Who's Fooling Who? Fauci Portrays Himself as the Icon of Objectivity in Interview. Here's How He Stoked the Flames of Politicization of Science

Fauci's interview with Faust about Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic is self-aggrandizing. We needed an ethical scientist and physician. We got an authority. Those are not the same thing.

A recent MedPage Today interview special “report” with Anthony Fauci (link below), conducted by Jeremy Faust, sheds light on the politicization of public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci, who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), pushed himself forward as a central figure in the US public health response and as the final word on all policy. His tenure was marred by controversy and criticism regarding his handling of the pandemic - and his politicization of science. Let’s critically look at Fauci’s actions, decisions, and statements and examine critical missteps, inconsistencies, and misinformation documented by various sources. We will explore in detail how Fauci played a crucial role in politicizing public health.

One obvious significant critique of Fauci's role involves his public statements and guidance, which often shifted and contributed to public confusion. Initially, Fauci held the position that masks did not “work”. At that time, the CDC’s website claimed that 20 layers of cloth were sufficient to mimic the efficacy of an N95 respirator. That was changed to 16 for a few days, and then after I called out that lunacy on Twitter, Fauci announced that even one cloth layer was protective and prevented transmission. Fauci's initial guidance against mask-wearing was later reversed, leading to questions about the consistency and reliability of his recommendations.

Experienced people will recognize this as an important tool in gaslighting. It causes people to stop asking questions and, in distress, say, “Just tell me what to do.”

Similarly, his ever-evolving statements, each stated with just as much certainty as the last, on herd immunity thresholds and the effectiveness of lockdowns fueled doubts about the consistency of his guidance and exacerbated public skepticism and policy inefficiencies. Fauci's estimates for the herd immunity threshold required to control COVID-19 shifted over time. Initially, he suggested that 60-70% vaccination might be sufficient. In December 2020, the Harvard Gazette quoted Fauci as promising that "(i)f 75 percent to 80 percent of Americans are vaccinated, then by the end of 2021, we can reach a degree of normality" - but in reality, he had no basis for such a claim other than a personal conviction that vaccines would be the only solution because he thought they should be the only solution. This change from 60-70% to 75-80% was not based on any newly published, peer-reviewed data showing that the vaccine prevented transmission. Fauci thusly contributed to public skepticism and policy inefficiencies via idle speculation at best or willful misleading of the public (lying) at worst. This, if anything, highlighted his inability or unwillingness to communicate transparently about evolving scientific knowledge during a pandemic.

Critics have highlighted the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest related to Fauci and other NIH scientists receiving royalty payments from third-party payers, including pharmaceutical companies. Investigations revealed that Fauci received 23 royalty payments, raising concerns about the impartiality of his public health directives.

Open The Books found that from 2009-2014, $350M from third parties had been paid to NIH researchers in the form of royalties, including:

• Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the highest-paid federal bureaucrat, received 23 royalty payments. (Fauci’s 2021 taxpayer-funded salary: $456,028).

• Francis Collins, NIH director from 2009-2021, received 14 payments. (Collins’ 2021 taxpayer-funded salary: $203,500).

• Clifford Lane, Fauci’s deputy at NIAID, received 8 payments. (Lane’s 2021 taxpayer-funded salary: $325,287).

See: Open the Books:Substack Investigation: Fauci's Royalties And The $350 Million Royalty Payment Stream HIDDEN By NIH

The same group also found that Big Pharma Paid $690 Million To Fauci’s Agency Through Secret Third Party Royalties During Pandemic Years .

Lack of Self-Control and Decorum

The well-known exchanges between Fauci and Senator Rand Paul further underscore the contentious nature of Fauci's tenure. These public confrontations, particularly around the origins of COVID-19 and gain-of-function research, illustrate the heightened politicization of health guidance and the challenges of maintaining a consistent narrative amidst political scrutiny.

Confrontational Antagonism, not Disaffected Rationality on the Origins of COVID-19

Dr. Anthony Fauci participated in significant public confrontations, particularly regarding the origins of COVID-19 and gain-of-function research, which illustrate the heightened politicization of health guidance and the challenges of maintaining a consistent narrative amidst political scrutiny. (Congress.gov - Fauci's Testimony Document; See Reason - Anthony Fauci Gives Misleading, Evasive Answers About NIH-Funded Research at Wuhan Lab).

His confrontational nature, widely publicized, contributed to politicizing the scientific discourse and confused the public regarding the pandemic's origins. More classical gas-lighting behavior was repeatedly on clear display during his exchanges with Senator Paul; this behavior was historically bad and will not age well.

Gain-of-Function Research

The debate around gain-of-function research funding and its potential link to the pandemic further polarized opinions. While Fauci asserted that the NIH-funded research could not have created SARS-CoV-2, critics highlighted discrepancies and the need for more transparency about the viruses studied under these grants. In the end, those in favor of objective inquiry won the battle. Fauci’s failure to sufficiently obfuscate has (correctly) alerted much of the public to the need for stalwart skepticism of official statements by every single person in the HHS - for now, forever, until sufficient reform is enacted to reverse misaligned and perverse incentives and to undo regulatory capture.

Fauci’s failure to hide the truth did more than highlight the difficulties faced by public health officials in maintaining a consistent narrative and the impact of political scrutiny on public health messaging. They demonstrated willful obfuscation. Repeatedly, outbreak after outbreak, the conclusion after abject failures is that “clearer communication is necessary”, as if what is being communicated does not matter. The public deserves, and from now on, will demand, 100% transparency in handling public health crises.

While Fauci clearly succeeded in pushing himself to prominence during the pandemic as a key public health figure, his actions and statements have proven that he was the last person who should have been entrusted with the health of the public and should never have been involved in the planning of the publication in which individuals who brought concerns of evidence inconsistent with natural origins.

What Should Have Been: Role of NIAID and its Historical Functions

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) primarily serves as a funding agency, supporting research in infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases. It provides grants, conducts clinical trials, and advances scientific knowledge. Historically, NIAID has not been involved in making public health policy, a role typically handled by other entities within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

High-ranking federal employees, particularly those in scientific roles, are expected to provide evidence-based advice, guide research priorities, support the translation of research into clinical practice, and develop interventions to improve public health. These roles are advisory and intended to inform policymakers without becoming politically involved. This separation is crucial to maintaining scientific integrity and public trust.

Despite his extensive experience and expertise, Fauci's role during the COVID-19 pandemic has been marred by controversy. His position as a central figure in the U.S. response and his public statements and guidance made it clear that he was positioning himself as the world's leading expert on COVID-19. Combined with the highly polarized political climate, Fauci’s machinations and prevarications were easily identified as more gaslighting. Fauci set himself up as a politically charged figure, and, via hubris, he vastly overestimated the power of his will to force people to stop thinking and obey.

Such politicization is generally seen as inappropriate for a federal HHS chief, especially one in a scientific role, as it can undermine the public's trust in health guidance and contribute to further division over critical issues like vaccine efficacy and more viable public health measures.

Anthony Fauci quickly became the face of the U.S. government's COVID-19 response, frequently appearing in the media and at White House briefings. His visibility made him a primary source of information for the public, significantly influencing health policies and public perception.

Fauci’s violations of breaking the fourth wall and overstepping his position to assume the position of public health policy dictator invited criticism from rational individuals who knew enough to see through the illogic and inconsistencies in his public statements and policy recommendations. These critics pointed out the discrepancies between Fauci's evolving guidance and the scientific data available at different pandemic stages, highlighting the lack of transparency and the potential conflicts of interest due to his position and the funding dynamics involved.

Overview of Fauci's Career and Status Before the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the interview, Faust and Fauci laud Fauci’s handling of the AIDS epidemic. Anthony Fauci began his career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1968 and has been the director of NIAID since 1984. He portrays himself as making significant contributions to understanding and treating infectious diseases. These contributions have been completely analyzed in Robert F. Kennedy' Jr’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci”. It’s enough here to say that Fauci’s self-narrative of his career is far from comprehensive and forthright. Fauci has advised multiple U.S. presidents on various public health issues since the U.S. population moved from being one of the world’s healthiest populations to one of the sickest. This is Fauci’s true legacy.

What Fauci fails to bring to the interview is an admission that he and his spouse, Christine Grady, worked to strip the American public of their rights to informed consent during medical procedures via this essay, in which they patronize that between the two people in the room on the question of informed consent, the doctor knows more than the patient, and thus the doctor should have more say than the patient on the patient’s course of clinical care, reversing (at the time) seventy years of systematic development of means of protecting individual patient rights from abuse.

The Failure of All Failures: Evaluation of Fauci's Positions and Medical Recommendations

Early Treatment Options

Fauci was hellbent on destroying confidence in promising results of research on early treatment protocols like hydroxychloroquine and corticosteroids (which showed a 4-fold reduction in mortality) and ivermectin. He and others unnecessarily made these treatments controversial. In doing so, they became science deniers. Massive numbers of published studies suggested they might reduce illness severity if administered early.

Richard Urso, MD, of Doctors for Covid Ethics, said of hydroxycbloroquine:

"(it) lowers the D-dimer, sed rate, C-reactive protein, decreases atherosclerosis, improves the bone heath, decreases the cholesterol level, decreases hemoglobin A1C, glucose tolerance is improved. 70% chance of improvement in chronic kidney disease for those people at risk, decreases stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolus. It's actually one of the best drugs you could ever take."

It is inconceivably wrong to have gambled public health on a novel vaccine. Fauci et al. maligned early treatments with real hope, destroying opportunities for early intervention that could have potentially mitigated the pandemic's impact and reduce severe disease and death. While the rules were changed to allow doctors to use real-world data in their decision-making about treating COVID-19 patients, Fauci and company worked overtime to cast doubt on their efficacy, favoring irrelevant late-stage COVID-19 studies which showed no efficacy (as expected). Instead of early treatment, Fauci touted going home and getting as sick as possible - hardly an ethical medical protocol, ignoring published protocols such as those by Dr. Peter McCullough, who used his massive knowledge and experience of internal medicine to make an informed protocol, and Dr. David Brownstein, who used a 30-year respiratory protocol that to this day stands in his practice as the standard of care for nearly all respiratory illnesses. Of course, Fauci favored much more profitable, less effective and harmful drugs like the now-abandoned molnupirivir and paxlovid, the failure of which led to the need for a new syndrome - paxlovid rebound.

Fauci missed the boat regarding the proper role of medicine in responding to a public health emergency from a respiratory virus. This, too, will be Fauci’s legacy.

Protecting Those at Most Risk

Initially, the strategy to protect the most vulnerable populations was not prioritized despite clear messaging in the form of the Great Barrington Declaration, an initiative of three well-heeled professors: Dr. Martin Kulldorff (a professor of medicine at Harvard University, specializing in biostatistics and epidemiology); Dr. Sunetra Gupta, (an epidemiologist and professor at Oxford University, specializing in immunology, vaccine development, and modeling of infectious diseases) and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, (a professor of medicine at Stanford University, focusing on public health policy, epidemiology, and health economics).

The declaration, released on October 4, 2020, called for a focused protection approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. It advocated for allowing those at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up herd immunity through natural infection while better protecting those at highest risk.

Fauci's approach focused more on broad public health measures, such as lockdowns and mask mandates, rather than targeted protections for high-risk groups. Over time, it became clear that shielding the elderly and those with preexisting conditions was a more viable and effective strategy. This oversight contributed to higher mortality rates among vulnerable populations in the early stages of the pandemic and prevented people who, while at risk of being infectious, from appreciating the importance of staying clear of the elderly and others at the highest risk of serious illness from COVID-19.

Fauci's Misstatements on Vaccine Effectiveness and Transmission Prevention

Fauci’s early statements suggested that vaccines would prevent transmission, which was later contradicted by emerging data. Data showing that vaccines significantly reduce the severity of illness depend on not counting cases, severe illness, and death until now 8 weeks after the second dose. Just as their impact on transmission was less than initially claimed, vaccinated people now realize that they enjoy little protection due to vaccines but rather due to viral evolution, as I predicted from day one. Fauci’s misrepresentation of vaccine efficacy led to a false sense of security and influenced public health strategies, such as the relaxation of mask mandates for vaccinated individuals. The evolving understanding of vaccine effectiveness further complicated public health messaging and policy.

The clearly misleading guidance on masks, early treatment options, protection of high-risk groups, and vaccine effectiveness underscores Fauci’s challenges and failures in managing public health communications in a rapidly changing situation. These issues highlight the need for clear, consistent, and transparent communication to maintain public trust and effectively manage public health crises.

Fauci's Role in the Politicization Process

Despite portraying himself as attempting to focus on science and public health messaging, Fauci not only made missteps and got most things wrong: he, in fact, made repeated inflammatory political statements by disagreeing publicly with then-President Donald Trump. The issues included masking, hydroxychloroquine, re-opening schools, ending lockdown, and holding large events - all of which are now normal, without a vaccine that stops transmission. Fauci’s involvement in the political discourse during the pandemic was significant and inappropriate. His public disagreements with the Trump administration over pandemic measures would have been understandable if he had been consistently correct on the issues; instead, via his words and deeds, he positioned himself as a political figure rather than a purely scientific advisor. Elected democrats and candidates repeatedly claimed that mRNA vaccines stopped transmission; at the same time, singing the same song, Fauci's statements were clearly partisan. He thusly further entrenched public health responses' politicization.

His massively off-target comments on school closures and reopening the economy also had widespread political implications, influencing public policy and fueling debates instead of building consenses across party lines.

Comparison with Other Experts' Approaches

Fauci portrayed himself as a stand-alone vanguard engaged in a battle with COVID-19 denialists to counter misinformation and present scientific evidence. Again, if Fauci had been more correct and less harmful, he might be entitled to strut. However, strutting is also unprofessional and unbecoming, and he was wrong most of the time about everything, so his interview makes it worse.

Suppressing Dissenting Views

Public debates with individuals holding opposing views can help bring out points that groupthink fails to recognize. Instead of turning to the medical community and asking them to report any successes in treating COVID-19 early, Fauci and those in his mindset prefer to focus on trying to educate the public through clear, consistent messaging without engaging directly dissenting views in earnest. This approach is now a proven failure: public health should call on scientists from all walks of life to engage with the public to find their questions and help them find answers in a highly distributed manner - not rely on one centralized authority.

Unprofessional Conduct

As Fauci’s confrontations with figures like Senator Rand Paul often became highly publicized, it caused Fauci to appear foolish and unprofessional in the eyes of millions of viewers. Those of the left tended at first to turn a blind eye to these repeated gaffs and faux-pas, further politicizing the discourse, as their fellow Americans could not get inside their heads on why they could not see the plain, simple Faucisms - lies he clearly did not believe himself - and see that Fauci left the rails of science far before Senator Paul questioned him.

Unfounded Positions in Public Debates and Their Implications

Public debates involving Fauci often became highly polarized, sometimes revealing that the scientific facts he aimed to communicate were not facts at all. This dynamic highlighted the reckless manner of the lack of self-control and decorum Fauci used in place of maintaining effective public health communication in a contentious political climate. The debates underscored the need for strategies involving forthright, not misleading, transparent statements - and always speaking the truth. The mandate to preserve public trust in health authorities at all costs is the wrong priority because disaster awaits when those authorities are wrong. Fauci's high-profile disputes with political figures frequently drew media attention, which sometimes emphasized the political drama over the scientific issues at hand, allowing the public to peer behind the curtain and see the Wizard pulling the levers of public perception control.

Fauci's Self-Preserving Views on the Origin of COVID-19 and Lab Leak Theory

Fauci claims he advocated for keeping an open mind about the origins of COVID-19, acknowledging both the zoonotic and lab leak theories. Behind the scenes, he worked overtime to kill all dissenting views. While representing himself as emphasizing the importance of evidence-based conclusions and calling for thorough investigations into the virus’s origins, he put into motion actions that led ultimately to a paper, “Proximal Origins,” that concluded that natural origin was almost a certainty and that no evidence existed for a laboratory origin. The public now knows that Fauci’s urgent phone call derailed rational inquiry, leading denialists to dismiss the lab leak theory, preventing further questions about the likely biology of the novel virus. Despite numerous statements of concern, that paper is not retracted.

Fauci’s handling of the lab leak theory has been criticized for potentially downplaying the hypothesis without sufficient investigation. Critics argue that more transparency and balanced consideration of all plausible origins could have bolstered public confidence in scientific assessments. The debates surrounding the origins of COVID-19 illustrate the broader challenges of managing scientific uncertainty and public expectations during a global health crisis. Additionally, Fauci's defensive stance during hearings and interviews, where he sometimes appeared to dismiss alternative theories prematurely, revealed his biases and lack of objectivity.

In summary, Fauci’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic has been marred by significant failures and actions that generated controversies where none were necessary. His efforts to singularly navigate the politicization of public health, enforce a “vaccine-only” policy, and failure to objectively address the virus's origins show that he was actually the last person the US and the world needed to address the complex interplay between science, public communication, and politics in a crisis.

The interview, like so much of Fauci, is cheap veneer.

Harvey A Risch, Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients That Should Be Ramped Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis, American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 189, Issue 11, November 2020, Pages 1218–1226, https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa093