What does it take to win the Rochelle Walensky Award? It takes a LOT. A lot of what? As Vinay Prasad explains, a lot of things like this:
When she was in Brookline, she advocated for school reopening, but when appointed by President Biden, who campaigned on the idea that schools were dangerous, she reversed that stance.
She met privately and discussed CDC guidance with the teachers unions.
She was dishonest about myocarditis. There is no way this was true by the end of April 2021.
The Israelis reported a rate of 1 in 3000 by February, and the EMA would soon confirm the safety signal.
Once she accepted myocarditis exists, she made no effort to lower it. No trials of spaced doses, lower or omitted doses.
She lied constantly about the evidence for masking. She lied to congress stating there was not equipoise for a trial testing if masking worked in children. This was clearly false given that the European CDC and CDC had divergent recommendations— and member states had a range of policies (e.g. Sweden never masked <12, US masked 2+). A divergence of practice is the definition of equipoise.
Walensky supported vaccine mandates, which were unethical, as COVID vaccines had never established a third party benefit.
Walensky pushed vaccines in people who had COVID— a strategy that may even be harmful.
Walensky pushed boosters in low risk populations, a decision that led to the resignation of Gruber/ Krause at FDA.
Walensky’s communication on TV was a constant mess of flip flopping and insecurity; she was a notoriously bad communicator. She even hired an outside consulting firm to help her communications, using taxpayer money.
As Prasad further explains, Anthony Fauci, for whom the award is named, got almost everything wrong, including this list (and there is a lot more that could have been on this list, including this and this and this and this.
Fauci was of course initially told the truth that multiple RCTs of community masking showed it didn’t help, then he lied about it. He never opposed masking 2 year olds.
He exaggerated the risk to kids. He opposed DeSantis in spring 2020 when DeSantis wanted to reopen schools.
Fauci was wrong about giving 2 doses to fewer people over 1 dose to more people.
Fauci was wrong to not meet with and discuss different ideas with the authors of Great Barrington Declaration.
Fauci was wrong about double masking.
Fauci was wrong about vaccine mandates and ignoring natural immunity.
Fauci was wrong about boosters for young people, vaccines for people who already had COVID.
Most notably, Fauci appears to have used Gmail to evade federal FOIA laws to conceal NIAID’s role in funding the laboratory in Wuhan to conduct gain of function research in sars-coronaviruses.
