Fauci's "Five Stages Of A Pandemic" Are A Fiction To Everyone Except Anthony Fauci
Fauci's "Five Stages Of A Pandemic" Are A Fiction To Everyone Except Anthony Fauci
Public officials love the sound of their own voice—it probably qualifies as an occupational hazard.
However, the desire to talk does not eliminate the responsibility of being factual in one’s talking. Anthony “the science” Fauci appears to have forgotten this with his quaint but fictional articulation of “the five stages of a pandemic.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top medical adviser to President Biden, said this week that we are still in the first of five stages of the pandemic, and he cautioned against thinking we are further along than we actually are.
The first phase of the pandemic—or the “the truly pandemic,” according to Fauci—is “where the whole world is really very negatively impacted as we are right now,” he said Monday at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda online conference.
The following four steps are deceleration, control, elimination, and finally eradication.
There is just one problem with his description of pandemic stages: no other major public health official uses this model, or anything resembling it.
CDC — The Pandemic Interval Framework
The US Centers for Disease Control And Prevention (CDC) uses a six-stage model titled the “Pandemic Interval Framework” for handling infectious respiratory disease (chiefly influenza and influenza-like illnesses, which would include COVID-19). This framework actually dates back to pandemic planning at both the CDC and the WHO prior to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, and has been revised a few times since then, the most recent revision being in 2014.
Frameworks describing the progression of influenza pandemics have evolved over time. The 2005 WHO global pandemic plan introduced the concept of pandemic phases (8). Six phases were used to describe the evolving risk of efficient human-to-human transmission as a basis for defining a pandemic.
In November 2005, the president of the United States released a national strategy for pandemic influenza (9), and the associated implementation plan was released in May 2006 (10). These documents introduced the concept of using stages to determine the response to pandemic influenza, including stage 0 (new domestic animal outbreak in an at-risk country), stages 1–3 (human outbreaks suspected, confirmed, and widespread overseas), and stages 4–6 (first case in a human in North America, spread throughout the United States, and recovery and preparation for subsequent waves). The U.S. government stages provided greater specificity for U.S. preparedness and response efforts than the WHO phases and facilitated initial planning efforts by identifying objectives, actions, policy decisions, and message considerations for each stage. The stages provided a general overview of the approach to a pandemic response; however, detailed pandemic response planning requires a greater level of specificity to determine federal, state, and local response actions during the course of a pandemic. In addition, the stages framework presumed geographic spread from outside the United States into the United States. In 2007, CDC developed the CDC intervals, a common framework from which CDC and other federal, state, and local governments and agencies could plan and coordinate their pandemic response actions.
Currently, the CDC uses the following six pandemic intervals:
Note that “control”, “elimination”, and “eradication” are not among the listed intervals.
WHO — The Pandemic Phase Model
Unsurprisingly, the WHO has a similar model to the CDC’s Pandemic Intervals Framework—the WHO model is the original source for the PIF. The WHO Pandemic Phases model also has six main phases, but also attaches two more un-numbered phases: “Post Peak” and “Post Pandemic.”
Yet again, nowhere in the WHO model are the concepts of “control”, “elimination”, and “eradication” to be found.
The WHO also expands on the basic pandemic model to describe an ongoing continuum of disease surveillance and response, both during episodes of pandemic disease and in between those episodes.
As the continuum itself indicates, ideas of “control”, “elimination”, and “eradication” are not a part of the WHO’s planning taxonomy.
Academic Models
Outside of the public health bureaucracies, a number of public health academics and researchers utilize somewhat different models to chart the course of a pandemic. In 2020, for example, Dr. Gerald Parker, Director of the Pandemic and BioSecurity Policy Program at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, described the five stage model he uses to discuss public health responses to pandemic disease:
Containment
Mitigation
More Containment pre-vaccine
Vaccine
Pandemic Preparedness
Once again, “control”, “elimination”, and “eradication” are conspicuous by their absense.
Dr. Parker’s modeling is a reflection of his interest and research into weaponized pathogens and diseases. A quick survey of his publications via ResearchGate shows he has spent substantial time studying the impacts of weaponized pathogens such as anthrax, smallpox, and even botulinum toxin. A pandemic model focused on containment, mitigation, and vaccination is reflective of this orientation and provides a useful framework for discussing such research.
What Dr. Parker’s model shares with the CDC and WHO frameworks is that they all end with a forward view towards preparing for the next disease outbreak. Eradication is not the focus, rather it is having as many resources available for whatever Mother Nature throws at humanity next.
Fauci Fiction Is NOT Science
Frameworks and conceptual models are important analytical and communications tools, and are widely used even beyond healthcare.
Within Information Technology, for example, the seven-layer OSI model for networked systems has long been a mainstay of technical analysis and systems design. The technologies that power the modern Internet conform to the technical framework of the TCP/IP protocol suite, the foundation of which is found in a technical document known as RFC793, which was substantially updated in a subsequent technical document, RFC1122.
The accounting profession rests on a framework body of knowledge known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. One cannot aspire to becoming a CPA without having a thorough knowledge of these principles, and one cannot succeed in the profession without being fluent in these principles.
However, as these non-healthcare models and standards illustrate, the functional requirement for all such models is general acceptance by the relevant community.
The OSI model dates back to 1978, but it remains a relevant conceptual model because technologists at all levels reference it or outgrowths from it. The documents known as RFCs are undergoing constant revision and refinement, but always through a process of consensus.
GAAP is an even older body of knowledge, but it is maintained by a similar process of consensus via the professional accounting bodies such as the AICPA.
Fauci’s fictional five pandemic stages are the product of no such consensus—indeed of no apparent professional discussion whatsoever save within Anthony Fauci’s own mind. The fact that he places the world still at Phase 1 of his model prevents his model from having any relevance to the real world; there is no communicative benefit to such a framework, other than to continue to amplify the fear and paranoia that has characterized the pandemic panic narrative from the outset.
No matter how extensive Anthony Fauci’s resume might be, no matter how many credentials he might attach to his name, his own personal ponderings on pandemics are not in any way scientific; Anthony Fauci is not now and never has been “the science” of anything. A disease framework concocted by him alone provides no basis for either research or communication, and is therefore functionally worthless within public health.
Given that with the possible exception of smallpox, no disease has been fully controlled through vaccines or other public health measures, let alone eradicated (the US still has outbreaks of measles, and other countries still grapple with polio), Anthony Fauci’s final pandemic stages are little more than a quaint fiction with little or no connection to science in the real world.
Reality: Diseases Come And Go
The reality is that diseases, and infectious respiratory diseases such as COVID-19 in particular, come and go, with little heed to the planning and prognostications of the world’s public health experts. Planning did not prevent the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and has been an abysmal failure in regards to COVID-19, as both the harsh lockdowns and vaccines have done no good and demonstrably much harm.
In large measure, this is simply the order of things. This is the way of the natural world. It does not bow to human science, and it does not conform its behaviors to the cogitations of “experts”.
As Alex Berenson pithily and accurately quips, “virus gonna virus.”
Anthony “the science” Fauci can choose to pretend this is not the case. Reality will give his pretense no quarter—nor should it.