This may be true in some cases. Maybe most cases.

But we know it wasn’t true with his early reversal on masks, and we know it wasn’t true with his later reversal on what share of the population would need to be immune in order to reach herd immunity.

How do we know? Because he admitted to having been deliberately deceptive for strategic reasons in both cases.

The well has been poisoned ever since. Anytime Fauci changes his mind on something, we’re left to wonder. Did he see some new data that altered his thinking?

Or is there some as-yet-unknown angle he’s working, to be acknowledged later only when he’s decided that it’s safe to trust the public with the truth? Watch, then read on.

MSNBC’s @NicolleDWallace scores the first interview w/ Fauci since his emails were made public and uses it to say: “The true mark of someone is if they look good even when their personal emails come out, so you pass the test very few of us would pass." pic.twitter.com/SNMXBrXm5v

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 2, 2021

More of the new Fauci emails are circulating online today. This one’s getting attention but ironically seems more likely to be an actual case of opinions changing as the data changed than a cover-up:

Scientist Kristian Anderson told Fauci SARS-CoV-2 has “unusual features” that “potentially look engineered”.

Not long after this email, the scientists authored a piece insisting the virus was natural and Fauci said the same publicly. This is a massive cover-up.

(Buzzfeed FOIA) pic.twitter.com/BD3OUzgDzR

— Sharri Markson (@SharriMarkson) June 2, 2021

The author, Kristian Andersen, did indeed co-author a study of SARS-CoV-2 that appeared six weeks later which declared, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” The study includes data which experts with the requisite training could scrutinize. And of course, other scientists with genomic know-how could always check Andersen’s work by examining the virus’s genome directly. The unsexy but probable explanation for Andersen’s change of heart after he emailed Fauci in early February was that, upon closer study, he found that the virus was similar to naturally occurring viruses after all.

This is one of the perils of trying to tease out what actually happened in Wuhan. It’s not a simple matter of the zoonotic theory versus the lab-leak theory. It’s more a matter of the zoonotic theory versus the lab-leak theory versus the maximalist “China was working on a bioweapon and there’s an international scientific effort to help the ChiComs cover that up for some reason” theory.

And a lot of people like that last theory because it’s very sexy. And takes China’s role in this from negligence or recklessness in failing to avert a lab accident to a world-historic case of malevolence. Sexy doesn’t mean it’s true, though.

Here’s another one that’s overblown:

Smart guy tries to warn Fauci the virus has gotten out of control, China lying about numbers.

Fauci’s response? Tl;dr pic.twitter.com/LShpSJb74I

— Dr. Benjamin Braddock (@GraduatedBen) June 2, 2021

Some who were emailing Fauci were total randos. Smart randos, obviously, but not people he knew, just people with their own theories about the virus, its origins, its spread, and so on. The day that he received that email, March 19, 2020, was when all hell was breaking loose in the U.S. The NBA had shut down the week before. Tom Hanks had tested positive for the virus. New York was about to become the global epicenter for COVID, with hundreds of deaths per day. Fauci was doubtless in meetings all day long and consulting with Trump and Pence on how to manage the U.S. response.

How much do we want to fault him for not carving out 10 minutes in the middle of that to read some guy’s theory of Beijing covering up its true death toll?

Anyway, hopefully more emails are coming. Maybe he’ll even acknowledge some of his deliberate deceptions in some of them, seeing as how he was conferring with colleagues instead of the public.