KaneokaTheGreat | 17 January 2022

 

 

Johnson is not, as he himself noted on the Senate floor, the first to criticize Fauci for his health advice in the AIDS epidemic.

Sean Strub, an AIDS patient and activist, wrote an article on Fauci’s role in the AIDS epidemic for the Huffington Post in 2017, long before Fauci became a leadership figure.

In his article, which has since been taken down, Strub wrote that Fauci was “whitewashing history” to hide his role in delaying the promotion and implementation of a treatment that could have saved the lives of around 17,000 AIDS patients.

Specifically, Strub accuses Fauci of withholding Bactrim, an early treatment medication that could have prevented AIDS patients from developing a particularly virulent form of pneumonia that was the most common cause of death for 1980s AIDS patients. In one account related by Strub, Fauci even encouraged an AIDS patient to stop taking Bactrim.

Turning back to COVID-19, Johnson argued, “[Fauci] is using the exact same playbook for COVID as he did for AIDS: Ignoring therapy, like Bactrim, or the cornucopia of cheap, generic repurposed drugs that are being used successfully to treat COVID and save lives.”

“The solution has always been early treatment,” Johnson said. “But, again, Dr. Fauci is ignoring therapy and pushing a vaccine.”

Through refusing to explore early treatment options, Johnson contended, Fauci’s advice could have contributed to “as many as 500,000 lives” to be “needlessly lost.”

 

Related article: Sen. Ron Johnson Blasts Fauci’s ‘Fear Mongering’ Track Record on AIDS