Q&A: NIAID’s Jeanne Marrazzo speaks on bird flu, mpox, and succeeding Anthony Fauci
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An interview with the director of the NIAID, Jeanne Marrazzo, on bird flu, mpox, the post-Fauci era and more.

Jeanne Marrazzo, new leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, everyone:

Can I make a quick digression? We recently had a long Covid [research] meeting where we had about 200 people, in person. And we can’t mandate mask-wearing, because it’s federal property. But there was a fair amount of disturbance that we couldn’t, and people weren’t wearing masks, and one person accused us of committing a microaggression by not wearing masks.

And I take that very seriously. But I thought to myself, it’s more that people just want to live a normal life. We really don’t want to go back. It was so painful. We’re still all traumatized. Let’s be honest about that. None of us are over it.

So there’s not a lot of appetite for raising an alarm, especially if it could be perceived subsequently as a false alarm.

Edit - thanks for the help in bypassing the paywall.

  • barrbaric [he/him]M
    ·
    1 day ago

    Lib views are determined by a combination of what their authority figures say and what their peers say. If this comes up against a conflicting material reality, this may spark change, but this is unlikely, especially if that change would require the liberal to actually do anything, even something as trivial as wearing a mask. The authority figures and all of their peers are saying COVID is over, and so, in the mind of the plague rat liberal, it is over.

    Also, just curious if anyone else has had the same experience as me, but I'd never even heard of a "summer flu" until like 2023, and it's always just seemed like absolutely transparent cope about what is clearly COVID.

    • Ivysaur [she/her]
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      1 day ago

      It is incredible to me the mental gymnastics people will go to in order to forget not even a decade ago when people were by and large absolutely 100% not sick this often. This is what tells me they know what they’re doing. They understand what’s happening, but have chosen the comfortable(?) lie until the curtain falls. If you can remember your favorite old tv show, you can remember what life was like before now. It wasn’t this, and there is a very clear through-line of cause and effect.

    • NoLeftLeftWhereILive [none/use name, she/her]
      ·
      1 day ago

      Yeah no summer flu existed before. Or constant allergies. Or blood pressure meds for people in their 30s. Or Christmas flus for that matter.

      I also love the levels of splaining they will go to to prove their covid isn't covid. Educated adults who very well know you don't get sick from being cold straight up say things like "got the sniffles because I was out in the cold too long" and similar mental acrobatics. And the longcovid stuff is: aging (in people in their 30s), genes, stress, bad luck. It's never covid.