I haven’t thought about Yogi Berra in years and then I read Celia Farber’s reissued book Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS andYogi’s famous saying came to mind.
Why the famous saying? I briefly worked as a contracted Marketing Director for my former boss who was running an HMO. Since I was in a financial dilemma, I took the job and told myself that maybe I could make a difference to the health plan’s members and my staff. Instead it was one more trip down a rabbit hole.
Two strong winds blew through my time in Florida. In reverse order: in 1992 Hurricane Andrew had me hunkered down for hours in my walk-in closet, to the sound of a train roaring overhead followed by typhoon-like rain. Andrew caused incredible damage and injuries in his path, but nothing like my other experience. That was working in healthcare during the time of what became known as the AIDS crisis.
Part One – Déjà vu
Helping out after Andrew brought me in contact with a hospital chaplain and AIDS hospice volunteer Rev. Robert Duncan. We met and became friends while creating a food, clothing, and household goods bank for hurricane victims set up in his hospital. During one of our many healthcare conversations he brought up the subject of AIDS. “My anger is with Dr. Anthony Fauci, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” Robert said. “He wrote an article in JAMA and then went on ABC news and said that anyone could perhaps get AIDS—anyone. Many parents missed the word perhaps, and it caused them to shun gay men in their families. People were scared of getting AIDS from public toilet seats, sharing dining or cooking facilities, or sitting near a gay person on a bus. Fauci made the life of gay men even harder by losing the love and support of family and friends. And despite later backtracking his pronouncement, the public still believed him.”
Farber’s heavily researched book describes how In 1987, a highly respected virologist, Peter Duesberg, discovered that HIV didn’t always cause or precede AIDS. His research was significant in that the drug, AZT, was quickly becoming the only approved treatment for both conditions. Duesberg’s heterodox findings cost him access to research funding and speaking at international conferences, thanks to Anthony Fauci.
Forgotten is how Fauci continued to enforce a single treatment, AZT, an abandoned toxic cancer drug. Fauci and his team of hand-picked scientists at the National Institutes of Health raced to develop a vaccine with Burroughs Wellcome & Co. Trials of AZT were quietly abandoned due to the deaths of participants; actual data, while promised, was never released; and early concerns of long-term side effects were ignored.
That same year, the Food and Drug Administration approved AZT, claiming the benefits outweighed the risks. Fauci insisted on AZT for both HIV and AIDS patients with side effects including bone-marrow suppression, anemia, tremors, and loss of mental acuity. The fact that AZT alone rarely prolonged life wasn’t mentioned; dissenting scientists were discredited, and many had their research careers and further funding destroyed.
AIDS patients understandably put pressure on doctors to prescribe AZT due to the claims made for its effectiveness. The gay community held symbolic “die-ins” at the FDA headquarters (above), demanding quick approval of new drugs. As a result, the search for lower risk, promising drugs already in use for other diseases created the famous “buyers’ clubs.” Many doctors quietly prescribed Bactrim and other sulfa drugs to prevent PCP, the pneumonia that was at the time, the leading killer of people diagnosed with AIDS. Meanwhile, Burroughs Wellcome stock soared with an AZT price tag of $8,000 per patient, per year.
In 1989, the FDA announced that 1.4 million healthy Americans, plus patients in other countries who had the HIV antibody, could “benefit” from taking AZT, even those without symptoms of the disease. Fauci’s rationale was that “eventually all HIV-positive people will need to take AZT so they don’t die.” However, it’s estimated that 330,000 patients did perish from taking AZT.
Part Two – All Over Again
Even though we’ve somewhat memory-holed the AIDS crisis, you can’t read Celia Farber’s book and not think of the Covid-19 pandemic that we have lived through. And once again, who was at the heart of things? Dr. Anthony Fauci. Here are just a few similarities that made me choose the title of this post:
- Like AZT, the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines were the only drug available from the government, were effective for a few months, and then required boosters.
- The mandates initially included a list of directives that were later proven to be of no impact: You can still find Fauci’s six-feet apart circles in grocery stores; he simply made that up. Wearing masks outdoors and wiping down groceries proved pointless. Many of the PCP tests were found to render false positives so that a self-diagnosis was problematic.
- Like Duesberg and others, the price dissenters such as doctors, virologists, and researchers paid was censoring, defunding, and destroying their careers.
- Families and friendships were broken and communities, schools, churches, were reduced to vaxed/un-vaxed factions like the gay population experience.
- Fauci made a bundle along with others who invested in a sure thing – the vaccine and mandates. Many, like Bill Gates, dumped their stock just before increasing vaccine hesitancy questioned just how “safe and effective” the vaccine and boosters really were.
- During the pandemic, the Biden administration, HHS, the CDC, and the AMA denounced the use of any drug, even Vitamin D, and especially Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. A second alternative drug “buyers’ club” was created and remains in force in many states.
- Like the AIDS epidemic, the public’s trust in medical providers, hospitals, and government information was shattered.
First published in 2006, Farber added an Afterword in 2023. She wrote, “Put Anthony Fauci’s name into a Twitter search and you will find a new narrative taking shape: Fauci has too many lawsuits against him to list – for everything from lying to Congress to funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan; torturing dogs; destroying America with lockdowns; and killing an untold number of Americans, including children, with untested, dangerous vaccines.” It’s not clear whether President Biden’s Autopen will provide the kind of immunity from prosecution going back to 2014 that Fauci would like to enjoy in his retirement.
I just learned of the new website that the Trump administration has developed for anyone looking for the latest information on the Covid pandemic. Just go to www.covid.gov and scroll through the history of our experience, remembering the loss of family, jobs, education, small businesses, and most important – trust in government and in our own decision-making.