Anyone who listens to Anthony “The Science” Fauci might have noticed a curious phenomenon. I call this phenomenon “the two faces of Fauci.” The two faces of Fauci can be seen when Fauci makes a sober assessment regarding COVID-19 before a small circle of his colleagues. Then, regarding the same subject, Fauci says something very different and quite alarming when he is in the media spotlight speaking before a much larger audience.
Two examples of this phenomenon come to mind. They involve Fauci’s public statements regarding 1) the lethality of COVID-19 and 2) the PCR test used to detect COVID-19 cases.
Fauci’s Statements Regarding the Lethality of Covid-19
On March 11th, 2020, Fauci testified before Congress that COVID-19 is “ten times worse than the flu” (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DekzGCJhJw).
However, in an editorial piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine, dated March 26th, Fauci stated that the lethality of COVID-19 is probably comparable to that of a bad flu season. (During his congressional testimony, Fauci said that a bad flu season is 69,000 to 79,000 deaths.)
Fauci writes in the editorial:
“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.” (See https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?articleTools=true.)
Then, exactly one day later, in an interview with The Daily Show host Trevor Noah, Fauci repeated the “ten times worse than the flu” line. (See https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/fauci-offers-more-conservative-death-rate-academic-article-public-virus.)
Here, the two faces of Fauci are on full display. Notice that when he speaks to a small circle of his colleagues (i.e., readers of New England Journal of Medicine) Fauci quietly arrives at an estimate that is “more akin” to a bad flu season. He does so by taking into account a much larger x number of undetected cases (a reasonable thing to do if you are trying to understand the overall lethality of the virus). However, given a platform on which he is sure to reach a much larger audience, Fauci shows a very different face and loudly increases his estimate by a factor of 10.
More recently, we see the same sort of duplicity with regard to PCR tests.
The Validity of PCR Tests
On August 29, 2020, The New York Times raised an eyebrow or two when it ran a piece called “Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.” (See Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)) In this article, we learn that the PCR tests being used to diagnose COVID-19 infections are producing a high number of false positives. Why? According to the Times, the tests are too sensitive.
The sensitivity of the test is determined by the “cycle threshold” or number of amplifications used to detect RNA molecules from live or dead viruses. As the Times reports, “most tests set the limit at 40 [cycles], a few at 37…. [However] the CDC’s own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles.”
At or above this threshold, PCR tests are likely to pick up fragments of dead viruses (RNA molecules) being flushed from the body. At this point, the person is neither infected nor contagious. A positive test result, however, gets interpreted as a live infection—i.e., a “case.”
How inaccurate are these tests? A study by Jaafar et al. suggests that positive PCR tests using a threshold of 35 cycles have an accuracy rate of less than 3%. In other words, about 97% of positive tests at this level are false. (See Correlation Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates | Clinical Infectious Diseases | Oxford Academic (oup.com).)
A court ruling in Portugal held that PCR tests are “unreliable” and quarantines “unlawful.” Among the scientific studies cited by the judges presiding over the case was the aforementioned Jaafar et al. paper. (See Portuguese Court Rules PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful” – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org.)
One might say that the judges “listened to the science.”
Even Dr. Fauci questions the validity of the PCR tests. As early as July 16th, in an interview with Microbe.tv, Dr. Fauci made this statement: “If you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more, the chances of it being replication confident are minuscule. …It’s very frustrating for the patients, as well as for the physicians. Somebody comes in and they repeat their PCR, and it’s like 37 cycle threshold. But you almost never can culture a virus at a 37 cycle threshold. So, I think if somebody does come in 37, 38—even 36—you just got to say… you know, it’s just dead nucleotides. Period.” (See Fauci interview here at 4:21, https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-641/.)
Recall the Times article which stated that “most tests set the limit at 40 [cycles], a few at 37.”
Thus, multiple sources, including Fauci, indicate that the COVID-19 case counts we are being bludgeoned with on a daily basis are wildly inflated due to the use of overly sensitive PCR tests.
Now contrast Fauci’s sober assessment of the PCR test with his more recent comments on the rising case numbers. For instance, see here: Josh Wingrove on Twitter: “Fauci to CNN: “I’m actually disturbed and concerned about the fact that our baseline of infections is still stuck at 40,000 cases a day. That’s no place to be.”” / Twitter.
And here: US hits four million monthly Covid-19 cases as Fauci warns of holiday surge | Coronavirus | The Guardian.
Fauci lies by omission, as he fails to mention the unreliability of the PCR tests behind these numbers.
Here, again, we see the two faces of Fauci. In the company of specialists on Microbe.tv Fauci quietly acknowledges the unreliability of the PCR test as a diagnostic tool. But when he steps into the spotlight of a major news media outlet, he omits this important piece of information. There, in the spotlight, before a much larger audience, Fauci reverts back to fearmongering, without questioning the sky-high case numbers and the faulty PCR tests behind them.
Conclusion
The failure to draw out the implications of a hypersensitive PCR test prone to false positives—particularly as it affects the number of cases being reported—conforms to a pattern of duplicity that has characterized Dr. Fauci’s public statements since at least March 2020. These lies by omission pile on top of the contradictory statements made by Fauci regarding the lethality of COVID-19. These are two examples of the Two Faces of Fauci.