The demonization of Dr. Fauci is just one sign of this insanity

CNN

If we needed more proof of the magnitude of the threat posed by anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theorists and irresponsible public figures, look no further than the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. As long as large segments of the world’s population remain unvaccinated, the virus survives, mutating into new forms, disrupting our lives and adding to the toll of disease and death. 

Every time a Fox News personality, a politician or a social media influencer promotes false ideas about the vaccine or disparages the scientists battling the pandemic, they are not only making those who listen more likely to contract the coronavirus, they are also adding to our own seemingly endless pandemic plight.

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa, though we still don’t know exactly how or where it first developed. Perhaps it wouldn’t have appeared if more vaccines had been readily available, but that’s likely not the whole story.

There’s no question we need to get more vaccines to poorer countries. But it’s also true that in South Africa, lack of vaccines is not an issue. The issue, at least in part, is skepticism about the safety of the vaccine and the seriousness of the virus stoked by conspiracy theorists and their echo chamber.

Days before the news on Omicron last week, South African authorities told Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson to delay a planned shipment of vaccines because they were overstocked with unused shots, even though fewer than a third of the population was inoculated. The problem, officials say, is vaccine hesitancy.

Like people around the world, South Africans are hearing the toxic message, often emanating from the United States, that they should refuse the shot. That’s what one South African scientist discovered when her mother forwarded to her a video making outlandish claims about the vaccine, which her prayer group had found on Facebook. It came from the same osteopath whose ideas seem to get more bizarre by the day, now including a claim that the vaccine contains a “deadly parasite” that creates “neural networks” in the vaccinated, which can “influence their thoughts and actions.”

The outrageousness of the claims is escalating, most shockingly on Fox News, which has become a purveyor not just of deranged ideas but of its most offensive variants.

It’s hard to top the once-respected Lara Logan, the South African reporter who left “60 Minutes” in disgrace and joined Fox News shortly after. During an appearance on Fox News Primetime on Monday, Logan equated Dr. Anthony Fauci — the top infectious diseases doctor in the United States and one of the world’s most respected scientists — with none other than Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor known as the “Angel of Death” for performing brutally cruel experiments on concentration camp prisoners during World War II. It’s hard to imagine that the madness, the smears and the assault on science could become much worse, but even harder to believe they won’t.

Logan’s words resonated around the world, provoking a furious reaction. The Auschwitz Museum in Poland, on the site where Nazis murdered more than 1 million human beings, mostly Jews, rebuked Logan, noting that “exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving lives is shameful.” It called it, “a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.” The American Jewish Committee demanded an apology.

But Logan is hardly alone among Fox personalities and GOP politicians in promoting falsehoods and false equivalencies.

From the start of the pandemic, Republicans have turned Covid-19 into a political football. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz famously and wrongfully predicted that if Joe Biden became president, Democrats would immediately declare “everything’s magically better” with the pandemic.

The rest is here: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/opinions/vaccine-misinformation-fox-news-fauci-ghitis/index.html