Drama and controversy seem to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci wherever he goes, and such was the case at the White House daily press briefing on Nov. 22.
It all started when Daily Caller reporter Diana Glebova had the nerve to yell a question to the good doctor regarding what he has done to determine the origin of the COVID epidemic. (Oh, it was the Chinese wet market, right!) That’s when White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre scolded Glebova for being “disrespectful to our guest (Fauci).” Things continued to go downhill from there.
This was Fauci’s final press briefing as he retires this month as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to Joe Biden. The problem is, people like Jean-Pierre continue to cover for him.
Fauci, age 81, has served seven presidents during his 38-year career. Now, he will retire as the highest-paid employee in the federal government. Yet, above all else, Fauci will be remembered for overseeing the biggest public health disaster of all time. The carnage is easy to find as millions of children have been subjected to government-sanctioned abuse and developmental delay, thousands of businesses are gone and more than 1 million Americans are dead.
In the beginning, Fauci supported a shutdown of “15 days to slow the spread” (and praised China as a “model” in dealing with the virus). This was a terrible blunder, the effects of which still impact us today. After a group of scientists went public to condemn this policy as ineffective, the egoist Fauci and his minions quickly went about condemning them and destroying their very reputations. Ultimately, he even declared that to criticize him was to criticize science.
Fauci was also the master of flip-flops. After initially saying that masks offered no protection against the virus, he later came out in favor of mask mandates. Then, he suggested that even people who were vaccinated should wear masks. Fauci eventually became so enamored with masks that he told people they should consider wearing two of them.
He showed similar inconsistency on vaccines, stating that those who got the shot had a “very low likelihood” of transmitting COVID. By October 2022, Fauci admitted that “vaccines don’t protect overly well” against infection due to the high transmissibility of the virus. Recently, the Washington Post admitted that vaccinated people now make up the majority of COVID deaths, though Fauci continues to deny that vaccines have any harmful side effects.
Fauci was all over the board on what percentage of Americans should be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity too. First, it was 70-75%; then it was 80-85%. Finally, he admitted he didn’t really know, but the true range was likely between 70-90%. That’s covering all the bases.
Most of all, Fauci will be remembered for keeping people uncertain and fearful and making them feel guilty if they asked questions. Yet, he has been repeatedly discredited in the face of perjuring himself about whether the U.S. government funded gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan lab. And he still avoids answering the question about COVID’s origin.
In the end, Fauci has been a force of total disruption as it relates to the virus. Thus, his retirement should not preclude him from testifying about everything COVID or being prosecuted for the deception and lies he has spewed forth for so long. But there’s more.
Fauci helped undermine the entire field of medicine. He destroyed America’s confidence in public health institutions and in your own doctor. Health providers followed Fauci’s lead and supported lockdown measures that were far more destructive than necessary, including masking and vaccine mandates still with us today.
Seemingly gone is objectivity, replaced by an arrogant ideology and hostility. Facts now only matter if you are on the side of power. The so-called experts are in charge and know what’s best, even if evidence appears to the contrary.
Medicine, like many institutions, was once viewed as committed, dependable and trustworthy. Since COVID, diversity, equity and inclusion now hold sway over the well-being of the patient.
Fauci can deny taking credit for these developments, but his conduct speaks for itself. Sadly, confidence once lost is a hard thing to recapture.
Mark Figley is a political activist and guest columnist from Elida. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.
