Dr. "Science"

Gushing praise for the Dr. Anthony Fauci (who announced he was retiring by year-end) pours in from those who fervently believe that the policies he championed "saved millions of lives."  Here are just a few of many examples:

Steny Hoyer: “Americans have come to know Dr. Anthony Fauci as a competent leader during the worst public-health crisis in our lifetimes. I want to join in thanking him for his decades of public service to our country as he prepares to step down at the end of this year.”

Kamala Harris: “Dr. Fauci is an incredible public servant whose decades of leadership in science and medicine saved countless lives across the world. Dr. Fauci’s work helped guide our nation through its most challenging public health crises, and I am grateful for his service.”

Dan Rather: “Dr. Fauci, thank you for your service. Please ignore the haters.”

Barack Obama: “I will always be grateful that we had a once-in-a-century public health leader to guide us through a once-in-a-century pandemic. Few people have touched more lives than Dr. Fauci – and I’m glad he’s not done yet.”

However, there is another point of view that rejects fantasy thinking and is grounded in reality. Steven green summarizes nicely: "If you’re looking for one man whose actions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic did the most to damage our health, our kids, our economy, and trust in our public institutions, look no further than the diminutive bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur: Celebrity medical spokesmodel Anthony “Doctor” Fauci." *

Blue politicians and their trained hamsters in the media have chosen to disregard the hard scientific data indicating that Fauci's prescription of lock downs and mandates, school closures and censorship did far more harm than good. In essence, Anthony Fauci violated the Hippocratic oath—"First, do no harm."

The editors of the Wall Street Journal summarize Fauci's reign accurately:

He [Fauci] and a passel of public-health experts used their authority to lobby for broad economic lockdowns that we now know were far more destructive than they needed to be. He also lobbied for mask and vaccine mandates that were far less protective than his assertions to the public. Dr. Fauci’s influence was all the greater because he had an echo chamber in the press corps and among public elites who disdained and ostracized dissenters.

A flagrant example was Dr. Fauci’s refusal even to consider that the novel coronavirus had originated in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. This may have been because the NIH had provided grant money to the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which helped fund “gain of function” virus research at the Wuhan lab. In a semantic battle with Republicans, Dr. Fauci denied that the NIH funded such research. But his refusal even to consider the possibility that the virus started in a Wuhan lab showed that Dr. Fauci was as much a politician as a scientist.

Worse, Dr. Fauci smeared the few brave scientists who opposed blanket lockdowns and endorsed a strategy of “focused protection” on the elderly and those at high risk. This was the message of the Great Barrington Declaration [link added is mine] authors, and emails later surfaced showing that Dr. Fauci worked with others in government to deride that alternative so it never got a truly fair public hearing.

“There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” NIH Director Francis Collins wrote to Dr. Fauci. Their inability to abide criticism and dissent undermined the U.S. pandemic response.

“It’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science. 

Okay then. 

One thing is certain—Dr. "Science" certainly has an ego the size of his catastrophic policy mistakes.

It's only fair to note that there was uncertainty at the very beginning of the pandemic, but at the same time, within 4 weeks, it was fairly obviously (from data coming out of Italy) that people under 40 were at vanishingly small risk of death and very low risk of hospitalization. Fauci and his catastrophist minions should have immediately recognized this and crafted polices to protect the elderly and sick, NOT close down the country. Instead, he proposed draconian measures that did little good and much harm—ruining lives and livelihoods in a variety of ways.

Anthony Fauci deserves little praise for his actions during the COVID pandemic. 

Good riddance.

FOOTNOTE:

*  The dunking on Fauci has begun to accelerate (all with good reason). John Tierney comments:

"Never in the history of the public-health profession has anyone been so richly rewarded for doing so much harm to the public’s health. Fauci violated the fundamental principles of science, but got away with it by deploying the skills honed during five decades in Washington: bureaucratic infighting, media manipulation and fearmongering."