TIME ~ Man of the Year

Is there any doubt that Anthony Fauci is going to be the winner for 2020?

AOC all the way.

>2 lriley: I'm curious... why?

Worthy as Dr Fauci and AOC are, my vote (if I had one) for Person of the Year goes to Zhang Yongzhen, who on Jan 10, 2020 publicly released genome sequence of the coronavirus--the basis for vaccines now coming online--and was punished for it. Like Jonas Salk, he won't profit from the vaccines he has made possible.

( Maybe also recognize young Doctor Li Wenliang, who died trying to get word out about the deadly new virus?)

Eddie Holmes @edwardcholmes | 8:08 PM · Jan 10, 2020
All, an initial genome sequence of the coronavirus associated with the Wuhan outbreak is now available at http://Virological.org here: http://virological.org/t/initial-genome-release-of-novel-coronavirus/319
------------------------------------------

Eric Topol @EricTopol | 9:14 PM · Dec 2, 2020:
This tweet will go down in history.
The shared sequence led to the template for the @moderna_tx vaccine and, soon thereafter, the @BioNTech_Group /@Pfizer
vaccine.
And in the same year, very high efficacy and safe vaccines ready to move onto vaccination programs.

The sequence was provided to @edwardholmes via this courageous Chinese scientist—
Zhang Yongzhen—who was punished, his lab shut down, for releasing the sequence

The 100 Most Influential People of 2020: Zhang Yongzhen
Pardis Sabeti | September 22, 2020
https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/5888191/zhang-yongz...

Details of punishment for "malfeasance" and the story of
how @edwardcholmes worked with Dr. Yongzhen to get the sequence out to the world.
His lab was shut down through February.

The Pandemic Heroes Who Gave us the Gift of Time and Gift of Information
As safe and effective vaccines make news, let's remember the heroism of China's scientists and medical worker
zeynep | Nov 30
https://zeynep.substack.com/p/the-pandemic-heroes-who-gave-us-the

Image--highlighted zeyne text ( https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1334329690643812352/photo/1 )

#4--I didn't know this story but after hearing it I'd vote for Dr. Yongzhen too.

I think that title usually go to whoever was featured the most during the year. Unlike some years, one person isn't the obvious feature across 2020 covers.

https://time.com/vault/year/2020/

The selection of Dr. Fauci wouldn't surprise me, as he represents this country's focus on the novel coronavirus pandemic, but my guess for Person of the Year is John Lewis.

https://time.com/tag/john-lewis/
https://time.com/5869243/john-lewis-cover/

>6 aspirit: I think that title usually go to whoever was featured the most during the year.

Ooh, that sounds like a fun hypothesis to explore. I wonder if the data is available...

https://apnews.com/article/dictionary-word-of-the-year-pandemic-5a441093f6eb425d...
Dictionary companies choose same word of the year: pandemic

The fact that all the dictionary experts came to the
same conclusion about the 2020 word puts Fauci at the
top of all/any lists in my estimation.

Maybe Zhang Yongshen will get a Nobel Peace Prize-- they've made worse choices!

Fauci kind of captures the vax effort as well as the civil servants who delivered for us under trying circumstances. Fed, state, and local.

>7 kiparsky: see "Everything You Need to Know About TIME's Person of the Year". I remember the outrage from when Donald Trump was chosen in 2016. I had forgotten since then about the reader's poll, but I still think John Lewis might be the 2020 Person of the Year.

Dr. Fauci is a symbol of the pandemic but largely considered inconsequential in it.

fixed broken link

"Man" of the Year?

Why skirt the issue? Hands down, the "man" of the year is Mr. SARS-CoV-2, the virus itself.

"Man" of the Year? Frontline workers. (Insert picture of hospital worker with mask bruise over bridge of nose.)

Happy to have been wrong ~

Time Person of the Year ~

Biden & Harris ~
Decency and common sense are returning to 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue after a long 4-year absence.

The frontline workers would have been best. Yongshen second.

Trump obviously.

Time need to add a category: Sore Loser of the Year.

>16 MsMixte: Lotsa folks vying for that one, but yeah, yer man DD is standing head and shoulders above the crowd.

Echo echo echo...

Here's the link to TIME's Person of the Year 2020 essay.

https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2020-joe-biden-kamala-harris/

Melania: "It's only a magazine cover. Get up off the floor and wipe that froth off your mouth, Donnie. You look like a mad dog."

Donnie: "Aaarrrghhrahhhwhooooooo- yip-yip-yip-yip!"

>20 Limelite: Well, bear in mind that magazine covers are very important to the boy. Let's not forget how much money he shelled out just to touch a boob that had been on a magazine cover.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Frontline Health Workers Are TIME's 2020 Guardians of the Year

Donald does get upset when others get recognition---an example being when Fauci threw out that baseball to open the season. Donald almost immediately let it be known that he was going to throw out a baseball at the first New York Yankees home game which was news to the Yankees.

But it's not just Time covers and baseballs--it's Nobel Peace Prizes as well and making sure that everyone knew he got more votes than Hillary (not) and a bigger inauguration crowd than Obama (again not).

On Fauci--I do recognize he's taken a lot of unnecessary harassment and hung in there pretty good---that he has to go around with bodyguards and such. That said in the early months of the pandemic he was telling people that masks weren't strictly necessary. To me it was a mistake like Cuomo's on nursing homes--so while I more than less appreciate what he's done it wasn't a flawless performance on his part. The other thing for me is as much as he's taken a lot of hell from Trump and conservatives it's not the day in day out hell that doctors and nurses in many places have had to go through trying to save lives in impossible situations and putting their own lives at risk doing so. Double shifting day in and day out is a killer--I use to do this in my first several years working at the post office. It turns you into a zombie pretty quick but I was dealing with mail and not a deadly virus that could kill me or that I could bring back to my household. These people deserve a huge reward for what they've done--their selflessness has literally held this nation together. They are much like the firefighters that went into the collapsing towers on 9-11.

"the boy"

projection

"working at the post office"

lol

>24 lriley: The advise on masks was the correct call at that time with the information they had. People have to understand that this virus is very new and knowledge of how it spreads was bound to change over time.

I think we all have to acknowledge that it's now Dr. "Hunky Fauci" after last night's SNL.

And while we're on the topic of good physicians, this to the WSJ. It's Dr. Jill Biden to you, not "kiddo," as you might prefer. Would you have even dared to write an editorial if the first husband were an MD, suggesting he drop the "doctor" honorific from his name just because he's married to the woman president and living in the WH?

What, Dr. J.B. suddenly ceased to exist because not doctor J.B. was elected prez? Give. Me. A. Break. It's soon going to be 2021, not 1921.

>27 jjwilson61: True. Also remember how limited the stocks of available PPE were at the time, that cloth masks were not yet widely available, and that nobody had verified that cloth masks would be as effective as the well-tested paper masks which were the standard.

As you say, the medical "deep state" gave the best advice available given the information at the time and the available resources, and they corrected that advice as they learned more. To me this is what "getting it right" looks like.

>27 jjwilson61: >29 kiparsky:
Yup.

Science is absolutely true. But never absolute.

>30 Limelite: I would not say "science is absolutely true", but it's certainly the best way get to the best available approximation to the truth (by which I mean nothing more than the best description of the world consistent with available facts).

By which I mean pursues nothing but truth in describing Nature by means of its method of inquiry, challenge, and desire to be proven wrong.

>32 Limelite: Yeah, I think we're on the same page. Sorry if I'm being excessively pedantic.

>33 kiparsky:

Resist the Kraken!

>34 Limelite: You can't make me resist.

LoL!

Sorry! Embrace the Kraken!