This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before a closed House Select Subcommittee on the COVID-19 pandemic. Two key takeaways from his history are his flip-flop on the lab leak theory — he now claims it was not a conspiracy theory — and his admission that the social distancing guidance recommended by the CDC during the pandemic was likely not based on any data.
“After two days of testimony and 14 hours of questioning, many things became evident. During his interview today, Dr. Fauci claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come," Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R–Ohio) said. "He testified that the lab leak hypothesis — which was often suppressed — was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory. Further, the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans 'sort of just appeared’ and were likely not based on scientific data."
Fauci’s sorry record during the COVID pandemic is not news to PJ Media readers. For example, you know about how he not only lied about the lab leak theory but also tried to suppress it. We know it wasn’t a conspiracy theory, but he treated it like one. Does he really think he can absolve himself now by saying it wasn’t a conspiracy theory and claiming he never actually rejected it?
In the early days of the pandemic, we all wanted to have faith in Dr. Fauci and our health institutions. And most of us did. In mid-July 2020, two-thirds of voters trusted Fauci’s information on COVID.
Related: Can We Arrest Fauci Now?
To me, it was clear he was a hack when, on July 17, 2020, he did an interview with PBS NewsHour and praised New York’s COVID response.
“We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York,” he told PBS’s Judy Woodruff. “New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly.”
I was covering New York’s COVID response extensively at the time, and nothing you can say about it was good. Then-governor Andrew Cuomo, likely contemplating a presidential run at the time, cared more about attacking Trump and grandstanding than anything else, and his policy on nursing homes was, to put it mildly, deadly.
While my faith in Fauci was shattered then, in reality, he was a liar from the earliest days of the pandemic, motivated more by politics and power than public health.
Based on emails released by FOIA request in June 2021, he knew about gain-of-function research at Wuhan, that COVID may have been engineered, and that masks don’t work to stop the virus, but he pushed for mask mandates anyway.
I know Americans have short memories when it comes to many things, but does Fauci really believe he can get away with rewriting history?
But there’s so much more. We also know he still backs lockdowns even though they didn’t slow the spread of COVID. Another entry in the Fauci Hall of Shame was the way he repeatedly moved the goalposts on herd immunity to push more vaccinations.
Fauci and our health institutions did almost everything in spite of science, not because of it. I have barely scratched the surface here of the ways that the public was lied to and manipulated, and I sincerely hope Fauci pays a huge price for what he did.
