It looks like Dr. Anthony Fauci is finally getting his comeuppance.
About time!
The man who has single handedly put the nail in the coffin of public trust in public health deserves to get the scrutiny that for too long he’s avoided.
American Greatness writer Julie Kelly has a more pessimistic view of whether Fauci will ever pay a real price for his outrageous behavior, but she thinks one things for sure: most Americans are suffering from Fauci Fatigue.
…his favorability rating has dropped from 68 percent one year ago to 54 percent now. Forty percent of U.S. voters say they’ve lost confidence in Fauci over the past year. His latest tap dance about the origins of the virus while defending the trustworthiness of Chinese researchers does little to restore confidence in his integrity or self-proclaimed expertise.
House Republicans introduced a symbolic but futile bill to oust Fauci from his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Some even imagine Fauci and his fellow COVID-19 propagandists and profiteers will face charges for the incalculable damage they have inflicted on the country under the guise of virus mitigation.
But I have bad news for anyone hoping Fauci will pay a price for his incompetence, misdirection, and in many instances, straight-up malfeasance: he won’t.
Over at National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty isn’t so sure Fauci will avoid trouble. Dougherty provides a detailed summary of some of Fauci’s greatest failures and wild shifts in opinion—from his dismissal of mask efficacy early in the pandemic to his insistence that the novel coronavirus couldn’t have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), because, according to Fauci, the virus doesn’t jump from an animal to a human. Dougherty also points out the scientific community’s shifting positions with nary a conversation about the shift:
The polarization of our politics and of public-health elites has left us with two categories of thought on COVID: the Science, and dangerous (sometimes racist) conspiracy theories. Half the time, the conspiracy theories become the Science. Belief in the efficacy of masks or in the lab-leak theory made these transitions. But these shifts don’t happen upon the publication of credible new scientific studies. There is almost no public jousting and argument among scientists and researchers. There is just a sliding from one position to another when it becomes safe. Long after these shifts take place, CDC guidance often comes to incorporate them.
And while many Americans are removing their masks and returning to normal, Dougherty addresses one of the lingering and unnecessary COVID precautions that continues to be endorsed by Fauci: masking children. Daugherty writes (emphasis mine):
Credible scientific evidence that outdoor transmission of the coronavirus was negligible was available late in the spring of 2020, even as newspapers were still shaming people about being on beaches and a solo paddleboarder was arrested in California. But CDC guidance on outdoor activities and outdoor mask-wearing didn’t change for a year. We’ve long had evidence that children under twelve are far less likely to get seriously ill or die from COVID than they are from the flu. The scientific evidence is all there in the open that children are basically safe to gather together, but the mysterious scientific consensus hasn’t developed to the point of making it safe to say this in public. It’s as if doctors are afraid that pointing this out will make them vulnerable to accusations that they are providing aid and comfort to COVID-skeptical parents. But Dr. Fauci does understand the science. And so he could barely suppress his laughter when asked to explain on television why the CDC insists on young children wearing masks outdoors at summer camps this year — children who will be sleeping in the same indoor spaces with each other. Fauci has been the face of this shape-shifting consensus, even at its most ridiculous.
Dougherty later quotes Peter Navarro, a long-standing critic of Fauci, saying Fauci must have known the virus came from the lab. Navarro says “My theory is that Anthony Fauci is a sociopath.”
It might take a while to find out what really happened in that Wuhan lab. We may never know all the facts about Fauci’s involvement. If Fauci knew and kept this information from the public, then yes, he’s a sociopath. But I don’t need to wait to find out.
The fact that Fauci laughed at the suffering of masked children is proof enough for me.