Washington The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program has published Spanish-language versions of its resources on COVID-19s impact on mental health and substance use.
Specifically, the tools focus on:
The resources include a PowerPoint presentation, a workplace solutions training tool and an activity worksheet.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that he never tried to squelch lab leak theories about the origins of the coronavirus, distanced himself from a senior adviser who bragged about defying transparency laws and rebuffed Republicans who said he should have spoken out against the 6-foot social distancing rule.
Dr. Fauci, the face of Americas response to COVID-19, admitted in public testimony to Congress that there was no basis for the 6-foot rule but said it wasnt his place to clear that up. He said that was a decision for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It was their decision to make and they made it, Dr. Fauci told a House subcommittee investigating the pandemic response.
In sometimes combative testimony, he said his success over decades leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was in laying the groundwork for the vaccines, which were developed unfathomably quickly and saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. and millions of lives worldwide.
He vigorously rejected the idea that American money his agency sent for bat research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology helped spawn the pandemic. Even if the virus came from a Chinese lab, he said, it couldnt be traced to U.S. money.
I keep an open mind as to what the origin is. But the one thing I know for sure is that the viruses that were funded by the NIH phylogenetically could not be the precursor to SARS-CoV-2, Dr. Fauci told lawmakers.
SEE ALSO: Fauci said it wasnt his job to stop unproved 6-foot rule during pandemic
In 2020, Dr. Fauci regularly downplayed the idea of a lab leak, indicating that it wasnt the scientific consensus. In one interview, he said the evidence strongly indicates that the virus evolved naturally and jumped to humans.
Another time, from the White House lectern, he cited a research paper that discounted any type of laboratory-based scenario.
He said Monday that the research paper resulted from an episode in early 2020 when some scientists suggested that the virus responsible for COVID-19 was manipulated in a lab. He then participated in a conference call with experts. After more work, the scientists concluded that the lab leak wasnt likely.
Now, several major U.S. agencies say the lab leak is the most likely explanation.
Dr. Fauci insisted Monday that he kept an open mind throughout the entire process.
In his most striking testimony, Dr. Fauci challenged his employee, Dr. David Morens, senior adviser to the director of NIAID, who said in emails that he had ways to sneak information to Dr. Fauci without worrying about Freedom of Information Act demands. In one email, Dr. Morens said, he had a back channel directly to Dr. Fauci.
SEE ALSO: MTG tells Fauci he should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity
I dont have any idea what hes talking about. There is no back channel at NIAID, Dr. Fauci testified.
He said Dr. Morens, with whom he co-authored scientific papers, was not part of his inner circle and did not have walk-in access.
Dr. Fauci was making what could be a legacy-shaping appearance before Congress. He retired from government in December 2022 after nearly 40 years running NIAID, shepherding the U.S. through HIV, the bird flu, Zika, Ebola and the coronavirus. COVID-19 and the use of government power to shut down schools and businesses and insist on vaccinations remain deeply controversial.
You became so powerful that any disagreements that the public had with you were censored on social and most legacy media, said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the Ohio Republican who leads the subcommittee. This is why Americans became so angry.
The social distancing rules were a major part of that.
Republicans blamed those rules for shuttering schools and businesses and said the effects still seep through society, with students struggling to make up for years of virtual learning.
Dr. Fauci recently said the 6-foot rule had no scientific basis but sort of just appeared.
He said the rule was developed during the early days when researchers thought the virus was chiefly transmitted by droplets. It later became clear that the virus was aerosolized, which undercut the idea behind the distance rule.
When I say was not based in science, I meant a prospective clinical trial to determine whether 6 foot was better than 3 was better than 10, Dr. Fauci said on Monday.
Rep. John Joyce, a Pennsylvania Republican and a physician, wondered why Dr. Fauci didnt speak up at the time. He said it fueled the fracture of trust in American scientists.
Dr. Fauci said it was the CDCs call and it wouldnt have been right to be publicly challenging the system.
He said the governments decision-making was necessary when as many as 5,000 Americans daily were dying and added that it does make sense now to ponder some of the non-public health consequences of the shutdowns.
Dr. Fauci said the trouble with tailoring mandates is that its not always clear who would benefit, and the dangers to some populations dont become clear until later.
He acknowledged the problems that resulted from vaccine mandates and the surge in hesitancy and said these issues need to be considered in decision-making.
We need to reevaluate the cost-benefit ratio of those types of things, he said.
Rep. Raul Ruiz of California, the top Democrat on the panel, said the hearing and questions about Dr. Fauci were intended to deflect anger away from President Trumps handling of the initial months of the pandemic.
Mr. Ruiz said Mr. Trumps behavior could be linked to as many as 400,000 unnecessary COVID-19 deaths.
He said Democrats are not afraid of following the facts and have been outraged by EcoHealth Alliance, the firm that broke federal rules by the way it handled taxpayer funding of the Wuhan lab and by Dr. Morens claims.
He said that shouldnt taint the broader efforts to combat the pandemic.
We are now faced with a crisis of confidence in the very science and public health interventions that lifted our society from one of the most challenging periods in our nations history, Mr. Ruiz said.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, said that skepticism should be blamed on Dr. Fauci. For most of her questioning, she refused to call him doctor.
Youre not doctor; youre Mr. Fauci, she said. That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.
She called for Congress to draw up criminal charges.
We should be recommending you to be prosecuted. We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, she said.
Democrats objected and demanded she be punished. Mr. Wenstrup, who was chairing the hearing, said no punishment was appropriate but directed Ms. Greene to recognize the doctor as a doctor.
Dr. Fauci told lawmakers he still receives death threats over his pandemic work.
Every time someone gets up and says Im responsible for deaths of people throughout the world, the death threats go up, he said.
He said its the sort of thing that will discourage prospective researchers from going into public health.
Were not getting the best people coming in because of their reluctance to put themselves and their families through what they see their colleagues going through, Dr. Fauci said.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
2024-06-03T10:37:07-04:00https://images.c-span.org/Files/9d4/002/1717425610_002.jpgDuring the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic examining the U.S. response to COVID-19, Dr, Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, delivered his opening testimony and addressed certain claims made about the COVID origins and his work.
During the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic examining the U.S. response to COVID-19, Dr, Anthony Fauci, the former dire read more
During the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic examining the U.S. response to COVID-19, Dr, Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, delivered his opening testimony and addressed certain claims made about the COVID origins and his work. close
Topline
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., refused to address Dr. Anthony Fauci as doctor and called for him to be jailed during an, at times, explosive hearing before Congress on the origins of Covid-19as Republicans continue to demonize the federal governments former top infectious disease expert in their probe into the governments response to the pandemic.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., holds up a picture of Anthony Fauci, former director of the ... [+] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, with his mask down, while questioning him during the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Coronavirus Pandemic hearing titled "A Hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci," in Rayburn building on Monday, June 3, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Greene told Fauci youre not a doctor, youre Mr. Fauci in my few minutes, adding that his medical license should be revoked and he should be in prison for crimes against humanity, citing mask mandates.
Greene delivered the attacks as she accused Fauci and government agencies of making up guidelines, like six-feet distancing and masking of children, questioning whether the American people deserve to be abused like that?
Officials like Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have recently acknowledged the six-foot social distancing recommendation was not based on medical data, with Fauci telling Congress in a closed-door interview in January the Centers for Disease Control made the recommendation as an empiric decision that wasnt based on data, according to a transcript of the interview released Friday.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, who is a podiatric doctor and chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, reprimanded Greene in response to the attack, instructing her to refer to Fauci as doctor and adhere by committee rules of decorum, to which she responded Im not addressing him as doctor.
Fauci voluntarily agreed to testify in the hearing, which marks his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since he left government in 2022.
Republicans have zeroed in on the notion that the virus causing Covid-19 originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, a theory Fauci and medical experts have said is unlikely, but not improbable. Republicans have accused Fauci of trying to downplay the lab leak theory because a nonprofit virus-hunting research organization, EcoHealth Alliance, received grants from the National Institute of Health and subcontracted with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Covid-19 wasnt created by bats in a wet market . . . it was manufactured in a lab funded by Fauci. He tried to cover it up, Greene said last year. Some of the research methods ostensibly used at the lab in Wuhan are controversial and considered risky, but no direct evidence has emerged linking that research to the coronavirus, and federal officials say the viruses studied by EcoHealth Alliance were genetically distinct from the virus that causes Covid-19. Republicans have also questioned whether Fauci flouted public records laws by sending emails from his personal account, pointing to an email one of his senior advisers, Dr. David Morens, sent to other scientists explaining that Fauci was aware of including sensitive information in emails that could be leaked, writing I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or his house. Fauci denied the accusation in his opening statement Monday, stating that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email.
Fauci said it was absolutely false and simply preposterous to accuse him of attempting to cover up the lab leak theory in his opening statement, in which he read an email he sent to another scientist detailing his instructions for an investigation into the theory. It is inconceivable that anyone who reads this email could conclude that I was trying to cover up the possibility of a lab leak. I have always kept an open mind to the different possibilities, Fauci told the committee.
The federal government suspended funding to EcoHealth Alliance last month after the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general released an audit alleging the NIH failed to properly monitor how the grant money was facilitating research at the lab in Wuhan.
Fauci: Trumps Covid-19 Response Very Likely Did Cost Lives (Forbes)
Heres What Dr. Fauci Has Said About Covids Origins And The Lab Leak Theory (Forbes)
Thats Nonsense: Fauci Responds To GOP Backlash Over His Emails On Covid Origin (Forbes)
The study,Relative efficacy of masks and respirators as source control for viral aerosol shedding from people infected with SARS-CoV-2, published May 29 in eBioMedicine, a Lancet journal.
The research shows that any mask is much better than no mask, and an N95 is significantly better than the other options. Thats the number one message, says the studys senior author,Dr. Donald Milton. Milton is a UMD SPH professor of environmental health and a global expert on how viruses spread through the air.
The study started in May 2020, shortly after the pandemic began, and compared breath samples from volunteers who had active COVID-19, testing the performance of four commonly-used masks. Even without giving participants fit tests or training on how to wear masks correctly, all masks significantly reduced the amount of virus escaping into the air. The study tested masks as a way to control the spread of the virus from the source, i.e. the infected person, and did not test masks as protection from COVID-19 in the surrounding air.
Because COVID-19 is airborne, we focused on the extent to which wearing a mask reduces contamination of the air around you, Milton says. This latest study is a continuation of investigations by UMDsPublic Health AeroBiology Lab(PHAB Lab) into how contagious respiratory viruses such as influenza contaminate the air.
Researchers asked volunteers with COVID-19 to breathe into a unique contraption known as the Gesundheit II Machine, developed by Milton and colleagues to measure viruses in exhaled breath. Participants, who breathed into the machine for 30 minutes at a time, were asked to do avariety of vocalizations such as repeating the alphabet, singing Happy Birthday, and evenhonoringUMDs mascotby repeatedly shouting Go Terps!
In each instance, researchers measured the amount of viral particles in the exhaled breath of volunteers, pairing each 30-minute session of breathing with a mask on with another 30-minute session with no mask.
Data from our study suggests that a mildly symptomatic person with COVID-19 who is not wearing a mask exhales a little over two infectious doses per hour, says first author Dr. Jianyu Lai, a postdoctoral researcher at the PHAB Lab. But when wearing an N95 mask, the risk goes down exponentially.
The duckbill N95 blocked 99% of large particles and 98% of small particles from escaping out of a persons mask. Milton says the designs tight seal, a powerful filter, and large air space for breath to move around all contribute to the duckbills success.
Surprisingly, KN95 masks the disposable masks used widely were no more effective than cloth or surgical masks. The study found that a common brand of KN95 masks leak more air than duckbills or other studied masks, because they dont conform to the face well. That flaw is compounded by a powerful filter with more flow resistance that pushes air out of the mask at the sides instead of through the filter, allowing more virus particles to escape into the surrounding air.
Cloth masks also outperformed both KN95 and surgical masks. Milton theorizes that cloth masks with greater coverage, wrap around the face and give a better seal than either KN95 or surgical masks. With cloth mask filters, flow resistance is also lower, allowing breath to pass through the filter and not leak out the sides of the mask.
Limiting the amount of viral particles in the air is a key way to control highly contagious respiratory viruses in general, Milton said. This is even more the case with the COVID-19 virus, given transmissibility has increased over time, with Omicron in particular breaking through the immunity people developed from vaccinations or prior infections.
Our research shows definitively why its so important to have non-pharmaceutical responses like wearing masks, and why we need studies like this to illuminate which masks are most effective, says Milton.
Both Milton and Lai hope that their findings will inform health policies going forward, including when combatting potential outbreaks like bird flu or even the common flu.
Duckbill N95 masks should be the standard of care in high-risk situations, such as nursing homes and health care settings, Lai says. Now, when the next outbreak of a severe respiratoryvirus occurs, we know exactly how to help control the spread, with this simple and inexpensivesolution.
In addition to researchers from the UMD School of Public Health, collaborators include authors from the UMD A. James Clark School of Engineering and the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control at the University of Hong Kong, China.
This research was supported by the Prometheus-UMD, sponsored by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (agreement N66001-18-2-4015), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (contract 12-HHSN272201400008C), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (contract 200-2020-09528); by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and by a gift from The Flu Lab.
## Media Contact - SPH Communications, sph-comm@umd.edu, 301-405-2438
Antony Fauci became the nation's most trusted expert in the chaotic early days of the 2020 outbreak.
Former US government scientist Anthony Fauci angrily denied covering up the origins of Covid-19 Monday in his first public congressional testimony since retiring as the face of the fight against the pandemic.
Fauci became the nation's most trusted expert in the chaotic early days of the 2020 outbreak, but his clashes with former president Donald Trump over the response sparked fury on the right, and he now lives with security protection following death threats against his family.
Republicans accuse the 83-year-old immunologist of helping to set off the worst pandemic in a century by approving funding passed on to Chinese scientists they accuse of manufacturing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
He was pressed by Republicans on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on his knowledge of "gain of function" research, which seeks to enhance viruses as a way of finding ways to combat them.
The controversial technique is at the center of a theory that the pandemic originated in a lab leak.
But Fauci said it would be "molecularly impossible" for the bat viruses studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to be turned into the virus that caused the pandemic.
And he dismissed as "absolutely false and simply preposterous" Republican claims that he influenced the CIA's analysis of whether the pandemic started naturally or escaped from the lab.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 38 years until he stepped down in December 2022, Fauci helped craft federal policy during an outbreak that killed 1.1 million Americans.
His regular TV appearances correcting Trump's misinformation about the pandemic earned him enemies among allies of the billionaire, who is bidding for a second term in November.
The panel has taken more than 100 hours of testimony and sifted through a mountain of documents in a 15-month investigation but has failed to turn up any evidence linking Fauci to potentially dangerous research in Wuhan.
The World Health Organization and scientists across the world have investigated the origins of the virus, most believing it to have spread from animals to humans in China.
A US intelligence analysis released last year said it was also possible that the virus was genetically engineered and escaped from the Wuhan lab.
Fauci told lawmakers it was "not a conspiracy theory" to discuss the merits of the lab leak theory.
"What is a conspiracy theory is the kind of distortions of that particular subject, like, it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak," he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Ive been dipping in and out of
Yes, dear friends, we are back with the LAB LEAK!!!!! And, of course, GAIN OF FUNCTION! Ranking member Dr. Raul Ruiz, Democrat of California, was quick to call bullshit, not that it mattered to the majority, which was cutting campaign commercials on the taxpayers dime.
So despite the clear evidence that Dr. Fauci and his agency did not fund gain of function research under the P3CO regulatory definition and that the virus studied under the federally funded grant EcoHealth Alliance Grant could not have been the progenitor virus for Sars-cov-2. Republicans have levied these unsubstantiated allegations knowing very well that they are not true. Theyve done so to push their extreme partisan narrative that Dr. Fauci and our nations public health officials caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
And Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) just couldnt resist.
See? That isnt hard. Hang all the blunders and stupidity around his neck, and never mention him without using the primary modifier Convicted Felon. And stick up for decent public servants into the bargain.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, was back before Congress on Monday.
Author: wfaa.com
Published: 4:32 PM CDT June 3, 2024
Updated: 4:32 PM CDT June 3, 2024
