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Anthony Fauci's diary musing about dinners with famed journalists during the COVID-19 lockdowns evokes memories of neighbors who couldn't have guests at their child's funeral, attend the birth of their grandchildren, or buy seeds at a local garden center.
Those narcissistic entries about his towering fame remind me of local children who were barred from attending high school with their friends, couldn't have proper graduations, or start college on time, many of whose lives were needlessly thrown off course forever.
Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) document dump of the diary entries and emails of former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases accentuates what we already knew about Fauci. Though his fans portrayed him as a saintly public health official merely sharing advice and evolving science with decision-makers, Fauci was a self-serving authoritarian operator who relied on fearmongering, coaxing, and lying to manipulate the behavior of hundreds of millions of Americans.
On Feb. 8, 2020, for example, Fauci acknowledged privately that after speaking with former CDC Director Tom Frieden, he believed COVID-19's fatality rate was likely at 0.2%-0.3% not 2%, and "acting like a bad influenza."
Less than a month later, under oath in front of the House oversight committee, Fauci warned that COVID-19 was "10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu." The man who claimed to represent science itself was stoking fear to implement obedience.
In a June 18, 2020, email to Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus coordinator, Fauci voiced frustration that viral transmission has been unaffected by lockdowns: "I have been obsessing about the increases in cases that do not seem to be related to openings or closings or massive crowds."
Fauci's apprehension, "we may be looking for the lost keys under the light of the lamppost," didn't stop him from spending the next days, weeks, and months attacking any politician who proposed easing lockdowns as anti-science.
Fauci privately and publicly criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for opposing mask mandates, school lockdowns, and pushing back against federal public health guidance that the head of the NIAID knew was questionable.
When ABC News asked Fauci in 2022 if it was a mistake for schools to be shuttered as long as they were during the COVID-19 pandemic, he claimed that we "should realize, and have realized," that "there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that." In a later interview with the New York Times, he demanded, "Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did."
But in his entries, we learn that Fauci took credit for convincing then-New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and others to shut down schools. In a March 15, 2020, entry, Fauci approvingly notes that Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D-CA) chief of staff, Ann O'Leary, told him that "based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants."
There was no mention of deleterious collateral consequences.
Though Fauci absorbs most of the anger over pandemic-era shutdowns, he's not wrong to point out that he had no power to dictate state policy decisions. Public officials, possessing little if any knowledge of virology, are perhaps the most risk-averse people in the country. They were never going to challenge a man canonized by the media as the embodiment of science. There will never be any reckoning for them.
But when dissent did pop up, Fauci was there to suppress it.
In an Oct. 14, 2020, entry, Fauci says, after noting Julia Roberts had sent him beautiful flowers, that he'd had "long talk" with Trump adviser Jared Kushner "asking his help in getting rid of" Dr. Scott Atlas, the White House pandemic adviser who was giving him a hard time on the "herd immunity issue."
In the same entry, Fauci grouses about "Great Barrington Declaration," a document authored by scientists Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, which questioned the efficacy of lockdowns, warning, correctly, about deleterious collateral consequences of closing schools.
Fauci colluded with others to suppress the document, plotting a "quick and devastating published takedown" even though he admitted in his own emails and diary entries that he was frustrated about the efficacy of lockdowns.
One of the most politically contentious issues during the pandemic was the origins of COVID-19. We all remember the concerted effort by the government to pressure tech companies to censor any theorizing about COVID-19's lab origins. Joe Biden accused Facebook of killing people and leaned on social media outlets to both "elevate" and "suppress" users based on their stances on COVID-19. Twitter suspended tens of thousands of accounts. Facebook banned any talk implicating the Chinese Communist Party. Fact-checkers and left-wing press regularly treated anyone who brought up the Wuhan lab theory as a disinformation peddler and likely racist.
In a diary entry dated Jan. 26, 2020, Fauci notes that "now we know the market," by which he means the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where some theorized the virus had jumped from bats to humans, "was not the source, it was the amplifier."
Critics have pointed out that even five months after this revelation, Fauci was still blaming the wet markets in an interview with National Geographic, a piece used in numerous "fact checks" by the media. But it was worse.
In June 2021, about a year and a half later, Fauci told Kara Swisher on her New York Times podcast, "America's chief immunologist claps back," that the evolutionary virologists who'd studied the virus believed that the wet market theory was "absolutely totally compatible with something that evolved from bat viruses because of the closeness to."
Conversely, Fauci said, the notion that the Wuhan virus was created in a lab was a "very, very, very, very remote possibility."
Four verys.
Even taken in the most generous framing, it's perfectly clear that Fauci was blatantly misleading the public about the origins of COVID-19.
"It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person in the world," Fauci wrote to himself on May 21, 2020.
It's easy to mock the narcissism, but it was also inarguably true. And that's the problem. The Fauci diary entries expose a man imbued with far too much influence, prestige, and power. Fauci was given a historic responsibility, and he failed on every front.
Then again, perhaps his enduring offense will have been helping to shatter public trust in institutions and genuine expertise. The void he left is already being filled by the ravings of quacks, cranks, and conspiracists. These are the people millions of people will turn to next time we have a public health emergency.
That's Fauci's legacy.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• 07/31/26 Fauci's Cowardly Fifth Amendment Evasion
• 07/27/26 Neither Party Is Talking About What Voters Actually Care About
• 07/20/26 Luddites Are Winning the Data Center Debate
• 07/13/26 AOC Should Thank Baby Boomers for the World They Left Her
• 07/03/26 The United States Has Always Been at War
• 07/01/26 The Socialist Revolution Will Eat the Dem Party
• 06/19/26 Why Is the Trump Administration Taking Orders from the Iranians?
• 06/12/26 Even Without His Controversies, Graham Platner Is Just a Lightweight Extremist
• 06/08/26 Southern Poverty Law Center's REAL scam
• 06/01/26 Dems Are in No Position to Lecture Anyone About Candidates
• 05/25/26 Jeff Bezos Is Right About Capitalism, Wrong About Taxes
• 05/11/26 Why Stay in NATO if Europe Isn't Willing to Help Us?
• 05/01/26 Nazi Tattoo? Hamas Defender? No Problem, Says Chuck Schumer, a self-styled defender of Jewish interests
• 04/24/26 James Madison Saw Abigail Spanberger Coming
• 04/20/26 Hey, Socialists, We've Already Figured Out the Supermarket
• 04/16/26 Argentina Is Booming -- Capitalism Remains Undefeated
• 04/13/26Everyone Knows What the Dems' AIPAC Obsession Is Really About
• 03/27/26 Trump's Iran Deal Must Be Nothing Like Obama's
• 03/24/26 Class-War Economics Is Counterproductive and Un-American
• 03/20/26 Paul Ehrlich is dead. Regrettably, his legacy isn't
• 03/13/26 When 'Islamophobia' Becomes a License to Lie
• 03/06/26 Trump eradicates 47 years of feckless foreign policy
• 03/02/26 What Trump Should Tell the American People About Iran
• 02/20/26 Yes, Dems are crazy
• 02/20/26 Obama Is in No Position to Lecture Us About Decency
• 02/13/26 Shut Up and Ski
• 02/06/26 Don't Cry for The Washington Post, It Helped Destroy Media
• 01/30/26 Price Controls Won't Work Any Better for Republicans Than It Does Dems
• 01/16/26 The Left's Silence on Iran Is NOT Hypocrisy
• 12/26/25: For JD Vance, Free Speech Only Means His Friends Can't Be Criticized
• 12/12/25: The Left Doesn't Believe in the Constitutional Order
• 12/07/25: War Powers Are Dead
• 11/27/25: MTG Embodies the Inanity of Populism
• 11/14/25: Gaslighting Americans is latest Dem Disaster
• 11/11/25: Trump's Filibuster Nuke Would Hand Dems the Keys To Remake America
• 11/04/25: Let's Talk About the Real Genocide of Christians in Africa
• 10/16/25: Obamacare Is a Massive Failure. The GOP Shouldn't Bail It Out
• 10/10/25: Why Aren't 'Ceasefire Now!' Activists Celebrating Trump's Gaza Peace Deal?
• 09/12/25: Israel's Strike on Qatar Should Have Happened Years Ago
• 09/05/25: An Open Letter to My Esteemed Colleagues at the International Association of Genocide Scholars
• 08/29/25: The President Doesn't Get to Dictate How We Express Ourselves
• 08/22/25: Is Socialism as Popular as the Media Think?
• 08/15/25: Save the Little Sisters of the Poor!
• 08/08/25: RFK Jr.'s War on Vaccines and Public Health Continues
• 08/01/25: Europe's Recognition of 'Palestine' Is a Cynical Joke
• 07/18/25: Legacy Media Still Covering for Biden
• 06/27/25: Trump Learned the Lessons of Iraq
• 05/30/25: We Have No Constitutional or Moral Duty to Subsidize Harvard
• 05/30/25: Welcome to the Intifada, America
• 05/16/25: Scapegoating Biden Isn't Going to Solve the Dems' Problems
• 05/09/25: The Pulitzer Prizes Have Become a Sad Joke
• 05/05/25: How Do You Do, Fellow White People? Tim Walz Says Hello!
• 04/25/25: Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes a Powerful Argument for School Choice
• 04/18/25: If Everyone Is an Expert, No One Is
• 03/31/25: The Left's Imaginary COVID 'Reckoning'
• 03/21/25: Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists -- Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
• 03/03/25: Mitch McConnell: A GOP Hall of Famer?
• 02/21/25: RFK's Dangerous Autism Lie
• 02/14/25: It's Time to End the EV Racket
• 02/07/25: If You Really Support Immigration, Stop Excusing Chaos
• 02/03/25: Trump's Gaza Proposal Makes Complete Sense
• 01/24/25: How Biden's Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power
• 01/17/25: Israel Makes a Deal With the Actual Devil
• 01/13/25: Why Javier Milei Matters
• 12/20/24: The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
• 12/13/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 12/09/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 11/08/24: Don't Trash the Constitution to Dunk on the Libs
• 11/08/24: This 'liberation' will NOT be reported
• 11/01/24: HARRIS Is the Bigger Threat to the Constitutional Order
• 09/20/24: Fact checked! Harris Is the Extremist
• 07/13/24: Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
• 07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
• 04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
• 03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
• 02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
• 02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
• 06/30/23: Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by 'Extreme Weather'
• 03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
• 01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
• 01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
• 04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
• 04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
• 04/01/22: Recuse Yourself, Joe Biden
• 03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
• 03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
• 01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
• 01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
• 01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
• 12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
• 12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
• 11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
• 10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
• 09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
• 09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
• 09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
• 08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
• 07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
• 06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
• 05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
• 04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
• 03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
• 03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
• 03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
• 03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
• 02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
• 02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
• 12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
• 10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
• 10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
• 09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
• 08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
• 08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
• 07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
• 07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
• 07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
• 06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
• 06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
• 06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
• 05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
• 05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
• 05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
• 05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?