PUBLISHED: June 9, 2024 | www.baltimoresun.com
History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. The bubonic plague ravaged the globe. People were told it was caused by bad air, Jews, God, or the alignment of the planets. Later, after the plague had killed one-third of Europe, it was discovered the plague was caused by fleas embedded in rats. Without censorship, John Milton taught in Areopagitica, truth will unhorse falsehood.
The truth has a funny way of getting out. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but as is often said in India: “The truth will out.”
With the testimony of Dr. Anthony Fauci before Congress last week, we are reminded of this. What was stated with conviction, authority and certainty just a few short years ago, now turns out to have been not hidebound to science in the least.
A plague at the time was sweeping across America. Where it came from we didn’t know. In which state or region it would next descend upon couldn’t be predicted. We the people were vulnerable. We looked for answers. There on the dais, speaking to us every afternoon, was our own national physician, Anthony Fauci, M.D.
We listened with rapt attention, as he later said: “I am science.” First, we were told no masking was necessary. There were no scientific trials about masking one way or the other though, as it turned out, his concern was to first protect health care workers by preserving personal protective equipment for them.
Later, closing schools and shuttering businesses; prohibiting worshipping together in churches, temples and synagogues; gutting the economy and leaving our elderly alone and particularly at risk — all this was done to comport with “the science.” Yet now we learn what many suspected even in those dark days of early COVID: There was no science.
Where did COVID come from? Remember the “wet market?” Bats were the COVID reservoir, though the infected bats lived 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. No trace of infection was found over the miles between Wuhan and the large population of bats, among whom the virus was endemic. Yet there, hiding in plain sight in Wuhan, was the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And they were known to be investigating the coronavirus and perhaps engaging in making it yet more contagious and more virulent than the version found in nature. Could it have leaked from the lab?
Without doubt or nuance, Dr. Fauci’s supporters scolded those who asked such questions and took exception to the orthodoxy. They were ridiculed, canceled and belittled. Conspiracy theorists, we were told; wet market it was.
Physicians in Wuhan, back in the fall of 2019, had noticed that patients in the hospital and receiving hydroxychloroquine seemed to fare better than other hospitalized patients. Physicians here in America began using the medicine for desperately ill patients for whom no other treatment was available. The scolding began in earnest. The medicine was not approved. Medical professionals were using the medication that was off label. Dr. Fauci wasted no time in rebuffing these doctors who had only the lives and well-being of their patients in mind. He was the arbiter of care. He determined proper standards. Daring physicians were undeterred and remain among the unsung legions of heroes who stood by their patients at the peril of their own professional well-being.
Now these years later, the truth is oozing out. Public records now made available by the Freedom of Information Act and virologists reviewing the molecular design of the virus and its pattern of spread back up the theory that this virus arose from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that it was genetically modified and that our nation was to some extent involved in this risky research.
Dr. Fauci once decried notions like these, but last week, he was held publicly accountable. Not for not knowing, as none of us knew. Not for making management mistakes, as in the fog of war those are inevitable. But it is becoming plainer for all to see that his telling of the story was not just wrong, but a self-serving series of distortions that expanded his power and allowed government to extend into every nook and cranny of our lives.
The men of Tuskegee in the 1930s understood that they were enrolling in a study of syphilis and placed their trust in the government. Even when antibiotic therapy was available and proven effective as a treatment, they lingered untreated, succumbing to the ravages of an ancient disease. The government had its own agenda.
The homily here is that we choose our advisors wisely. The government has its own agenda. It is only partially coaxial with the safety and security of the governed. Let the physicians care for their patients unfettered. Support the robust pursuit of truth by our thought leaders in science. And cast a jaundiced eye on unelected figures who, from time to time, rise up and purport to speak and act on our behalf, but in fact undermine our own ability to see with our eyes and hear with our ears. We give them the helm at our own peril.
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