This is the stuff that Elon Musk and his accomplices want to see more of on social media:
Vocal Covid-19 vaccine opponent Alex Berenson has discovered who the real victim of soccer analyst Grant Wahl’s sudden passing at the World Cup is: Berenson himself.
And his accused persecutors? Wahl’s family, of course.
In an unfathomably ghoulish tweet, Berenson whined about the Wahls’ alleged efforts to “shame/silence those of us raising serious questions about mRNA safety.”
“I’m sorry if Grant Wohl’s [sic] family prefers no one discuss what might have caused his death. But he was a public figure and publicly pro-mRNA shot and his wife is a huge jab advocate,” declared Berenson within a larger thread critiquing proponents of the mRNA vaccines.
After their advent, Wahl called the vaccines “incredible,” submitted that they were “not getting enough credit for the marvel that they are,” and echoed the medical community’s critiques of anti-vaxxers such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Wahl’s widow, Dr. Céline Gounder, is a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and outspoken proponent of the vaccines who served on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board transition team.
In both an appearance on CBS and post celebrating her husband’s life on his Substack page, Gounder revealed Wahl’s cause of death to be an ascending aortic aneurysm. From Substack:
An autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death.
Gounder did not reference the vaccine-related conspiracy theories during her CBS appearance, so the clause “his death was unrelated to vaccination status” in a longer tribute appears to comprise the totality of her efforts to silence and shame the delicate flower calling itself Alex Berenson.
Berenson’s theory of the vaccine’s role in Wahl’s death is wholly without merit. He bases his ludicrous claim on giant cell arteritis (GCA) being a risk factor for an ascending aortic aneurysm, calling it “a side effect of mRNA jabs.” The two screenshots Berenson provided as evidence refer only to singular cases of GCA being observed in much older patients in the immediate aftermath of vaccination — a textbook example of correlation without causation — and with no subsequent ascending aortic aneurysm following either case. He linked to neither article.
For the dual crimes of differing with Berenson about the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines and Wahl’s having passed away at an early age, Wahl (posthumously) and Gounder (while grappling with unspeakable tragedy) have been tried and punished by the disgraced ex-New York Times reporter. In carrying out their sentence, Berenson has exemplified his signature traits: shoddy work, an unshakeable victim complex, and chronic inhumanity.
This is sickening on so many levels from the massive numbers of deaths from COVID (due to failure to vaccinate) to grossly suggesting that Grounder had a role in her husband’s death because she was in favor of vaccines. And Elon Musk continuing the insane disseminating of disinformation about COVID. These people are despicable.
This interview with Dr. Fauci in the LA Times addresses the anti-science bias that’s killing people:
Your career has been bookended by the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics. Both diseases are still with us, and are likely to remain so for some time. Do you find that discouraging?
Not at all. The work with HIV is historically transforming. When we first started caring for patients, we would give an infected patient a life expectancy of eight to 12 to 15 months.
Almost all of my patients died.Over a period of time, we discovered the virus and developed a diagnostic test. And over a few years, we developed a series of antiretroviral drugs, then we added the protease inhibitor. Today we can tell somebody who’s infected with HIV that if they get on therapy, they are going to live an essentially normal lifespan.
And now, we have drugs that can 99% prevent infection with HIV. It’s true we don’t have a vaccine yet for HIV/AIDS, but hopefully we’ll get it.
That’s the science thing that I’m responsible for. I’m not responsible for the implementation of healthcare systems that don’t get people into healthcare. I’m not responsible for the fact that there’s a lack of equity. What I have been responsible for is the science, and the science has been an overwhelming success story when it comes to therapy and prevention. So am I discouraged? No, I think it’s cause for celebration!
The public seems to expect quick, complete solutions. Do they fail to appreciate that science doesn’t quite work that way?
I think there is a lack of appreciation for that. With HIV it was a gradual process of going from a complete lack of interventions in the early 1980s, to fielding interventions that proved slightly effective in 1986-87, then progressively adding medications that were moderately effective, and now to having drug combinations that are universally and dramatically effective.
I think people think of science as something that you get up at bat and you hit a home run the first time around. It isn’t that way — it’s a gradual, iterative process that is cumulative, and that will ultimately get you to the endgame you want.
And when the progress of science takes an unexpected turn?
That’s another lesson learned. Science collects data, and you act on the data that you have at the time.
In January 2020, we were learning about aspects of the coronavirus, and we had to, by necessity, make recommendations, make guidelines. We had to publicly discuss our understandings of the virus.
But the outbreak was dynamic, and science is self-correcting. So what we knew in January was one thing. When we later learned that the virus is readily spread by aerosol, and that 50% to 60% of the spread was by people who didn’t even know they’re infected, we had to change our recommendations and guidelines.
People sometimes said, “You’re flip-flopping.” It has nothing to do with flip-flopping! It was a case of continuing to make decisions based on the latest and most accurate data you have. After all, the SARS-CoV-2 that we were dealing with in January 2020 was very different from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that we’re dealing with now.
If you stick with the science, you’re going to have to be prepared to change as the facts evolve.
You’ve had more experience communicating with the public than most scientists will ever have. What has that taught you?
That people don’t hear the caveats. They hear the positive aspects of what you say.
As we communicate what we know, the only thing we can do better is to continue to try to emphasize that we’re dealing with a moving target, and that what we’re telling you now is based on the data as we know it. However, this may change, and we may need to change. Yet every time I’ve done that, the headline never includes the “however.” They never, ever include the caveat.
The science of immunology is enormously complex. Yet people without science background need to understand enough of it to make sense of your recommendations. How do you deal with that?
You have to take special care in articulating its complexity. And you just have to keep the “however” in the explanation.
I don’t blame the public. But it is truly complicated — the whole idea of antibody immunity that goes up and then goes down, and the T cells that persist but are tough to measure, though they’re probably the most important thing protecting you from severe disease. It’s so difficult to get that into a soundbite. You can’t report immunology in two sentences.
What happens when you add extreme partisanship to the mix?
It makes it untenable. Untenable! It makes people’s willingness to accept the dynamic nature of the science impossible.
We’re living in a progressively anti-science era, and that’s a very dangerous thing when you’re dealing with a very deadly pandemic that has already killed more than a million people in this country.
Do you ever ask yourself where we would be now with HIV/AIDS if we had today’s level of partisanship back then?
I don’t think we would be as advanced as we are now.
Ideological differences are a good way of keeping balance in this country. But not when it turns into profound divisiveness.
An example is if you look at the number of people vaccinated in red states versus blue states. There is absolutely no reason whatever that you’d make a decision about whether or not you are going to avail yourself of a lifesaving intervention for yourself and your family based on your ideological persuasion. It just doesn’t make any sense.
You are among the most beloved doctors and scientists in the country and also among the most reviled. Are you OK with that?
For me personally, I don’t care. But I’m not OK with the country being so divisive that they threaten the life and the safety of people like me and my family merely because I’m telling people to get vaccinated, to wear a mask where appropriate, to avoid indoor settings, and to abide by public health principles.
I mean, if that’s the reason why I’m hated by people, that’s a sorry state for the country.
The country is in a sorry state indeed. Rich fools, attention seekers, snake oil salesmen and devious power-mongers are exploiting people’s ignorance and making them hostile to science. It couldn’t happen at a worse time.
Berenson is a fiction writer. He is not a scientist, a doctor or even a science writer. He writes fiction. This is what he’s writing these days now that he’s back on twitter:
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