“I am deeply disturbed about the state of our society. But it is not so much about an impending public health disaster. It is about the crisis of truth in in my country…” Dr. Fauci.

Recently, a friend loaned me Doctor Fauci’s book, On Call. I was surprised to learn that Doctor Fauci, who was belittled by members of the Trump administration and conservatives in general, was not a flaming liberal. He was a somewhat simple kid from the Bronx who didn’t want people to get sick. He appreciated baseball and had been athletic as a youth. He was proud to be Italian. He was undeniably heterosexual but decidedly not homophobic. He was, in fact, somewhat conservative. He worked very well with Reagan and George Bush the 2nd, Obama, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, and had a fondness for Hilary Clinton. His autobiography reads like a who’s who of diseases and possible pandemics, some realized, some avoided.

Two things surprised me about his book.

One thing that really surprised me in this book was Project Bioshield. I really hadn’t heard of it. I knew about the incentives for development of AIDS fighting drugs, but Project Bioshield came about after 911. One aspectsof Project Bioshield which remains true to this day are the ability to rush vaccine development. Another is to have the Health and Human Services and Homeland Security be in charge of developing and implementing programs to protect us from bioweapons. Considering who we have in charge right now, it’s a little bit scary.

You may recall that it was George Bush who pushed the Department of Homeland Security on us. During the early Y2K era, he was concerned that smallpox, anthrax or even Botulism would be used as bioweapons. One huge focus of the early Bush administration was smallpox. How we would get people vaccinated for this deadly disease should it be become a bioweapon?

As a preparation, some people for in the military were vaccinated against smallpox.

Smallpox vaccines have undergone many iterations since the first one was developed in 1796 from cowpox, a cow udder disease. Only humans can get smallpox but exposure to cow and horse pox granted humans immunity from smallpox. The smallpox vaccine is not an easy one to handle. It can give people myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle. People who were children before 1972, you might notice, have a big scar on their arm from their smallpox vaccinations. The old school vaccines of the 1960s had side effects ranging from fever, rashes, and even death from smallpox. As the oldest child, I wrote a cheery book for my siblings to ease their pain after their smallpox vaccinations. Valerie The Vaccination began as a scratch, became a scar, and fell off with a smile never to return. The vaccine was a live virus which gives the recipient a mild form of the pox via a scratch. The scratch site blisters and leaves a scar. Throughout much of smallpox vaccine history, the smallpox virus was weakened (attenuated) by growing it in cow tissue.

The current vaccine is milder form of “pox” which is less dangerous.

In the US we have vaccines stockpiled, some of them in cooperation with the World Health Organization. But are there enough?

Smallpox was eradicated by a vigorous vaccine campaign accomplished by the World Health Organization, beginning in 1967 and ending in 1980. Before this, smallpox had a mortality rate of about 30%, wiping out the immune system and allowing the virus to spread and pop human cells unchecked. It’s estimated that smallpox from Europeans killed 95% of Native Americans. Humans who survive smallpox can be left with scars and blindness. Some stockpiles of the virus exist in the US and in Russia. (images of smallpox shown below)

Below: © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Above: https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/mummified-crypt-smallpox/

George Bush was wrong about bioweapons, a smallpox attack, and nuclear weapons. They were not being developed. He never faced a reckoning for his errors. He did, however, take Dr. Fauci’s advice about how to prepare for and stop a pandemic.

Dr. Fauci got along well with presidents, all except one. He tried to respect Trump but found him flippant, demanding, and unable to understand that he couldn’t order COVID to be gone by Easter 2020. Trump grabbed at unproven elixirs such as hydroxychloroquine and later Ivermectin. He and his friends even promoted and sold them.

Since 430 BC, stopping a pandemic focused on keeping healthy people away from sick people, often by fleeing from them, and sometimes by only meeting with others outside.

When COVID became a pandemic, Trump agreed to a 15-day quarantine period, then 30. When some states stretched it out, Trump went hostile, said they were violating freedom, and called for the states’ liberation. My son was in an ER residency in Detroit during COVID and I can’t emphasize enough how grateful I was for Gretchen Whitmer’s leadership in Michigan, which included restrictions on public gatherings, which resulted in a kidnapping plot against her.

Trump was angry that a vaccine wasn’t developed and approved before the election. Now, the FDA is in chaos. This is hurting innovation. We see a hatred of vaccines in general. Connect the dots if you can. Trump called Dr. Fauci a Democrat. Death threats followed. There’s quite a lot more in On Call.

Sadly, the current administration is dismantling much of Fauci’s work, including AIDS prevention and control and pandemic readiness. We’ve brought a halt to pandemic readiness. In fact, the government is not allowed to use the words biodefense or pandemic preparedness. We will not be tracking or monitoring disease outbreaks. We are, however, seeing states allowing for sales of the quack cures ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine over the counter. We are facing bills limiting the governor’s ability to impose quarantine.

You might recall that monkeypox was stopped in its tracks in 2022 (thanks Biden and the World Health Organization). The US has withdrawn from the World Health Organization. See information above about smallpox vaccines.

Iowa is considering dropping school vaccine requirements. We are seeing a whole political party making policy based on anger and revenge, not science. We’re all going to die but let’s not make it easy.

My second surprise was the ease in which the Republicans allowed and continued to allow scientific expertise to be sidestepped for revenge. During COVID, the US had more deaths per capita than many countries, yet the factors leading to those deaths have not been corrected. They are getting worse.

Revenge and frustration should not be the basis for public policy. As scientists like to say, nature doesn’t care about what you believe. COVID is a coronavirus, known for mutating and becoming less deadly with time. This has happened. Smallpox has been with us and deadly since at least the Viking Era. Hopefully, will not have a pox on us for being so short sighted about pandemic response should another one arise.

Thank you, Tina, for loaning me this fascinating book.