I guess what it boils down to for me is the arrogance inherent in making sweeping statements without any humility in recognizing how much we or he (in the case of Fauci and others) do not know.
Would you be able to find an actual quote, either here on DDF, or via Google, of Fauci making one of these statements that sound arrogant to you? I wonder whether this might be one of those situations where two people listen to the same thing and come away with a very different impression. Because I've heard Fauci many times, in press conferences and interviews, and he never sounded arrogant to me. I don't know if we're listening to different media, or if the difference is that I hear him from the perspective of an insider, that is, if I am hearing something between the lines that is not in the actual words. To me, it sounds like he is constantly emphasizing that there's lots we don't know, that we have to wait for the data, etc., so I'd really like to understand where you are getting the opposite view.
Which sometimes has resulted in needing to walk statements back (e.g. yes masks or no masks, 70% or 90% vacccination rate for herd immunity etc.) and sometimes not even having the grace to do that but almost simply hoping that people would forget or ignore some of what they said.
He does this when his knowledge or the situation changes. Much as a rav may say it's okay to eat in a particular restaurant, and then later "walk that statement back". Do you accuse the rav of flip-flopping? No, because you're familiar with kashrus issues, and you understand that there must have been something that led him to change his mind.
I would use the natural immunity question as the example again as it bothers me the most, have you heard anyone from the CDC or Fauci etc. ever express anything about the possibility of that being a factor with real evenhandeness?
"a factor" in what? Are you asking what they have to say about the long term immunity of those who've recovered from covid?
And you can't simply say "well they didnt know and were waiting for the data", because then that holds true about vaccines as well.
The question of how long naturally-acquired immunity to covid would last is something that has been discussed by the CDC, Fauci, and even DDF since about May 2020. At that time, we had no idea, so were looking at research on how long immunity lasted after infection with other types of coronaviruses. In August 2020, we saw the first reinfections, and asked: Were reinfections occurring only in those few people who had particularly weak immune systems? Or were those the tip of the iceberg, and soon everyone would start to lose that naturally acquired immunity? So they've been discussing naturally-acquired immunity for a year now, and the only way to get an answer was to wait for the data. There! I said it!
For example, does the statement "immunity may have a limited time span of efficacy, and may be less effective against new variants which have/will emerge" apply to vaccines or natural immunity, and to which one more than the other or at least possibly equally?
Scientists have been asking this, and have speculated (that is, guessed based on their knowledge of other viruses and the immune system in general) but there's no consensus. We really do have to wait for the data, but you can be sure that the data is being collected, because a lot of scientists want to get at the answer.
So why have we heard it applied almost exclusively to naturally acquired immunity and not at all to vaccine-based immunity?
I'm not following you here. Since June, when US and Israel started to see breakthrough infections, they've been trying to figure out how long-lasting vaccine-based immunity may be and how effective it is against new variants.
