his book on Fauci, Continued.

 This is my seventh entry in my critique of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. My first entry is here and you can follow the links from there. Why so many entries, why so many words? It is easy to hurl out lies. Truth-telling takes more time.

In previous entries I have posted the cover of Kennedy's book. Here is Fauci's recent autobiography. I haven't read it, but having fought back against so many slings and arrows and trash talk flung his way, he deserves a little promo.

Continuing Chapter One. 

 I teach antibiotics, including antivirals to my medical students each fall. My first opportunity to teach them about pharmacological COVID interventions came in October 2020. My slides from that time that pointed to working therapies had three salient points. #1. Dexamethasone had been shown to be effective for COVID patients receiving artificial ventilation. #2. Remdesivir essentially sucked. #3. Vitamin D3 had been shown to be effective in reducing COVID cases. 

Kennedy is obsessed with people not recommending vitamin D3. This surprises me. I don't agree with virtually anything he says, but decent evidence was available even in 2020, that D3 reduced COVID cases. There are some who ascribe miracle status to D3 and that I would disagree with. Could Fauci have been against vitamin D? What were his statements? 

"If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. So I would not mind recommending, and I do it myself taking vitamin D supplements,” Fauci, 79, said." This news story was dated September 14, 2020. So where did Kennedy get his idea that Fauci was against vitamin D? I have no clue.

Kennedy goes on to say "On April 30, 2021, Canadian Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons threatened to delicense any doctor who prescribed non-vaccine health strategies including Vitamin D." Their statement does not mention vitamin D or delicensing. It does mention that physicians have a responsibility to not promote "unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19." At that time vitamin D was a supported intervention. It said, "Physicians who put the public at risk may face an investigation by the CPSO and disciplinary action, when warranted." No mention of delicensing. And all but Kennedy would agree that those putting the public at risk should be considered for disciplinary action. 

Their full statement is at the bottom of this entry. Following such sensible advice, Canada had a death rate 42% that of the United States.

Kennedy says, "During the centuries that science has fruitlessly sought remedies against coronavirus (aka the common cold), only zinc has repeatedly proved its efficacy in peer reviewed studies." 

So many problems with that. Coronaviruses are neither "aka the common cold" nor are they the main cause. From the American Lung Association. "Rhinoviruses are the most common cause of colds in the U.S. Parainfluenza viruses, adenoviruses, enteroviruses, human metapneumovirus and common human coronaviruses also cause colds." This is why lawyers should not write science. Or they should at least know what they're talking about. 

Zinc tablets are not a remedy, they are a treatment for colds or a prophylaxis. I have taught zinc as a treatment for colds. The evidence is iffy but leans in favor. (I would argue that the reason the support is iffy is that there are so many viruses and strains that cause colds, zinc may well work against some and not others leading to conflicting reports.) To say that zinc works for COVID just because other coronaviruses cause a small percent of colds is ridiculous.

Kennedy says, "Throughout 2020, before vaccines were available, some 99.9% of people's natural immune systems protected their owners from severe illness and death." No citation is given for this statement. It is nonsensical as written. Did Kennedy mean "the natural immune system of humans protected 99.9% of people who acquired COVID from severe illness and death?" Just the death figures were higher than that. Is he saying worldwide human's natural immune system protected all but 0.1% of people from acquiring COVID [through 2020] thereby not leading to severe illness and death? Or is he advocating for the efficacy of the natural immune system in general and not talking about COVID here? He says before vaccines, so he isn't crediting other interventions including ones he advocates.

From here, Kennedy goes into talking about treatment interventions and early doctors who adopted multidrug therapies. I'll save that for my next entry. 

College of Physicians and Surgeons Statement on Public Health Information, April 30, 2021. 

The College is aware and concerned about the increase of misinformation circulating on social media and other platforms regarding physicians who are publicly contradicting public health orders and recommendations. Physicians hold a unique position of trust with the public and have a professional responsibility to not communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown statements and/or promoting unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19. Physicians must not make comments or provide advice that encourages the public to act contrary to public health orders and recommendations. Physicians who put the public at risk may face an investigation by the CPSO and disciplinary action, when warranted. When offering opinions, physicians must be guided by the law, regulatory standards, and the code of ethics and professional conduct. The information shared must not be misleading or deceptive and must be supported by available evidence and science.

Continued with entry eight. 

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.

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RFK Jr.'s Book on Anthony Fauci, Continuing with Chapter One.

 In reviewing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, my first four posts dealt with the Introduction. Those first four entries can be found: Entry #1, here. Entry #2, here. Entry #3, here, and Entry #4, here. The first entry critiquing Chapter One is here. The third entry is here. This is the second entry.

Anthony Fauci recently came out with a biography. I've not read it. Unlike Kennedy's book, I bet it has page numbers. Reading it might be helpful to provide perspective to some of what Kennedy is claiming. Kennedy doesn't often help decipher what he is saying: his statements often do not have footnotes that can lead me to his sources. 

Continuing Chapter One. 

I've found that when Kennedy does present footnotes they often go directly to a conspiracy-mongering source and do not go to where the quote or data originally came from--if it came from anywhere beyond the conspiracy theorist. If this is to be the standard, Kennedy could easily be cited for his whoppers as though they had any connection to reality.

I found this next assertion particularly egregious because it represents all of Kennedy's slapdash, hateful, and poorly sourced material. "Dr. Fauci dreamily recounted his own grade school measles and mumps vaccines—an unlikely memory since those vaccines weren't available until 1963 and 1967 [respectively], and Dr. Fauci attended grade school in the 1940s." (Fauci was born in December 1940.)

#1. The first mumps vaccine came out in 1948, it was the live-attenuated mumps vaccine that came out in 1967. Kennedy does not know vaccines.

#2. The measles vaccine did first come out in 1963. However, I couldn't find where Fauci claimed he got a measles vaccine as a grade school student. In contrast, he does say he got the measles as a child and wished there was a vaccine.

#3. What is the source that Kennedy cites for Fauci's dreamy reminiscence? Disclose TV on Twitter. The post is no longer up. From Wikipedia: "Disclose.tv is a disinformation outlet based in Germany that presents itself as a news aggregator. It is known for promoting conspiracy theories and fake news. . . . [it] platforms hate speech, including Holocaust denial and neo-Nazism, on its message groups." When Kennedy quotes reasonable sources, the information disagrees with his assertions. Perhaps that's why he has to rely on Neo-Nazi sources.

Another statement says, "[Fauci] supported jabs for previously-infected Americans, defying overwhelming scientific evidence that post-COVID infections were both unnecessary and dangerous. Under questioning on September 9, 2021, Dr. Fauci conceded he could cite no scientific justification for this policy." Sounds damning. The source given? Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller. A hack opinion piece. As this article in the magazine, Science, declares in its title, "Almost everything Tucker Carlson said about Anthony Fauci was misleading or false." 

Kennedy returns to frothing at the mouth (he never really leaves). "The shockingly low quality of virtually all relevant data pertinent to COVID-19, and the quackery, obfuscation, the cherry-picking, and blatant perversion would have scandalized, offended, and humiliated every prior generation of American public health officials." (Maybe Kennedy chose not to include page numbers to make his own quotes difficult to source. I've started writing page numbers on the bottom of the pages. This would be page 4 of Chapter One.)

I have presented enough evidence of Kennedy outright lying, mischaracterizing, and inventing to say that he is the quack, he cherry-picks data, and blatantly perverts the truth. If this is the quality of research he put into his anti-vaccine books, vaccines must be panaceas. 

Also page 4, Kennedy says, "At the onset of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci used wildly inaccurate modeling that overestimated US death by 525 percent." Okay, this can be connected to a footnote, "How one model simulated 2.2 million deaths from COVID-19" and a second article saying that 352,000 deaths in 2020 made that number into an overestimate of 525%. 

COVID didn't stop killing in 2020, nor at the time Kennedy wrote his book. The US death total climbed to 1.2 million. In the worst case scenario, for example, if the US had Peru's death rate, that death rate would have left 2.2 million dead (this number is a coincidence, the "one model" cited above didn't have the hindsight of what did happen when the infection was left unchecked). 

In general Kennedy seems to regularly think that the world stopped at the time he turned in his book (October 2021). His claims that the middle class was driven to virtual extinction in the United States or Black-owned businesses went permanently bankrupt were not supported by data that later came out (and really not supported by the data of the moment or in his citations). He didn't seem to think that the world would go on and a lot more research would address the questions he posed.

Kennedy makes passing potshots using arguments about "herd immunity" numbers and counting who died from COVID. These are important issues and if this was my full time job I would address them here. If Kennedy does bring them about in detail, I'll make a more detailed discussion.

Kennedy makes the assertion that the CDC stated that "only 6 percent of COVID deaths occurred in entirely health individuals. The remaining 94% suffered from an average of 3.8 potentially fatal morbidities." A citation leads to a number of statistics from the CDC including a relevant table. The table has been updated through 2023 but has basically the same numbers cited by Kennedy. It says over 5% of deaths listed no comorbidity on the death certificate with 4.0 average comorbidities. 

First of all, COVID killed by a mechanism, not just the presence of COVID. Those with only COVID on the death certificates were the small percentage of those forms filled by those who were lazy. The comorbidities cited? Respiratory failure. Heart failure. Septicemia (infection in the blood). These were not persons walking around with septicemia or with their hearts not beating before they contracted COVID. People who were entirely healthy did not die of COVID. COVID made them sick and their breathing and hearts stopped.

Kennedy states that many of the tests for COVID may have overstated the results because, quoting Fauci, they amplify "dead nucleotides." Nucleotides are a chemical and are never living. He cites another conspiracy-embracing news site as a source for this comment.

Tucker Carlson, misinformation sites, John Solomon are not primary sources. If they say something that is correct--and they do on occasion--they would have primary sources. Kennedy states that viral injury surveillance system may underestimate injuries by 99%. He provides no citation, not even the meaningless ones he reflexively goes to.

Here's a fun one. Kennedy likes to talk about 9/11 conspiracy theories and brings that up here (although he does not blame Fauci for 9/11). "Public surveys showed that, just as Fox News audiences were shockingly misinformed following the 9/11 bombings, CNN viewers and New York Times readers were catastrophically misinformed about the facts of COVID-19 during 2020. Successive Gallup polling showed that the average Democrat believed 50% of COVID infections resulted in hospitalization." (Page 5 of Kennedy's book.)

Problems with his statement.

#1. There is nothing in the Gallup poll about CNN viewing and New York Times reading.

#2. There is no way to read the poll and come to the conclusion that the average Democrat responder said 50% of those with COVID were hospitalized. The poll was divided in two parts: risks for those vaccinated and risk for those not vaccinated. (Over half the U.S. population was vaccinated at the time.) The poll said 54% of Democrats believed that the risk of being hospitalized with vaccination was 1% or less while a mere 2% of Democrats believed it 50% or higher. In contrast, 7% of Republicans said the hospitalization rate was 50% or higher with vaccination. (chart below) The numbers did change for perceptions of risk for those non-vaccinated. In this case, 53% of Democrats said 30% or higher.

The Gallup poll cited in Kennedy's Endnotes. This is for vaccinated population.

#3. In a CDC article (the same as linked above) it says that 748,363 (65%) of U.S. COVID deaths took place at a "healthcare setting, inpatient," for example, hospital. Others took place at a "nursing home/long term care facility (15%), or "Home (10%)," and further listed places. Not going to a hospital did not make COVID less serious. 

#4. The Gallup poll he cites lauds Democrats for understanding vaccine efficacy. "Democrats provide much higher and more accurate vaccine efficacy estimates than Republicans (88% vs. 50%), and unvaccinated Republicans have a median vaccine efficacy of 0%, compared with 73% for vaccinated Republicans." In other words, those Republicans who weren't getting vaccinated believed the vaccines had a 0% efficacy.

#5. The same Gallup poll in their Appendix, estimated the hospitalization rate of those not vaccinated to be 89 times higher than those vaccinated. "Using these adjusted figures, we calculate that the hospitalization rate for the vaccinated population is 0.01% (or 1 in 10,914), and the rate for unvaccinated adults is 0.89% (or 1 case in 112 people)."

#6. The poll provided an interesting graph of vaccination rates among those who identified as Democrats, Republican and Independents. 

An update: (12/1/24). I decided to run some numbers to see what percentage of COVID-19 patients were in the hospital at the time this poll came out. Cumulatively, for the two weeks leading up to September 7, 2021, there were 2.24 million new cases of COVID in the United States. Over those same two weeks, there were 170,117 hospital admissions for COVID, approximately 7.6%. (Sources 1, 2) Source 1, use the chart for new cases in the past two weeks and select a date. For source 2, select the line for hospitalizations over the past week for September 7 (83,639) and then for August 31 (86,478). 

We are into page 5 of Chapter One. I don't know how long I can keep this up. Clearly Kennedy didn't care about checking his material. To be continued.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.

 

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RFK, Jr.'s Book on Anthony Fauci: Chapter One

 Reviewing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, my first four posts dealt with the Introduction. Those first four entries can be found: Entry #1, here. Entry #2, here. Entry #3, here, and Entry #4, here. On to Chapter One. (The second installment of the Chapter One critique can be found here.)

 

Chapter One.

Chapter One is titled: Mismanaging an Epidemic. The first section is titled: I: Arbitrary Decrees: Science Free Medicine. 

This chapter begins with something like a topic sentence. "Dr. Fauci's strategy for managing the COVID-19 pandemic was to suppress viral spread by mandatory masking, social distancing, quarantining the healthy, while instructing COVID patients to return home and do nothing–receive no treatment whatsoever–until difficulty breathing sent them back to the hospital to submit to intravenous remdesivir and ventilation."

That's a packed sentence. The first part, mandatory masking and social distancing were certainly part of the approach and will be discussed at the end of this post. Quarantining the healthy? Quarantines involve not leaving home. In quarantines you cannot go out to perform necessary functions. The stay-at-home orders, issued state-by-state (more on that below) permitted the healthy to go out for health needs and groceries, among other activities. Workers essential to such things as the food supply, health care, and other jobs were exempted. The governor of Florida extended the essential workers to those of the World Wrestling Foundation. 

As for asking the sick to stay at home unless they had an emergency: that came at a period when hospitals were overwhelmed. More on that below. (This is the introductory sentence and I will deal with individual parts as they are supported in the coming pages.)

Continuing with the opening sentence, I agree that remdesivir sucks. More on that in a future installment, where drugs are discussed.

Kennedy goes on to say, "Medicines were available against COVID–inexpensive, safe medicines—that would have prevented hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and saved as many lives if only we'd used them in this country." I see this chapter will include hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and those who promoted them. Here, Kennedy is in my wheelhouse. I have been teaching pharmacology and antimicrobials for thirty-some years. I am quite practiced at telling the difference between an effective treatment and a phony one. I've never hesitated going after big Pharm when they put forward a lame drug or balked at sorting out which therapies work and which ones don't. I look forward to responding to what he says. 

Okay, with his thesis statement out of the way, let me undertake a lengthy digression from critiquing Kennedy's fiction. It is necessary to provide context to my commentary. I've been criticizing what Kennedy says happened and giving many examples of where he was flat out wrong. Let me present a more accepted version of what happened including my own research.

The Early Phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic, The Threat, and the Response. 

At least through the end of 2021, the COVID pandemic in America consisted of roughly two phases with no clear date separating the two. First, I'm going to provide a lot of background and then get back to the two phases. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was the first wave. Health care officials in the United States were reacting to several things. One was the SARS outbreak that began in 2002. Although contained, it had nearly a 11% lethality rate.  That is crazy high for a flu-like disease, translating to rate of tens of millions of death if the disease spread worldwide. When COVID-19 infection was first mentioned, I heard the term "coronavirus." Coronaviruses, typically, are very infectious, but not that severe in terms of disease. I was calm. If I had heard SARS-COVID, I would have hidden under my desk.

Secondly, come February 2020 during the COVID-19 infection, there were reports from free countries (in contrast to China) including Italy and France where the disease was absolutely devastating local populations. Between February and April 2020, in Italy there were "143,626 confirmed cases and 18,279 deaths." The high rate of deaths probably related to an insufficiency of confirming cases. Nevertheless, absolutely shocking numbers, suggesting a once-in-a-century event.

Thirdly, and I find this the most instructive, during February 2020, was the cruise ship the Diamond Princess. Due to its time isolated from land and the ability to test and monitor most all its passengers, the world obtained a picture, albeit imperfect, of how the disease might spread and its effects. Imperfect efforts were made at lockdowns during the cruise within the passenger compartments. A summary of the cases: 

"Six hundred thirty-four (17.1%) cases were diagnosed in a total population of 3711 cruise passengers, and 328 (51.7%) cases were asymptomatic. As of April 24, 2020, 712 cases had been diagnosed and 14 (1.96%) deaths had occurred [additional diagnoses and deaths took place]. . . . Without an evacuation plan for passengers and crew, we estimated the total number of cumulative cases would reach 3498." [94.2%] From: A major outbreak of the COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship: Estimation of the basic reproduction number. So, 94% of people infected in the worst case scenario and nearly 2% deaths. That could translate into over a 100 million deaths worldwide. Note: According to another study, only 80% the cruise ship passengers and employees submitted to COVID testing and 17.4% were asymptomatic.

So, as of February 2020, we could be looking at a high rate of lethality for a highly contagious disease. So what was the response? A terrifying concept: flattening the curve. Italy showed us what it was like to have a rapid steep peak in COVID cases. If you overwhelm health care services, if you have 50 to 80% of people with symptoms, everything shuts down and you have a lot more deaths. Fauci's guidelines aimed to flatten the curve. America only partly listened to him and only partly flattened the curve. 

Other countries were quicker to act than the United States. Beginning March 2, 2020 Japan shut down its schools (and perhaps to no useful effect). March 19 would be the first state called for mandatory state-at-home. 

Why flatten the curve? Beyond blunting an overwhelming spike in cases, pandemic organisms that cause severe disease and death weaken over time. Why? Those with minor infections and those who are asymptomatic are more likely to be out there in public spreading weaker strains of the disease. Pandemic organisms also tend to become more infectious. The strains that are more infectious spread to more people. COVID-19 might well have started with a 10% lethality rate. It was soon down to 2%. Eventually, over time, it became closer to 1% (in part because good management of the disease finally kicked in). (Wordometers reports approximately 700,000,000 cases worldwide with 7,000,000 deaths.) A 1% death rate from a flu is also absurdly high. The early goal was to slow the spread of virus infections.

The Two Phases

With this setup, let me describe how the COVID pandemic came in two phases in America. On February 29, 2020, America had its first official COVID fatality. (Later research would find earlier cases.) On March 12, 2020 with COVID raging in a number of European countries, President Trump announced in a nationwide address, a suspension of "all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days." This was an incorrect pronouncement. He was inaccurately describing an order limiting non-citizens from entering the U.S. 

American tourists, thinking they might be stuck in Europe, fled from COVID-infested areas. No efforts were made to stem the infections they brought with them. Many of the first wildfire outbreaks of COVID in America came at the sites of airports that received high amounts of European flights: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Chicago. The virus at the height of its morbidity and lethality flooded into America. In the next few weeks, hospitals overflowed and hospital cots were set up in Central Park. The hospitals being overwhelmed is why those without the more serious symptoms were for a time advised to stay at home.

O'Hare Airport, March 14, 2020, two days after Trump's televised address

The first phase continued with superspreader events seeding the virus around the country. I detailed some of these in my previous posts (here and here). Were these events following "lockdown" orders? Many of them took place in states that snubbed Fauci's recommendations. 

The second phase came at the beginning of 2021, after a vaccine had become available, and after some imperfect treatments had appeared. This also overlapped with the deadly Delta version of the virus. 

I performed an analysis to learn which states fared better and more poorly during the period of February 23, 2021 (the first appearance of the Delta virus) and October 1, 2021, the time of my analysis. February also corresponded to a time when the vaccine was becoming generally available. I contrasted these rates to the mortality rates in the first phase (defined as before February 23). The table below includes all states and the District of Columbia ranked according to death rates.

COVID death rate by state per 100,000 population
February 23, 2021 to October 1, 2021.

The phase one lethality numbers are higher: 72.7% of all deaths between the start of the pandemic and October 1, 2021, occurred before 2/23/21. That was a full year (versus seven full months of phase 2) and, as said above, the first wave overwhelmed the system. For Phase 2, the states that fared worse are in general those that chose Trump and his superspreader policies over Fauci and his cautions. Florida actively pushed against vaccination. The top 15 states with the highest Phase 2 lethality were those who voted for Trump in the 2016 and 2024 elections, indicative of following the lead of a man who held superspreader rallies and promoted spurious treatments in contrast to following the advice of Fauci.

Most of the highest rates of death in Phase Two were in states with lower vaccination rates. Most of the highest rates of death in Phase One had airports that were hit by the evacuation order from Europe. Exceptions include South and North Dakota, hit by their own superspreader event. 

It is easy to describe a third phase. The super-infectious omicron variant took hold in December 2021 causing numbers to hugely spike with total cases increasing by 50% in two months. By that time, the death rate had fallen well below 1%. 

Back to Kennedy's Arguments

Kennedy's depiction of "lockdown" orders is wholly delusional. He speaks of stay-at-home orders as quarantines (they were not: they always allowed people out for necessary activities) and speaks as though they were universally imposed. They were not. Stay-at-home orders were decided and implemented (or not) state by state. Here is a chart from an excellent article that looks the nature of the individual state stay-at-home orders, whether they were mandatory or advised, how long they lasted, and whether they were for everyone or, for high-risk groups, or for high-risk counties.

Through May 31, 2020, three months into the pandemic, no stay-at-home directives, advisory or mandated, took place in the following states: Arkansas, Connecticut, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The following states issued only advisory stay-at-home directives: New Mexico, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Utah, Texas and Iowa. Two more states issued mandatory stay-at-home directives only for those at high-risk or for certain counties: South Dakota and New York. Another twelve states had mandatory stay-at-home order that lasted six weeks or fewer (let's open up again for Memorial Day was a big rallying cry): Nevada (5 weeks), Arizona (6 weeks), Virginia (6 weeks), Maryland (6 weeks), Kansas (5 weeks), Rhode Island (4 weeks), Alaska (4 weeks), Florida (1 month), West Virginia (6 weeks), Colorado (4 weeks), and Georgia (4 weeks). (Georgia continued with mandatory orders for those who were deemed at high-risk.) (Note: I live and teach in Puerto Rico. We had the first mandatory stay-at-home orders in the nation, before any state, and had one of the best responses in terms of death rates for COVID in the country. If we were a state, we would have ranked 47th lowest in the rate of mortality. From: Worldometers. (sort by death rate)) 

This leaves twenty states that had mandatory stay-at-home orders lasting more than six weeks. Kennedy believes that represents Fauci being all-powerful and stay-at-home mandates being so devastating to everything from the economy to mortality by other causes. Those states with mandatory stay-at-home orders that lasted more than six weeks made up 55.3% of the United States population (in part because the massive population of California was included).

Masks

Kennedy goes on to discuss masking mandates. He quotes an early statement by Fauci, stating that masks were much more effective in preventing an infectious person from spreading the disease than protecting a person against infection and saying that (typical) store-bought masks had "leakage around that doesn't really do much to protect you." Yes, masks are much more effective in preventing infection from an a symptomatic person. That doesn't make masking futile. He further quotes Fauci, "Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason to wear a mask." That "now" referred to February 17, 2020, approximately two weeks before the first recorded US death by COVID. It is clear that Fauci updated his recommendations. 

Kennedy goes on to quote Fauci saying asymptomatic transmission does not drive the outbreak of respiratory diseases. Kennedy concludes Fauci said masking asymptomatic people is fruitless and later that "asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 is infinitesimally rare." That is not what Fauci said.

Kennedy says 52 studies found ordinary masking useless. He goes on to say, some 25 studies supposedly showed that masking causes a "grim retinue of harms," and "fourteen of these studies are randomized peer-reviewed placebo studies." 

The problems with that statement. First, it combines a minimal standard (peer review, the others weren't peer reviewed?) with a gold standard (placebo studies). Placebo studies in this context make no sense. It is impossible to blind a participant to knowing whether or not they are wearing a mask.

So, 52 studies support the notion that masks don't work? The supporting footnote references Kennedy's website. One general reality that Kennedy overlooks is that there is a whole LOT of research out there. If you want to pick and choose a contrarian finding, it is not difficult to do. Kennedy does not present any of the many studies that contradict him. For example, this recent review looked at 400 studies of masks and came to the conclusion "Our review confirms that masks work, with a clear dose-response effect." 

Kennedy deals only briefly with social distancing "mandates" quoting a former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb saying that the six-foot distancing was arbitrary and example of "a lack of rigor by the CDC around making recommendations."

Okay, the six-foot rule was arbitrary and based on large droplet spread. Small droplet spread would have recommended 24-feet, impractical short of a total shutdown of businesses. There are certainly studies that did find social distancing worked which stand unchallenged since Kennedy didn't offer anything more than an opinion that the six-feet dictum lacked rigor. 

Kennedy goes back to the "unprecedented" lockdowns to conclude his first section of his first chapter.

Continued here.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.

Continue reading →

A Summary of the Introduction: RFK Jr's Book on Fauci

 Reviewing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, my first three posts went through the Introduction practically line by line. Although there was so much wrong, my posts only could only begin to broach the errors and the lies. For those who don't want to plow through the more detailed analyses, I decided to summarize my critiques here. The detailed evidence and the poring over original sources can be found on what I have already published. Entry #1, here. Entry #2, here. Entry #3, here. The first entry discussing Chapter One is here. The second installment discussing Chapter One is here. 

My Major Points.

#1. The book is poorly constructed. The Index and Table of Contents refer to page numbers. There are no page numbers. Supporting citations are given at the end of each chapter (and the Introduction). When the footnotes are numbered, there are no corresponding numbers in the text. In the Introduction the footnotes are not even numbered, just introduced by <?>. This makes it very confusing trying to find what he is using to support what statement, and from going through the footnotes, I was left believing some statements were not supported at all. 

#2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a poor writer. When he is not raving, he is repeating the same points over and over. For example, in one sentence he decries, "novel, shoddily tested, improperly licensed technology so risky that manufacturers refused to produce it unless every government on Earth shielded them from liability." Two sentences later, "unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions." He has no hierarchy to his thoughts. He prefers insults over building an argument.

#3. Virtually nothing that Kennedy says is supported by his citations. I detail this item by item. Very little is supported by the experts he cites, and frankly, several of those he cites strongly disagree with him.

#4. Kennedy tells whoppers. "Dr. Anthony Fauci spent half a century as America's reigning health commissar . . ." He repeats this, talking of Fauci's "50 year regime." Fauci first ascended to be in charge of a governmental health care agency in 1984, NIAID. NIAID has a small portion of the US health research budget. Thirty-seven years being in charge of anything would have been honest (the book was written in 2021).

And speaking of whoppers, there's this one that would make any physician who began their careers during the 1980s or before do a spit-take. "Some 80 autoimmune diseases, including juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, Graves' disease and Crohn's disease, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his [Fauci's] watch."

Of course, the diseases listed were not practically unknown before 1984. I took two of them, juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, and showed how their numbers have increased over time: but not much since the 1980s. Juvenile diabetes was virtually unknown a century ago because the patient had a life expectancy of two years after diagnosis. Numbers went up as treatment became available.

#5. Kennedy blames virtually everything on Fauci. "As Dr. Fauci's policies took hold globally, 300 million fell into poverty . . ." The "explosion" of autoimmune diseases cited above. And extending beyond autoimmune diseases, "Under Fauci's leadership, the allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses which Congress specifically charged NIAID to investigate and prevent, have mushroomed to afflict 54 percent of children, up from 12.8 percent he took over."

#6. Kennedy contradicts himself. He says that Fauci is responsible for the worldwide response to COVID and then blames Fauci for America's response and how America's casualties were much worse than the rest of the world. If Fauci was responsible for the worldwide response, other countries would have done as poorly as the United States.

#7. Kennedy leaves out anything that might dispute his tirade. In listing nations that did better than the United States, he doesn't include those that did worse. In the articles he cites, he leaves out key words. For example, he cites the article as saying the COVID response caused suffering and death when the article says COVID itself did.

#8. I made a detailed argument that America fared poorly during the COVID epidemic because many Americans did not listen to Fauci. Other countries that did not listen to Fauci, for example, Bolsonaro's Brazil and Orbán's Hungary, fared worse than America over the time period Kennedy chose. Individual states in the United States that permitted large gatherings or had poor vaccination rates, fared much worse than the nation as a whole.

Which leads me to the conclusion that Kennedy has a very disorganized mind. Furthermore, with so many false statements, he must know he is lying. Even though, correcting individual statements was quite often easy, correcting him proved exhausting just from the sheer number of his lies.

Correcting him is necessary. That he should have any power over decisions regarding health is mind-boggling.

Continued with the first entry discussing Chapter One, here.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.

Continue reading →

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and His Attack on Science, Part Three

 

 This is my third entry into a critique of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. The first entry can be found here and the second entry can be found here. A summary of the first three entries can be found here. The first entry discussing Chapter One is here.  The second entry discussing Chapter One is here.

Superspreader Events

 At the end of my last entry, I detailed the rise in COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths after the 2020 Sturgis, South Dakota Harley-Davidson rally. Those increases took place in South Dakota and neighboring states. I made the case that such events, contrary to Fauci's guidance, were what caused the disastrously bad numbers of COVID deaths in the United States when compared to countries that did adhere to Fauci's advice. In a later installment, I will detail how individual states not adhering to Fauci's advice experienced worse outcomes.

Another superspreader event was the June 20, 2020 campaign rally by Donald Trump in Oklahoma. While the motorcycle rally was in the hundreds of thousands of individuals, the Trump rally was much smaller, so it is likely there will be a smaller effect. 

Before I do go to the data, let me make a pair of predictions. Hypotheses: beginning, let's say three weeks after the rally, the state numbers in Oklahoma, and in the neighboring states of Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri, COVID infections will bump up to a greater degree than the national numbers. Starting about six weeks later, the COVID deaths in these states will increase to a greater degree than the national numbers. 

Let's look at the numbers. They took about an hour to gather, summarize, and calculate. If only Kennedy cared to spend the time. (Numbers are from worldometers (a source cited in Kennedy's book: they have an easy way of choosing specific geographic locations and linking cumulative data to a specific date.)

Number of cases reported. (Percent increase compared to June 20, the day of the rally)

	Cases, June 20	Cases, July 11	Cases Aug. 1
Oklahoma	10058	19837  (97.4%)	36607  (264%)
Kansas	14150	22598  (59.7%)	30739  (117%)
Arkansas	15519	28563  (84.1%)	43577  (181%)
Texas	131321	303984  (131%)	515287  (292%)
United States	2382139	3464328  (45.4%)	4915770 (106%)

 

Number of deaths reported. (Percent increase compared to June 20)

	Deaths, June 20	Deaths, August 1	Deaths, August 31
Oklahoma	446	732  (64.1%)	1121  (151%)
Kansas	260	361  (38.8%)	457  (75.8%)
Arkansas	246	522  (122%)	994  (304%)
Texas	2687	8069  (200%)	14394  (436%)
United States	125167	161458  (29.0%)	195962  (56.5%)

 

(Note: not all states reported on the same days. For example, some did not report on Saturday. Sometimes I used data from the proximal day.)

 

While Kansas did moderately worse than the US as a whole in its statistics over the above time period, all the other states did dramatically worse. I am not suggesting that all the increases in Oklahoma and its neighboring states were due to the Oklahoma Trump rally, but a marked increase did occur.

 

The June 20 Oklahoma rally represented Trump's first rally since the COVID lockdowns began. He went on to hold over 60 more rallies before election day. [as listed in Wikipedia]  Certainly these events were not according to Fauci's counsel. 

The Drop in Life Expectancy

Returning to Kennedy's arguments, he notes the drop in life expectancy in the United States subsequent to the COVID pandemic. 

"Anthony Fauci seems to have not considered that his unprecedented quarantine of the healthy would kill far more people than COVID. . . We have no way of knowing how many people died from isolation, unemployment, deferred medical care, depression, mental illness, obesity, stress, overdoses, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, and the accidents that so often accompany despair." (That last sentence is painful to type. He has no sense of hierarchy, cause of death, repetition of concepts, etc.) He goes on to discuss the drop in life expectancy in the US and UK and among Hispanic and Black Americans.

Kennedy declares, "This dramatic culling was unique to America." No, it wasn't. And the claim that it was negates Kennedy's arguments that Fauci's policies had lethal effects worldwide. While unacceptably high, the United States did not nearly have the highest rate of COVID deaths. Those that had higher death rates also had multiyear loss in life expectancy: Peru experienced a decline in life expectancy of 3.8 years between 2019 and 2021, Brazil, 2.6 years, Hungary 2.2. 

Kennedy goes on with the quote: "I naively thought the pandemic would not make a big difference in the [age of survival between US and other countries] gap because my thinking was that it's a global pandemic, so every country is going to take a hit," said Steven Woolf, Director Emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. "What I didn't anticipate was how badly the US would handle the pandemic. These are numbers we aren't at all used to seeing in this research; 0.1 years is something that normally gets attention in the field, so 3.9 years and 3.25 years and even 1.4 years is just horrible. We haven't had a decrease of that magnitude since World War II."

It is strange for Kennedy to quote Dr. Steven Woolf as someone who supports his contentions. Woolf has vocally denounced characterizations that say the COVID response and not COVID caused additional deaths. 

Steven Woolf wrote: "Conspiracy theorists—citing dubious evidence—claimed the gap reflected deliberate underreporting of deaths to downplay COVID-19 or the alleged dangers of lockdowns, vaccines, or masks." Steven H. Woolf. Policies Have Consequences: Measuring Excess Deaths During the COVID-19 

And Woolf is quoted here: 

"I don't disagree with the fact that the pandemic has been responsible for an enormous number of excess deaths in the US and that adults age 25-44 were deeply affected. But it's ridiculous to attribute this catastrophe to vaccine mandates and boosters." 

Can Kennedy find anyone to quote who doesn't undermine his theories? Yes, he can. Alex Gutentag.

Cost of Quarantines — Death

Kennedy's next section of the Introduction is titled Cost of Quarantines — Death. Here we get to some pretty serious stuff. 

Kennedy quotes Alex Gutentag as writing, "Globally, the impact of lockdowns on health programs, food production, and supply chains plunged millions of people into severe hunger and malnutrition."

Kennedy usually lists the qualifications of those he cites (see Steven Woolf, Director Emeritus, etc., above). So, that means by not mentioning Gutentag's qualifications, Kennedy is hiding something. Kennedy didn't note that Alex Gutentag teaches middle school to special school kids in Oakland, California. Good for him. He is a conservative commentator and anti-trans advocate, things you can do without qualifications. 

I should note here that at the end of the Introduction there is a list of sources cited. These sources are not numbered as footnotes usually are. Each entry is preceded by <?> suggesting that someone intended to provide footnote numbers but never got around to it: which would have been helpful to find the source of the quotations. I've never seen a book so crappily presented. (Later chapters have footnotes with numbers at the end of the chapter, but no numbers to connect them to in the text. I guess the footnotes are numbered to prove he can count.)

To his credit, Kennedy doesn't just rely on an unqualified author in an online magazine, he goes on to support the man's assertions. "According to the Associated Press (AP), during 2020, 10,000 children died each month due to virus-linked hunger from global lockdowns." Now I know where those who accuse me of supporting tens of thousands of child deaths get their numbers from. (Kennedy's assertions, not those of the AP article, as I will show you.)

The AP article does not say that the deaths were due to global lockdown. It does agree with that assertion in part, saying that "the coronavirus and restrictions are pushing already hungry communities over the edge." (italicization mine) In this statement and those that follow, Kennedy makes no efforts to separate the effects of COVID from imposed restrictions. 

 

The fuller quote from the article, "All around the world, the coronavirus and its restrictions are pushing already hungry communities over the edge, cutting off meager farms from markets and isolating villages from food and medical aid. Virus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic . . ."

Okay, I would like to understand this better, so I examined the source. The article is written on July 27, 2020. There was no "first year of the pandemic." It is written from the country of Burkina Faso. The accompanying picture of a starving child is dated November 2019. That country had it first COVID case in March 2020, and 56 deaths due to COVID through September. They also had war lords disrupting their food supplies for five years. What is meant by virus-linked hunger? Is that because the food chain supplies have been broken by people being infected by the virus or, as Kennedy suggests, due to the response to COVID? Kennedy doesn't provide anything to help sort that out. Burkina Faso's life expectancy in 2019 was 60.04 years. In 2022, it was 59.77. There was no massive drop. Kennedy suggests the country did follow Fauci's guidelines and that was why they suffered. They seemed to have fared well.

Among all countries, Peru was the worst hit by COVID. This was due in part to political chaos: Peru had four presidents during the course of 2020. Burkina Faso, with its warlords and internal fighting suffered in a similar way and yet they didn't have so many consequences.

Kennedy states, "In 2020, disruptions to health and nutrition services killed 228,000 children in South Asia." This matches up with a March 17, 2021 BBC news report that says "The disruption in healthcare services caused by Covid-19 may have led to an estimated 239,000 maternal and child deaths in South Asia." The article clearly states that it is COVID doing the disruption, not the response to COVID.

Kennedy talks of serious matters such as increased rates of "child abuse, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, obesity, mental illness . . . Suicide among children by 50 percent" among other terrible consequences. Again, he doesn't sort out COVID from the response to COVID. Having a grandparent (among others) die due to COVID could certainly add to depression. It was a terrible time. Personally, I would have described the COVID response as a far second to COVID itself in terms of stress.

There are two things implicit to all Kennedy's assertions. The notions that the response was too drastic and that lockdowns and other the responses were universally applied. Without supporting his argument, he says the response was the problem. He glosses over COVID itself as being a killer. Again and again he blames Fauci for the worldwide response and then provides evidence that the world did much better than the US.

Next up: Economic Destruction and Shifting Wealth Upward

This is a brief section. "Dr. Fauci served as ringmaster in the engineered demolition of America's economy." This hasn't aged well. Employment has come back, the GDP has rebounded, even the post-COVID inflation is down to reasonable levels. Kennedy says the business closures contributed to a run-up in the national deficit — "the interest payments alone will cost almost $1 trillion annually." The 2020 budget, which Fauci was hardly responsible for, ran a $3.2 trillion dollar deficit, primarily due to a Keynesian stimulus being injected into the economy. We do not have a 30% interest rate. The $1 trillion dollar a year interest payment is based on 80-plus years of accumulated debt.  

Kennedy goes on to say, "His lockdown shattered the nation's once-booming economic engine putting 58 million Americans out of work, and permanently bankrupting small businesses, including 41 percent of Black-owned business, some of which took generations to build. The Endnotes references don't give a citation for this, although it wasn't hard to find a source. 

Counter to that assertion, small businesses did not permanently close. Small businesses are counted in two ways. Total small businesses including single person businesses and those with at least one employee. Both means of counting had increased numbers from 2019-21. 

Total small businesses: 2019: 27.1 million; 2020: 27.2 million; 2021: 28.5 million. 

Those with at least one employee: 2019: 6.08 million; 2020: 6.12 million; 2021: 6.27 million.

As for Black-owned businesses, Kennedy didn't cite the article but the following made the news. "The report estimates that 41% of Black-owned businesses across the country shut down between February and April . . ." CNN, others. This is not permanent bankruptcy. Furthermore, the lockdowns didn't start until mid-March. "The first statewide order in the United States that restricted mobility to reduce the transmission of coronavirus was issued by California's governor on March 19, 2020 and it required all residents to remain at home except when engaging in essential activities ... the number of states with statewide stay-at-home orders increased from 9 on March 23 to 21 on March 26 to 30 on March 30, and 41 on April 3." From: Statewide COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders and Population Mobility in the United States, Grant D Jacobsen, Kathryn H Jacobsen. 

So, did 41% of black-owned businesses go bankrupt even as "lockdown" orders were still rolling out? Of course not. A study from the prestigious Pew Research says there were 134600 black-owned businesses in 2019, 141900 in 2020, and 161000 in 2021.

Kennedy says the COVID deficit will likely bankrupt the social safety net. The safety net has certainly survived so far. There are those who would like to gut it.

His next section is titled: Enriching the Wealthy.

It begins, "Dr. Fauci's business closures pulverized America's middle class and engineered the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history."

I am reluctant to criticize this. On the one hand, instinctively I would guess there was a cash grab during COVID. On the other hand, just about everything Kennedy has said so far is a lie.

As songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote: "The poor stay poor, the rich get rich, That's how it goes. Everybody knows." Certainly this is Fauci's fault.

Beyond invective, Kennedy says an additional 8 million Americans dropped below the poverty line. Let's look at the numbers in poverty, US, 2019 to 2022. 2019: 39.5 million. 2020 38.4 million. 2021, 41.4 million. 2022 (most recent year available) 41.0 million. There was a temporary bump of nearly 2 million.

Beyond these figures, Kennedy says that online meeting application usage zoomed (including Zoom) and these enriched their owners. Other big businesses certainly suffered. The cruising industry and tourism in general.

Kennedy goes on to repeat himself, as he often does, ". . . the demolition of our economy, the obliteration of a million small businesses, the collapsing of the middle class, the evisceration of our Bill of Rights, the tidal wave of surveillance capitalism . . ." (Note: I hate surveillance capitalism.) 

I haven't noticed the collapse of the middle class. The Pew Research Center measures the percent middle class. 2019, 51%, 2021, 50%, 2023, 51%. (I couldn't find numbers for 2020 and 2022, perhaps they do this each two years.)

As to what percent Americans identify as middle class or upper middle class, this is not measured every year, but in 2019 it was 52%. In 2022, it was 52%. In 2024, it was 54%. (Being an opinion, it is sampled by Gallup Polls.)

The next section is Failing Upward.

Here, there are fewer statistics (Kennedy does badly whenever he cites statistics) and more tirade. "The 'J. Edgar Hoover of public health' has presided over cataclysmic declines in public health, including an exploding chronic disease epidemic that has made the 'Fauci generation'---children born after his elevation to NIAID kingpin in 1984 ---the sickest generation in American history and has made Americans among the least healthy citizens on the planet." He goes on to say that America spends more than any other country on health care and does the worst among developed nations by the way of results. By many metrics, that is true. As for Fauci being a kingpin that is just Kennedy's ongoing delusion.

Kennedy focuses in part on autoimmune diseases. He says, "Some 80 autoimmune diseases, including juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, Graves' disease and Crohn's disease, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his watch." That sentence makes me want to scream. Juvenile diabetes practically unknown prior to 1984?  Rheumatoid arthritis? Graves' and Crohn's disease? On what planet does someone have to live on to think these were "practically unknown" prior to 1984? I imagine every physician on earth would drop their jaw at that statement.

Let's look at juvenile diabetes. The journal Diabetes has a fine article summarizing various studies that have looked at the prevalence of juvenile diabetes (also called type 1 diabetes) throughout the world. A major U.S. survey in 1935-36 found the prevalence "for the age-group under 15 years was 0.35/1,000 for boys and 0.41/1,000 for girls. In contrast, National Health Interview Surveys undertaken later in the century gave prevalence figures of 1.30 and 1.60/1,000 under age 16 years for 1973 and 1976." The paper cited a study that concluded "a sharp upturn in the incidence of insulin-dependent diabetes had occurred in the U.S. around the mid-century." The Rise of Childhood Type 1 Diabetes in the 20th Century. Edwin A.M. Gale

The abovementioned paper included the above graph of increases in diabetes among children under 10 in Norway per 100,000, which the authors describe as the best surveyed nation. A sharp increase that began in the mid-1950s slowed down toward the end of the century. 

So, what about more recent years? While the authors of this study looked at 4.9 million U.S. children up to 19 years old, they provided the numbers to calculate those who were under 15 years of age allowing a more direct comparison to the above US studies. In 2001, the incident rate was 1.17 per 1000, in 2009 the incident rate was 1.46/1000, and in 2017, the incident rate was 1.56/1000 (compared to the above cited 1.60/1000 for 1976). An epidemic!

Rheumatoid arthritis? Do I need bother? Kennedy clearly doesn't. From looking over several reviews, it appears that their findings can be summed up as follows. "Frequency data are conflicting. No proof exists from cohort studies that the incidence of RA has changed over time. Overall, the prevalence of RA is stable or on the rise." 

Kennedy goes on to list disorders that he says have become "commonplace" in American children including narcolepsy (now at 24 per 100000) and Tourette's syndrome (now at 30 to 60 per 100000). 

What reason does Kennedy give for why these illnesses are increasing? "So vaccines are a potential culprit . . . other possible perpetrators . . . are corn syrup, PFO flame retardants, processed foods, cell phones and EMF radiation, chlorpyrifos, ultrasound, neonicotinoid pesticides."

For the remainder of the Introduction, Kennedy mostly describes what he will go on to prove. Whew. So much better. So much of what he has said so far, not only did he not provide evidence to prove it, the evidence and the people he cited went a long way to disproving what he said. 

I have skipped over some of his claims. (For example, the incidence of Crohn's disease from above). This is not due to having found something that supports his claims and then not wanting to mention it. It is because this review of his book so far is already running the length of the book. I kept hoping for a pages where he would make reasonable, supportable, factual statements. Or else some let up to his poorly written diatribe. Some hope that something he stated would be supported by anything beyond his say-so. 

I started this series of blogs with a very different view of Kennedy. Now I recognize he knows nothing of science, health, critical thinking, or decency. He is a hatemonger and a blithering conspiracy theorist and I am certain my impatience is showing compared to the first two installments. On to Chapter One. 

Continued in a summary of the first three posts.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.

 

Continue reading →