[throwawaylinux]

So when Fauci had this https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387 published in March 2020 that included the words "This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)", what weighting should we give to his current credibility, would you say?

[_djo_]

You’re stripping out important context there. He was comparing it to SARS and MERS with CFRs of 9-10%, so saying COVID-19 would be closer to the influenza end of the spectrum if, and only if, some of the early info on the infection fatality rate was correct.

What you did isn’t a good faith move. There’s tons to criticise Fauci on in any case, you shouldn’t need to selectively quote stuff like this.

[throwawaylinux]

I didn't think I was stripping out important context, but I will add more for your:

If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

I don't think that really changes things. The orders of magnitude are 0.1%, 1%, 10%, and he's saying it may be considerably less than 1%, i.e., much closer in relative magnitude (and obviously far nearer in absolute terms) to a seasonal flu.

You are the one who is missing the larger context of this thread, which has been an unfair bullying of someone going back over what they had said 2 years ago about covid and claiming he should "sit this one out". Given this is the position that the experts had back then, clearly having an opinion that it was like a seasonal flu was not way out of line.

And my question to OP about Fauci stands too. Given that is what he wrote, and I provided the link for full context, what credibility should we assign to his current statements.

[_djo_]

Again, note the language used. First, it’s a summary of what’s suspected at the time, but with a lot of caveats around what’s uncertain. The statement being made the quoted portion is that it’s likely to have a CFR a lot closer to flu than to MERS or SARS 1. That’s still not inaccurate, what they missed was how infectious it was.

The piece also doesn’t argue against action or vigilance. It highlights the unknowns, risks, and some potential outcomes. As more information came out Fauci and others adjusted their reviews, predictions, and recommendations to suit.

It’s hardly the same thing as the group of people who’ve spent the last two years trying to downplay this virus every chance they got, and refused to learn from getting it wrong. Telling us it wasn’t serious, that it would die out on its own, that we didn’t need interventions like masks and social distancing, and all the rest.

[throwawaylinux]

Yep that's what was suspected at the time which is why these experts were saying it's probably more like a seasonal flu than a serious pandemic of other sorts, don't wear a mask, keep traveling, etc. And they were wrong (well, to some extent -- it's still probably around a 1% mortality rate so still arguably closer to a seasonal flu going by Fauci's same reasoning).

Clearly bullying here of a person for pretty much repeating what many experts like Fauci and politicians like Pelosi were saying at the time is way out of line. Hopefully you can agree on that.

[_djo_]

Experts don't always get it right, but what differentiates those we trust from those we don't is that they're cautious, curious, and learn from new information to adjust their views and recommendations.

Plenty of scientists have admitted that they underestimated aspects of this pandemic, from the effectiveness of masking, to the likelihood and severity of variants, to how quickly vaccines would come on stream. But they learnt from it and moved on.

Someone who downplayed the pandemic from the very beginning and who, in response to a new variant that has virologists and epidemiologists extremely worried, says "this is danger porn. pay it no mind and have happy holidays" is neither a serious person nor worth listening to on this subject. They clearly haven't learnt from their past mistakes, or don't want to.

[throwawaylinux]

> Experts don't always get it right, but what differentiates those we trust from those we don't is that they're cautious, curious, and learn from new information to adjust their views and recommendations.

I don't think they do necessarily. I have heard very little in the way of contrition or reflection or honest explanation as to why so many got it wrong for so long. Wrong about the virus, wrong about how it spreads, wrong about vaccines, etc. And yet so many of them still act like they are absolutely certain of what they are saying, when it's clear they in fact don't.

Scientists and experts can be egotistical, dogmatic, inflexible, and rusted on to old ideas. That whole Planck's principle thing, you know.

> Someone who downplayed the pandemic from the very beginning and who,

Someone who said what many experts were saying, you mean?

> in response to a new variant that has virologists and epidemiologists extremely worried, says "this is danger porn. pay it no mind and have happy holidays" is neither a serious person nor worth listening to on this subject. They clearly haven't learnt from their past mistakes, or don't want to.

I disagree, I don't see how that follows. The media certainly have certainly hyped things up and exaggerated and peddled this danger porn. The OP was referring to a sentence from a news article, not a quote from a scientist. The claim is not that covid doesn't matter and this variant is harmless, it's that the news article is danger porn.

Which it is. If it's nothing there's not much we can do, if it's bad news there's not much we can do. As other top level comments say, mutations happen all the time. Look how many major variants there are https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-varian... what is there to gain by panicking every time a new one is found?