by Paul Ricci
Watching Dr. Anthony Fauci get grilled by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee brought back a lot of memories of the struggles of the pandemic. The committee is chaired by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). He is a trained ophthalmologist. Senator Paul is now pursuing contempt of Congress charges against Fauci after he plead the fifth amendment hundreds of time before his committee. Another physician in Congress who spoke out against Fauci was John Joyce of Altoona. Aaron Rodgers is not a physician but he has also joined the chorus of boos against Fauci. This is an affront to all those who worked to protect the public during the pandemic. This post will look at Anthony Fauci and those who worked to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Trajectory of the Pandemic
The pandemic began in late 2019. The first case reached Cambria County, PA in March 2020. I catalogued the trajectory of the cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations from the department of heath website (since taken down). You can see in the graph above how the rise in cases was slow at first during the lockdown. The number of cases and deaths (in the graph below) began to increase exponentially after Trump came to the area to campaign for reelection in October 2020 (the yellow dot in the above and below graphs) with thousands of people and no masks, a superspreader event. The 7 day death average rose to a peak of 8 per day on December 19, 2020. The one day record for deaths was 14 on January 13, 2021. It was a bad Christmas that year.
The local coronavirus taskforce went into action. I posted daily updates on the pandemic numbers on Facebook and Twitter for Cambria County and surrounding areas and had participated in an online discussion of the pandemic numbers with UPJ professor Jill Henning and local data scientist Tulsi Shrivastava. At the time we received a mix of positive and negative feedback on social media.
What ended the pandemic was the preponderance of the vaccine. The graph above shows the relationship between COVID vaccination rates and case mortality rates for the 10 county region. Counties with higher vaccination rates had lower case mortality rates.
Current Struggles
Anthony Fauci was the face of the public health response to the COVID pandemic in the U.S. His opponents imaginations ran wild with conspiracy theories about the virus. Normal evolutionary processes are the most likely explanation for the creation of the virus. Theories that some Chinese Dr. Frankenstein created it are unlikely.
We are now seeing an increase in measles rates due to lower vaccination rates in the Pennsylvania. In 2024 counties with lower white flu vaccination rates had higher percentages of the vote for Trump. Is this attack on Anthony Fauci and those who worked to end the pandemic a way to score political points in the upcoming midterms?