Tag Archives: Anthony Fauci

medical news

Back to hugging, kissing

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

LOS GATOS, Calif. — I must have heard it a half-dozen times while visiting a friend in this high-end Bay Area community.

We went to a gathering of fellow Rotary Club members, where my friend once served as club president and later as governor of the Rotary district.

Several folks were hobnobbing, chatting and laughing at each other’s jokes. When they embraced, they would say to each other, “Oh, it’s so nice to be able to hug again.”

Yes, this is the sound of the post-pandemic age setting in slowly. “Hey, don’t worry,” one of them told me. “We’ve all been vaccinated” against the COVID-19 virus, they said.

So, there you go. So have my wife and me.

I had no issue at all with the way folks were interacting. I am intrigued, though, at the response to federal medical experts’ changing guidelines regarding masks and social distancing in this region that takes safeguard measures quite seriously. They, too, are relieved at the relaxed guidelines and are as anxious as those of us in Texas are to get back to living the way we used to live before the pandemic began killing Americans.

I am not going to jump with both feet into the life we once led prior to the pandemic hitting us where it hurts. We still wore masks when we entered public places. We will continue to do so until someone down the road delivers the all-clear signal. Who should deliver that message when the time arrives? I guess when Dr. Anthony Fauci says it, then it must be true.

Even in this time when politics infects everything, it is striking to my ears to hear folks who live in a deeply blue/Democratic-leaning part of the nation express a strong interest in returning quickly to the life we all led before disease and death changed everything.

medical news

Dr. Fauci’s voice has a certain … lilt

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Surely others have seen and heard what I have seen and heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease guru who has become a household name since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What would that be? It would be the lilt in his voice — and were he to stand and stroll down the street a certain spring in his step.

Dr. Fauci now serves as President Biden’s chief medical adviser. He had the same title (in name only) while working in the Donald Trump administration. The difference between then and now is simple and is as clear as it gets: Fauci is able to speak clearly and bluntly to Americans without being challenged by the president of the United States.

Fauci sought to do all of that while working in the Trump administration. He would tell us that mask-wearing saves lives only to be slammed to the mat by Trump, who at one point called Fauci “an idiot.”

These days? He says the same thing and gets an endorsement for his expertise and receives rhetorical backing from President Biden.

When I watch Dr. Fauci being interviewed by news talking heads I see a man who has been liberated from the heavy hand of a president who refused to let his experts speak for an administration led by a functionally ignorant chief executive.

Anthony Fauci has been set free. He is enjoying being able to speak with candor and with the authority he has built brick by brick over many decades studying diseases just like COVID-19.

medical news

Fauci vs. Rogan? Huh?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If you’re going to listen to a discussion between a famed medical doctor and a mixed martial arts promoter regarding infectious disease … who’s going to garner your attention?

I’ll stick with the doc.

And yet, we had Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s senior medical adviser, jousting with Joe Rogan, the podcaster and martial arts guru over whether young people should wear masks to protect them against COVID-19.

Rogan said healthy young people don’t need vaccinations. Fauci disagreed.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield weighed in. “Did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we weren’t looking? I’m not sure that taking scientific and medical advice from Joe Rogan is perhaps the most productive way for people to get their information,” she told CNN.

Indeed, I am going to stand behind the wisdom of Dr. Fauci.

Fauci vs. Rogan: White House works to stomp out misinformation | TheHill

There surely is plenty of misinformation being tossed around. The COVID virus remains a threat, although not as serious a threat as it was a year ago, or even four months ago. It is a threat nonetheless.

So, when goofballs like Joe Rogan pop off, parlaying their celebrity status to peddle misinformation, we need to take great care … and listen to the experts.

national news

Jordan’s tirade reveals arrogance

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan’s tirade against Dr. Anthony Fauci this week underscores a chronic condition that afflicts politicians who think they hold the keys to power.

Jordan decided that because he is an “elected official” that he has some political right to be dismissive of experts in a given field. He shouted down Dr. Fauci, barely giving the esteemed doc the chance to answer questions that Jordan had asked of him.

To be fair, this is a bipartisan affliction that shows itself in Democratic and Republican pols alike. However, since we’re talking today about a GOP blowhard in Jim Jordan of Ohio, we’ll concentrate on the men and women of his particular party.

Jordan indeed should have demonstrated some humility while discussing the COVID pandemic and its impact on our lives with the nation’s leading infectious disease expert. In fact, he should be mindful that his boorishness might not play as well with all his constituents back home in Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District as he thinks it does.

Jordan is a GOP bully cut from the same cloth that produced Donald J. Trump. He just cannot stop yelling at witnesses when they appear before the committees on which he serves. He must possess some demonic creature that compels him to talk down to others, even those who are many times more expert than he is on whatever subject he has chosen to pontificate.

Jim Jordan is a volatile young man who needs to show some respect.

medical news, national news

Waters is right: Shut your mouth, Jim Jordan

2 Comments

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

So help me Almighty God in Heaven … I want to slap Jim Jordan bald-headed.

The Republican congressman/blowhard from Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District took it upon himself this week to scold, badger, hector and seek to intimidate the nation’s pre-eminent infectious disease doctor.

Jordan decided that he knows more about the nature of the COVID pandemic than Dr. Anthony Fauci. All he did, though, was demonstrate that he is a cheap, craven, loudmouthed political hack who — on matters of public health — can’t find his a** with both hands.

He bellowed and blustered over Dr. Fauci’s efforts to answer when the nation might be able to return to some semblance of normal living. Along the way, he felt the need to remind Fauci that he is elected by his congressional district constituents to represent their interests, while Fauci isn’t elected to anything.

Brilliant, Rep. Jordan.

You ought to take a few minutes to watch it here. It’s a hoot! Only you won’t want to laugh.

Rep. Jim Jordan yells at Dr. Fauci during heated exchange – Bing video

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters was right to tell Jordan to “shut his mouth.” Then again, the more he blathers the more revealing he becomes to those of us who detest his conduct.

medical news

Fauci hits back at blowhard

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s one thing to be hectored by a peer, a fellow expert who has a different opinion on matters with which you both are experts.

It’s quite another to be badgered by a bloviating blowhard whose only apparent mission in life is to make an ass of himself.

So it was when U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio decided to wield the hammer on Dr. Anthony Fauci. What does Jordan know about infection disease, or the treatments of them, or how to protect ourselves against its potentially lethal effects? Nothing!

There he was at a House committee yapping and yammering at Fauci, refusing to give the nation’s most respected infectious disease expert a chance to answer. They argued over whether mask-wearing violates Americans’ First Amendment rights.

Fauci finally had heard enough and accused Jordan of making it all “personal,” to which Jordan said he wasn’t, to which Fauci said he most certainly was personalizing the matter.

Dr. Fauci Hits Back At Jim Jordan: ‘We’re Talking About a Pandemic that Has Killed 560,000 Americans’ (msn.com)

I am one American patriot who is going to stand with Dr. Fauci over the partisan nonsense that flies out of certain politicians’ pie holes. Jim Jordan has “distinguished” himself only in demonstrating his boorishness in ways that sicken me.

national news

He did ‘the opposite’?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I didn’t hear it in real time when Donald Trump said it, but I have just heard it and I am still utterly astonished.

Trump told Fox News the other day that he deliberately “did the opposite” of what Dr. Anthony Fauci recommended he do to reduce the infection rate and death rate from the coronavirus.

The president of the United States, from what I have just heard, has admitted to ignoring the advice of the nation’s preeminent epidemiologist. It can be argued that Fauci is the top infectious disease expert on the entire planet.

So there we have it. Donald Trump ignored his advice. He did the opposite of what Fauci advised him.

Hmm. What’s been the cost of such ignorance? Oh, only the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who might still be alive today had the president/commander in chief/head of state had followed the advice of the men and women he enlisted to help him ostensibly with the nation’s pandemic response.

Can there be anything more astonishing than to realize that millions of Americans actually want this imbecile to run for president again?

Donald John Trump should be prosecuted for homicidal negligence.

medical news, science news

Senator fuels peeve list

1 Comment
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My list of pet peeves is lengthy.

It includes watching a politician lecture an expert on matters the expert knows far better than the lecturing politician.

My latest example of that occurred Thursday when U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, patronized Dr. Anthony Fauci over the value of wearing masks as a weapon to use against the killer coronavirus.

To be totally fair, I should stipulate that Sen. Paul is an MD. He is an ophthalmologist, so he isn’t a layman the way I am a layman. However, to listen to Sen./Dr. Paul lecture Dr. Fauci during a Senate committee hearing about whether mask wearing actually combats the virus makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I guess I should declare once more that Fauci is the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease expert. He is The Man, the go-to guy, the doc who has served seven U.S. presidents from both political parties.

Fauci said categorically that wearing a mask is effective in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, along with social distancing, frequent hand-washing and other measures.

Rand Paul persisted in trying to make whatever political point he wanted to make at Fauci’s expense. Dr. Fauci wasn’t having any of it.

I was delighted to hear Dr. Fauci push back hard against the know-it-all U.S. senator.

medical news

Politics overpowering pandemic battle

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the more astonishing aspects of this fight against the coronavirus pandemic — and there have been so many of them — has been the political tug-of-war over whether to get vaccinated against a disease that has killed 500,000-plus Americans.

On one side we have the MAGA-hat crowd, the folks who continue to stand with an ex-president who spent much of the previous year denying the pandemic was anything to cause worry. They oppose getting vaccinated.

It fell, then, on Dr. Anthony Fauci — the world’s leading infectious disease expert — to implore Donald Trump to encourage his minions to get vaccinated. The ex-president did so and for that I applaud him.

For the life of me I cannot fathom how vaccination protocols have become something to kick around like a proverbial political football.

The evidence of all three U.S. government-approved vaccines’ efficacy is overwhelming. They are helping curb the infection, hospitalization and death rates. Still, we hear reports of individuals declining to get vaccinated because of some lie that refuses to be exterminated that the vaccines aren’t working.

In a related matter, we also hear about individuals refusing to wear masks while doing business with companies that their customers to wear them. Did you see the video of the woman in Galveston getting arrested in a bank because she refused to mask up even though bank policy requires her to do so? She shouts idiotic cliches about her “personal liberty” being infringed by rules aimed at protecting her life and those with whom she comes into contact. Ridiculous!

If there is a sign that the politicization of society has veered out of control, I believe we are seeing it play out in real time … at this very moment. It has to stop!

medical news

Fauci makes timely plea

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Dr. Anthony Fauci has issued a timely and seemingly authentic plea to the 45th president of the United States.

Fauci, who is President Biden’s chief medical adviser, has asked Donald J. Trump — who he describes as enormously popular among those who continue to follow him — to encourage his millions of supporters to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

This is just my view, but my hunch is that Trump isn’t likely to listen to too much that Fauci says about anything. I mean, he did call Fauci an “idiot” after the renowned infectious disease expert challenged an assertion that Trump had made.

Fauci is trying to de-politicize the vaccine debate. The Trumpsters keep resisting the vaccine. Other Americans are lining up to receive them. The infection rate is falling, as is the positivity test rate — and the death rate.

Indeed, we now know that Donald and Melania Trump received their vaccines in private just a few days before leaving the White House. The POTUS and the FLOTUS didn’t want to let it be known that they had gone against Donald Trump’s own stated resistance to the severity of the pandemic.

The beans have been spilled and Dr. Fauci is seeking ways to get to the millions of Americans who hang onto the goofy notion that the vaccine is going to harm them. Fauci and the many other scientists say they only will help us.

Any of them would be acceptable, Fauci said: Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

I applaud Dr. Fauci for seeking to talk sense to those who at times seem to lack any sort of rational thought. If they hear from their hero/idol/cult leader that the vaccines are safe and effective, then perhaps we can accelerate the return to what we used to think of as “normal living.”