America's Talking - Fauci Takes Heat After Casting Doubt on Efficacy of COVID Vaccines

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Join The Center Square’s Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss Dr. Anthony Fauci taking criticism after his recently published paper cast doubt on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. The federal government released its latest inflation data Tuesday, drawing fresh fire for President Joe Biden as the cost of living continues to rise. President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Internal Revenue Service took a slew of tough questions from lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday as the agency he seeks to lead faces a series of controversies. --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everyone and welcome to the American Focus podcast powered by the Center Square. America and Focus is a production of America's talking network. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. How's the baby boy doing? He is doing great. He's sleeping some and he's eating a lot. lot, which is what they're supposed to do.

Are you sleeping at all? All day. Sometimes I wonder. I tell you that. Oh, yeah. You think I'm joking. Oh, my guess. Whatever.

Well, let's get into it. We are recording this on Thursday, February 16th, this week. You wrote a story this morning, Casey, about Dr. Anthony Fauci, who sort of led the health agencies nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic, pushed for the COVID-19 vaccines for everybody to get vaccinated, even pushed for vaccine mandates in certain industries. Well, he left the federal government's employee after decades, essentially an entire career, working for the federal government. Shortly after he did that, he co-authored a piece where he called into question on the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. And now he's taking a lot of heat

for that. This is a really interesting story. I've tried to be pretty unbiased on Fauci. I understand And White's taking a lot of fire over, you know, last couple of years. I've tried to not just dogpile him too much, but this, you know, and try to remain unbiased as we always do. But this story was really caught our attention. So as you said, Fauci almost immediately upon leaving his position of the federal government, wrote this paper admitting that the vaccination for things like COVID-19 was very difficult. And, you know, this is me of reading between lines a little bit.

But basically it's very hard on nearly impossible to have these vaccines be effective long term. And we've kind of always known that. So when you're reading this, you're like, wait, wait a minute. You know, this is the guy who's been telling us for a couple of years now alongside other, other, you know, officials in the Biden administration that you have to get vaccinated, you know, and that if you don't get vaccinated, you know, the question, do you love your country? Do you love others? people who aren't vaccinated have been called all kinds of names, have been called selfish. They've lost their jobs.

We've written about Navy SEALs who lost their jobs. A lot of people have been discharged from the military over this. And now they've changed that rule about discharging people, but those who were discharged were not allowed back in the military. Their careers were over, especially these, you know, Navy SEAL as a career guy, you know. There's been a lot of consequences for people who didn't take the vaccine. And of course, sorry to interrupt, but yeah. No, go ahead. But governors across the United States, particularly in blue states, took Fauci's and the federal health

agencies' recommendations and instituted in their own states various vaccine mandates. The state of Washington, if you work for the state of Washington, if you work for the Seattle government, you had to have a vaccine if you wanted to keep your job. untolds lost their jobs because of this. And I pointed out the state of Washington, but it happened in dates across the country. Fauci has really been the high priest of this vaccine dogma and COVID restriction doctrine.

I mean, there's been a very zealous movement in the U.S. partially political, but it's not just political, to pressure people to get vaccinated, all kinds of different laws, as you point out. People losing their jobs, as I was saying earlier. And one of the main drivers, if not the main driver, has been on Dr. Fauci. Anyone who questioned him, you know, it was brought up that they weren't a doctor.

Of course, Biden was right there with him, pointing to Fauci's comments. People may not have noticed this, but, you know, I monitor a lot of media. It's a big part of what I do, Dan. I'm not actually sleeping, you know, spending at least a couple hours on Twitter every day, I feel like just keeping up with things. And especially over the last couple years, Fauci has done, I don't know, I should have looked up the total, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's in the triple digits on the number of media appearances that he did during the pandemic to tell people they have to get vaccinated.

I actually got to, you know, meet Dr. Fauci a couple years ago in an interview for a different outlet. And he was talking about the need to get vaccinated, right? So this has been his big message. And so to come out later and say, hey, these things, you know, not as effective as we thought. The biggest problem is the kind of the suggestion that this isn't a new development. It's something we've kind of already known for a while now that it's really hard. That's the the biggest thing. That's what I was going to say. It's not like a light bulb went off when he left employment with the federal government. This has been known for quite a while. Yet the federal government, the Biden administration, governors across the state kept pushing these of the vaccine

mandates. And now all of a sudden he decides to admit that, hey, they're not all that effective after he leaves. It's not a light bulb thing. And the paper makes that clear. It's a really long, you know, medical journal. I can read, let me read this quote. from Fauci's paper. Taking all of these factors into account, talking about the difficulty with these vaccines, it is not surprising that none of the predominantly mucosal respiratory viruses have ever been effectively controlled by vaccines.

That includes like COVID and other kinds, like the flu. This observation raises a question of fundamental importance. If natural mucosal respiratory virus infections do not elicit complete and long-term protective immunity against reinfection, how can we expect vaccines, especially systemically administered non-replicating vaccines, to do so? This is a major challenge for future vaccine development and overcoming it is critical as we work to develop next generation vaccines. Casey, what does mucosal mean?

Mucosal is like affecting the nose, mouth, eyes, mucus membrane areas like that. Okay. So it's like a respiratory thing. Yeah. But, you know, that paragraph I just read to you from Fauci's article, that's the kind of thing that could have got you flagged for misinformation on Twitter, you know, in the last couple of years. So to hear it coming from Fauci, who's been the face of almighty science over the last 18 months, two years. Great.

It's, you know, a reason, yeah, through Wild 3 is the reason why this article is getting a lot of attention on the Soonersquare.com. And he's taking a lot of heat, heat for saying it. And deservedly so. Just touching on that Twitter angle, you're absolutely right. people who were questioning the efficacy of the vaccine in the early days, they were. They were banned from Twitter as being spreaders of disinformation, potential dangerous, potentially dangerous to other people's health. This is just, this is incredible.

Yeah, and I know we probably have to move on, but I think to me, the takeaway here is not a political takeaway, and it's really not an attack on Fauci. It's, hey, we can't silence debate. We can't censor people, even when it's a scientific, you know, debate. maybe the science seems to be favoring one side more than the other because the science changes. And people change their opinions. More research comes out. And so we can't shut down these conversations like we did on the vaccine and like we tried to do on COVID.

Because over time, it's just been proven that a lot of times the people who were shut down actually were making some decent points. Since you want to move on, Casey, we'll move on. I think we could spend the entire American focus podcast on this topic, but you obviously don't want to. So a recurring topic over the past year and a half, two years has been of inflation, of course. It looked like it was subsiding at least a little bit in recent months, but new data released this week shows that it's ignited again. What's going on? Yeah, one more thing about this Fauci story. I'm just kidding.

No, you're right. This inflation is something we've been covering a lot, and I think we've done a good job. Thanks for saying that, Dan, offline about how good a job. we've been doing. But the latest in federal inflation data came out. Now, to set the stage for this a little bit, you may remember that last month, the consumer price index, which of course tracks the prices of consumer goods, and it's a marker for inflation overall, it actually decreased 0.1% in December, which was a big deal. It was a sign, hey, inflation actually went down. That's pretty amazing. It's much better than where it's been. But a couple of things happened.

And one, they revised the December inflation numbers where inflation actually went up 0.1%. Now, it's only a 0.2% change, but it is kind of, I think, a more, it went from a moral victory to not being a moral victory because it didn't go down anymore. It just increased more slowly. And then we saw in this latest data that the consumer price index rose 0.5% in January, which is actually pretty high. It's not as high as, you know, we were seeing over 1% at more of the height of. of when inflation was spiking in the last 24 months or so.

But 0.5% is still high. And the way you think about it is, you know, 2 to 3% inflation is like a good goal. 2% inflation annually is what economists say is a good goal. So if you're getting 0.5% in January, you know, if you do that, I know this math might be overwhelming, Dan, but 0.5% over 12 months will be like 6% increase, which is three times what economists say inflation should be.

So, you know, I think this is a story that we took a good angle on. A lot of the mainstream media just heralded this as a sign that everything is getting better. And it is, inflation is rising less quickly than it was before. But we're still, you know, three times where we should be. So it's not, I wouldn't call us a victory at all. And it's higher than the previous month. So the last 12 months, inflation has risen 6.4%. I think the reason I'm also not spiking the football on this as, hey, we beat the inflation problem.

as some other media odds are doing are for two reasons. One, gas prices are going to start going up heading into the middle of this year. I really think that's going to happen. And two, the Federal Reserve is still raising interest rates. They're expected to raise multiple times later this year. So the Fed clearly doesn't think we're out of the woods yet. So I think it's premature to say, hey, we beat this inflation thing. I was getting ready to correct you on your math there, Casey.

But you got it right. But you know, as they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while. That's, yeah, I think I may have heard that one or two thousand times over the course of my. I don't know. That's probably a poor reflection on me, though. This is the podcast from hell, I think. We're both in some kind of a mood. Let's move on this week.

President Biden's nominee to lead the Internal Revenue Service, face to hearing of the Senate Finance Committee that you cover. He got some pretty tough questions there. Tell us about that. Yeah, I mean, this is maybe the, maybe the, the job that nobody should want. The IRS has been having a really hard time since Biden took over. It all began when the, you know, you probably remember the COVID relief checks went out. And, you know, those were a little controversial, but a lot of people were happy to receive a check from the federal government. But the IRS is the one who handled that. And it was a big undertaking.

It was a first time. There was a lot of, you know, software, a lot of work that went into distributing those checks. And what it led to was major IRS backlogs. So we're talking, you know, millions, there's like tens of millions of returns and millions of pieces of correspondence that did not get dealt with and it was just left in the IRS offices as these piled up. And of course, there's more checks came. So it created a big problem for the IRS. Now, since then, they have made progress in dealing with that backlog, but they're not, they're definitely not out of the woods yet by any means. So whoever gets this job is going to have to deal with that backlog. But maybe the more politically charged question is something we've talked about a lot on this podcast,

which is $80 billion from Joe Biden and the Inflation Reduction Act to hire tens of thousands of new IRS agents to audit Americans, right? And Biden has made really clear, this isn't a political point, he's made really clear that increasing auditing will increase revenue. And that's his way of generating more revenue to pay for the Inflation Reduction Act and other things without having to raise taxes. because he's committed to not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000, right? But he's just going to audit them more.

And I'm not sure if that's better because it's definitely going to hit people making less than $400 grand. I mean, we talked about, we can talk more in a second, but Biden has made clear he's going to crack down on waiters and waitresses. So this guy who's trying to lead the IRS, he's taking questions about these backlogs. His name is Daniel Werfel. He actually was a former IRS commissioner. He's got questions about this new army of IRS agents. We probably won't even get in too much to this, but there was millions of documents at the IRS that were just destroyed.

And there was a whole IG investigation or questions about why this happened. That's really gone unanswered. And not to mention, you probably remember, but remember back when we were talking about the IRS monitoring, $600 transactions? Yes. And what a big scandal. That hasn't gone away. It's just kind of been put into limbo right now,

but that has not gone away. gone away at all. All Americans, if anyone American who made a single $600 transfer of funds was going to be monitored. Let's talk about this waitress and waiter thing. The IRS is going after unreported tips for waiters and waitresses. Yeah, I mean, it's in some ways it's as simple as it sounds, but it's kind of an amazing story. And Biden's taking a lot of fire for it. Basically, the IRS is working with employers and trying to create incentives for them to crack down on employees reporting their tips. I don't know if you ever waited a table stand, but I did wait tables for a while. And you have a lot of leeway in what you report as your tips, especially cash tips.

You know, I definitely, I mean, I always reported my tips, but I definitely work with people. If they got a 20% tip, they would only report they got a 15% tip and keep the difference because whatever you report, you have to pay taxes on. But so if somebody leaves, you know, let's say, you know, somebody leaves $25 in cash on the table, you just put five in your pocket, and you put the $20 in another pocket, and then you can just report the $20, but you don't pay taxes on the five. So, you know, it's, and of course, waiters and waitresses aren't the wealthiest Americans. They aren't the wealthy who aren't paying their fair share that Biden has talked so much about. So I think that's why all this IRS stuff, the auditing, going after waiters and waitresses,

I think it's a little political dicey, politically dicey for him. I don't know what you think, Dan, but that is something people like the idea of more IRS audits. I don't think so, Casey, but one question for you. Did you ever think about going back to your own line of work? Oh, wow. Yeah, maybe it is the podcast from hell. I don't know. I think it is for both of us.

Why don't we move along, trudge through this? immigration, of course, is soared under President Biden. Republicans say he's had open border policies. We've seen well over three million illegal border crossings since he's taken office. There was a new poll out this week that you covered that says Americans are kind of getting sick of all these, the flood of people crossing the border. Tell us about this. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, we've seen a pretty significant change in.

Americans' opinions on immigration that corresponds with, as you said, record increases and record levels of illegal immigration. I mean, we've talked about that a lot. The podcast, we're getting to the point now where it's millions of Americans coming of millions of people coming into America illegally via the southern border. And, you know, we've had great reporting on our site from Bethany Blankly about how many people have been let in. But actually, we don't really know how many people get in illegally.

We know how many people that Border Patrol encounters and how many people get away. But, you know, if 100 people cross the Texas border today and no Border Patrol spots them, they're not counted in the statistics, right? They're not counted in these numbers we are always right about. So even as high as these numbers of illegal immigration are, they're still not fully capturing the whole picture. And I think, so anyway, but they are really high. And it's been going on for a while now. We're seeing, you know, a lot of Texas counties declare an invasion.

We saw El Paso declare a state of emergency because they have so many people coming in that they can't handle people who are sleeping on the streets. It's overwhelming their town. So this is getting more and more media attention. I think that's contributing to this change, which is a 6% or 6% drop in American satisfaction with current immigration level. So only 28% of Americans are satisfied with immigration in the U.S. right now, which is pretty significant because Gallup does these polls. over long periods of time to see how Americans, you know, as a population, feel about immigration. And even as you could argue that Americans' feelings on some of these issues have become more liberal politically, we've still seen this souring. And as Gallup says, it's the lowest reading in a decade.

So the lowest percentage of Americans in a decade are, you know, happy with where immigration is. And, you know, you could say, oh, well, maybe they want more immigration. And just assure you it's not people who want more immigration. It's almost entirely people who say they want less. Yeah, you referenced our border correspondent, Bethany Blankley, who does outstanding work on the influx of illegal immigration at the Southern border. She had a couple of stories this week with that I'll just very briefly touch on. One during a house hearing near the border this week. one Texas County Sheriff testified how they've found bodies because it's dangerous.

When you're crossing the border in the spring and the summer months, it's, you know, 100 degrees. You're traveling very long distances, sometimes without enough food and water. Sometimes you've got human traffickers who only want, you know, payments from these immigrants, don't care about the human life, the immigrants themselves, how they found hundreds and hundreds of bodies over the past. few years in a very rural era of Texas trying to cross the border illegally. And then in a second story that she filed this week, Texas Sheriff's Department's under Operation Lodestar, which is Texas Governor Abbott's response to President Biden's border policies, they've been trying to

enforce U.S. immigration law. They interdicted several human traffickers trying to get get people illegally into the country. And they find stacks of people like in trunks or in beds of trucks piled on top of each other. In one case, they found a five-year-old girl in the trunk of a car. So this is dangerous stuff. And it's a humanity crisis in addition to being an immigration crisis for the United States. Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I mean, it's a big part of that is because the cartels are so heavily involved in this. This isn't like the U.S. and Mexican government working peacefully together. I mean, it's really messy. There's coyotes, as you said. You don't know which coyotes are working for who, how trustworthy they are. The cartels are using, taking advantage of this big time to smuggle things in the U.S., most notoriously, fentanyl, which has become a huge crisis in the U.S. So, but setting aside even the fentanyl imports, which have been a real problem, you're right.

People are dying. And it's not just, it's not a safe journey. So, and probably another reason for this souring is politically there's been really no substantive improvements. You know, I mean, can you remember, Trump ran on doing the border wall, but he didn't really get it done in a substantive way that he had promised. So can you remember the last time a meaningful immigration bill was passed and enacted that actually helped this problem? Yeah, no, it's been an ongoing problem that's only grown under the Biden administration. Casey, we have time, just a brief, maybe a minute for one. One final story.

It is 2023. There is another presidential election, about a year and a half, a little over a year and a half away. We have a new candidate jumping in on the Republican side. What happened? Yeah, about a minute. It's okay. I think that might be how long this candidacy lasts. I don't know.

I'm a little pessimistic on this, but there's Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor. She was a cabinet member for former president Donald Trump. announced she is running for president, right? She's the first to announce. She was an ambassador to the United Nations for Trump, as they said. She put a video on Twitter talking about her campaign. She talked a lot about, you know, racial issues, but with a little bit more of a unifying message, I think.

She took shots at, you know, the radical left, you know, as she refers to it. And so it'll be interesting to see this campaign play out. I think Haley is a decent candidate. The reason I have more pessimistic on it, is. It's just because I think this is going to be the Donald Trump and Florida governor, Ron DeSantis show all the way. And so it's going to be hard to get any attention. But Haley could squeak, you know, create a niche for herself where she could end up being a vice presidential candidate. We'll just have to see.

Can't believe we're talking about presidential election policy already, but it never ends, I guess. Casey, that is all the time we have this week. Reminder to our listeners, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast. at Americastalking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America

and Focus podcast for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McAlo. We'll try to do better next week.