The Mistake Dr. Fauci Made
NOVEMBER 1, 2020
The mistake Dr. Fauci made is a common one PHYSICIANS i.e., medical doctors often make without even realizing it!
It is a mistake trial lawyers who sue doctors for their mistakes call … “the failure to obtain a surgical consultation in a timely manner.”
To appreciate Dr. Fauci’s mistake one must go back in time to the place when and where he made it and take a second look from the perspective of a person who has been in an operating room of a hospital before. Then Dr. Fauci's mistake will stick out “like a sore thumb” and become clear as crystal.
Dr. Fauci made his mistake when he made the decision to shut down the whole country and quarantine everyone except essential service personnel until he had “flattened the curve of the spreading coronavirus as indicated by “testing, testing, testing” … and until a cure or a vaccine had been developed.
The fact that a neither a reliable and fast test was available nor did a cure/vaccine exist at that time … did not faze him.
The place was the situation room in the White House.
To understand Dr. Fauci’s mistake, one must consider the White House Situation Room as an Operating Room in a hospital where President Trump was the CEO and the President.
The patient was “America.” Dr. Fauci was the Doctor in attendance. Dr. Adams, the Anesthesiologist, had just put the patient to sleep at Dr. Fauci’s request and President Trump had announced he was going to act upon Dr. Fauci’s recommendations, quarantine the whole country and shut everything down except essential services, speed up the development of a fast-enough test and a cure/vaccine for coronavirus.
What is missing from this picture?
Anyone who has been in an OR will know that by this time, a SURGEON would be in the room, chomping at the bit to start the operation ... but … in this case … there was no surgeon in sight!
If there was a surgeon in the room, as I know there was … he has fallen asleep … passed out overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem … was too “chicken” to belly up to the bar or intimidated by Dr. Fauci’s stature … or … he had some nefarious vested interest that prevented him from saying anything. Whatever the reason, the fact is ... that surgeon did not speak up.
Had Dr. Fauci consulted a surgeon with the courage of his convictions. Had the silent surgeon in the room found his voice and his surgical brain and spoken up. Had Dr. Fauci obtained a second opinion from even a third-world-country-surgeon practicing in the boondocks like myself. he would have been informed that the method REAL SURGEONS use to protect themselves and others 24/7 against unknown deadly infections and the irreversible damage death and destruction they could cause … is known as “universal precautions.” It is not “universal shut-down“ a concept that does not even exist in a surgeon's vocabulary.
The difference between Universal Precautions and Universal Shutdown is the fact that the former can accomplish at a moment’s notice, everything Dr. Fauci could not accomplish by Universal Shutdown in seven months and do it at no cost, without shutting down the country and without flattening its economy … and the coronavirus curve would have taken care of itself.
The first step of Universal Precautions consists of … CONSIDERING EVERYONE AS INFECTED AND EVERY SURFACE AS CONTAMINATED!
That eliminates the need for testing and its unreliability from decision-making processes. It eliminates the risk of considering an infected individual as uninfected and a contaminated surface as being clean. these are the two of the most deadly mistakes one could make that could lead to accidental new infections.
It eliminates the need for contact tracing that is very effective in dealing with infections spread by actual physical contact like AIDS and STD’s. The benefits of contact tracing in dealing with infections spread by droplets like coronavirus is associated with too many uncertainties that makes it an exercise in futility.
It maximizes the efficiency of infection control methods by focusing on the specific points at which infections occur and maximizing their efficiency at such points instead of wasting effort and resources in areas when there is nothing happening.
No, let us compare Dr. Fauci’s instructions for Universal Shutdown/Quarantine that is in effect now with recommendations of “Universal Precautions” that a surgeon would have advised had Dr. Fauci obtained a consultation in a timely manner BEFORE implementing his recommendations based on common sense and conventional wisdom of medical practice.
Dr. Fauci’s recommendations required everyone to do three things … practice socially distancing, use masks when in crowds and washing hands frequently.
The problem with Dr. Fauci’s recommendations is the fact that the physical control of infection is the domain of the surgeon. All procedures in surgery have one requirement for success. They must be executed with “surgical precision” for any of them to work. Failure to observe a single step of surgical protocol could result in an infection, failure of the procedure, and possibly the death of the patient from the simplest of operations.
Trainees are instructed in the methods and techniques. They observe others carry out the routines. Then, they practice those routines under the supervision and then only are they allowed to participate in any surgical procedure. If this protocol is not followed, the infection rate in surgery would be near 100% because bacteria and viruses are invisible and can cause infections at the speed of light with a single break in technique.
Therefore telling three hundred million people with no surgical background to carry out the first three steps surgeons were taught and trained to take to prevent infection BEFORE stepping into an operating room ... and expecting them to execute those steps effectively and prevent infection in themselves and those they care for … is a recipe for disaster if there ever was one.
From what has been said so far, it must be obvious that the REAL reasons why infection rates and death rates are spiraling out of control are ...
(i) Dr. Fauci did not inform all Americans about the steps they must take while using masks with the precision in technique needed to make them work
(ii) Dr. Fauci told people they ought to wash their hands frequently and how they must do it without telling them with surgical precision as to when they ought to wash their hands for handwashing to work. As a result, he has the country washing and sanitizing everything in sight hysterically all the time and not washing or sanitizing them when it matters the most.
(iii) Dr. Fauci recommended Universal Shutdown instead of Universal Precautions and made everyone stop doing the things they ought to be doing without initiating the process of doing any of the things they ought to be doing and most importantly without focusing efforts to the points where they had to be focus for their actions to be meaningful and effective i.e. on the vulnerable … for all their efforts to pay any dividends.
(iv) By quarantining the whole population, he prevented the development of herd immunity … Mother Nature’s way of vaccinating everyone for free at a cost of trillions of dollars and a lot more than that in human suffering.
Dr. Fauci's statement that herd immunity does not exist and that we must wait for a vaccine to be developed before resuming normalcy is oxymoronic because immunization is just an artificial way of creating herd immunity that occurs naturally.
The above statements must not be a reason to panic because that is where algorithms come into the picture and solve the seemingly insoluble problems enumerated above at the speed of light with mind-boggling unimaginable success.
Using algorithms is how Einstein accomplished all the seemingly impossible things he accomplished. In fact Einstein’ algorithm is the same as the one surgeons use to do everything they do. That is the algorithm Dr. Fauci should have used and we shall use now to determine what we must do to reverse the damage Dr. Fauci’s mistake has caused.
Algorithms are sets of steps that enable ordinary people with no special talent, education, skills, training, or experience to think like geniuses and act with surgical precision just by taking the steps of such algorithms.
The first requirement for using such algorithms is that one must be calm, cool and collected.
These steps will fail if taken hysterically.
Therefore, the first thing we must all do is to stop doing everything we are doing for a moment … long enough to take a long breath … hit the RESET buttons of our brains … think say and do the opposite of everything we have been thinking, saying and doing doing so far … to get back to square one.
Then, we must do everything we stopped doing i.e., everything common sense, conventional wisdom, and Dr. Fauci told us to do with the difference that we must do ALL of them with surgical precision and timing. We must do it as one smooth long step focused in time and place and to people … not haphazardly as we have been doing using Dr. Fauci’s medical algorithm.
That is what the algorithm surgeons use to prevent infections would have required Dr. Fauci to tell us do … that is also what Einstein would have told us to do if he were alive today … because the algorithm Einstein used to do everything was the same as the one surgeons use. This is so because surgeons and all super-successful people were inspired to develop their algorithms by Einstein’s Algorithm that has effectively become the mother of all super-successful algorithms!
Here is the list of things Dr. Fauci or the mute surgeon who was in the room when he Dr. Fauci made his initial recommendations should have clarified about those recommendations;
1. SOCIAL DISTANCING. Society works by bringing people close together so that they can work together and do the things that need to be done.
Social distancing disrupts and disables that concept when we need to use it the most.
It will paralyze surgeons, surgery and everything else. It is no better than stopping to breathe to prevent coronavirus from gaining entry into our nostrils … it will kill us before the virus does!
Surgeons practice social distancing by using Personal Protective gear (PPG) that begins with handwashing and wearing masks and progresses to wearing gloves, gowns and hazmat suits as dictated by circumstances … not every time and certainly not hysterically.
2. HANDWASHING. Universal precautions require everyone to wash/sanitize hands before touching any of the points of entry through which viruses and bacteria gain entry into the human body … the face (nose, mouth, eyes) open wounds and food … not at arbitrary predetermined intervals.
Dr. Fauci has done a good job of telling everyone how to wash ones hands and therefore I shall not repeat that. All I shall say is the everyone must wash ones hand before picking ones nose, rubbing ones eyes, and/or eating. One must do the same before touching or caring for a susceptible person who needs to be quarantined.
3. ON THE USAGE OF MASKS. Universal precautions require everyone to wear masks. For masks to prevent infections instead of spreading them, one must use them with a surgical level of attention to detail. Those details revolve around the following concepts.
i. Everyone must wear an ordinary, clean, reusable cloth mask to protect oneself and others from bacteria and viruses contained in droplets whenever there is anyone within six feet of oneself. Masks cannot keep every bug out. The few that get past masks help establish immunity and are therefore actually beneficial.
ii. Everyone must be informed that wearing masks is the most practical method of social distancing. Therefore, they must be worn whenever there is anyone within six feet except when one is at home and there are no vulnerable people around. Everyone who is symptomatic must wear masks as long as they are symptomatic except while alone and while eating.
iii. Everyone must be warned that improper use of the masks and hand hygiene negates their benefits. They will cause spread of existing infections instead of preventing the original infection from spreading.
iv. Everyone must be informed that proper use of masks involves never touching the outside of the mask once it is on because it becomes one of the dirtiest places on ones body. One must not take it off once it is in place as there is no safe place to put it down. If one must move it for example to eat, one must move it up over ones forehead or down below the chin. It must be moved back when done by holding it by its edges and corners and repositioned. When one gets home, one must remove it by its edges, sanitize/wash it and wash ones hands and face with soap and water before one touches anything or does anything else.
v. Everyone must be warned that removing ones mask, crumpling it and putting it in ones pocket or handbag guarantees spread of the invisible virus everywhere and eventually to ones nose, eyes, mouth, clothes, and to everything, everyone and everywhere else one touches. It could make anyone and everyone who breaks this technique a super-spreader.
IMPROPER USAGE OF MASKS, IMPROPER HAND-WASHING WITH REGARD TO TIMING AND TECHNIQUE AND INAPPROPRIATE FACIAL CONTACT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE AVOIDABLE SPREAD OF THE VIRUS raging all over the country and in the world at this time.
This is something universal education can solve easily and all governments must undertake it ASAP.
vi. Universal precautions requires everyone to know that invisible enemies when present, strike at the speed of light the moment breach of technique occurs. A single breach is all it takes to enable an instantaneous potentially deadly infection to occur. If you do not believe me, ask the nurse who contracted Ebola despite wearing a hazmat suit. Therefore, everyone must be instructed to wash hands AFTER removing PPG Personal Protective Gear like masks, cloves, hazmat suits immediately after removing them
vii. Everyone must become aware of the danger of using PPG’s ... the fact that it gives people a false sense of security that makes them abandon basic precautions.
PPG augments the effectiveness of fundamental methods. They do nor replace them. Ignorance of this fact could make the use of PPG more dangerous than not using PPG. PPG works only if one continues to follow fundamental rules of infection control with perfection while wearing them. PPG will not work if the brains of people using it has not been programmed to think efficiently while doing everything.
Dr. Fauci’s statement that “Testing, testing, testing is everything in infection control” is not true. he should have said it is “Thinking, thinking, and thinking," that accomplishes infection control every time we succeed at doing it.
The most effective PPG is not what we wear … it is what we carry around inside our heads … our brains. Use of PPG is no substitute to using ones brain. If one uses ones brain, one could control infection without PPG! Using PPG without knowing how to use it is as bad as if not worse than not using it. Therefore, PPG must be used while following the simplest rule surgeons use to prevent infections at the points of contact. According to that principle ... "the clean and the unclean must never touch." If they touch, immediate decontamination must occur by washing, sanitizing and restoration of protocol.
In this blog, I defined the mistake Dr. Fauci made and discussed how we could reverse the damage it has caused. In my next blog, I shall enumerate the things he did not tell us and the disastrous effects these omissions have caused and how we could reverse them too.
Ajitkumar Trivikram, MS, MD. FACS, FICS.
Retired Surgeon
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