It also turns out that Dr. Fauci was indeed misleading his audience when he rebutted Senator Rand Paul’s assertion that the National Institutes of Health and the NIAID were funding controversial gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Fauci took these as personal attacks and returned in kind, saying that Rand Paul didn’t know what he was talking about and that he resented Paul’s allegedly false assertions, which he said led to threats and nonsense. Fauci accused Paul of lying. A letter released by NIH this week confirms that in fact the NIH did, through a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in China. The next obvious question is on your mind — did the U.S. fund the creation of the virus that escaped the lab? — but people are still too afraid to ask it directly.
The Fauci effect, if it exists, turns out to be one of corrosion of trust in our institutions. It is the faith, shared by millions of Americans, that whatever the appointed experts are denouncing as a conspiracy theory is likely to be the conventional wisdom in six months or a year. Hardly any parents are vaccinating their children against Covid, despite recommendations from the FDA and some local mandates. Vax skepticism is up more generally after millions of people took a vaccine, or lost a job for not taking one — on the premise that taking the vaccine would significantly reduce spread.
Dr. Fauci misunderstood his role in a self-governing republic. His role was not to lead the national pandemic response, but to advise a self-governing people. Instead, thinking they were too stupid to lead themselves, he sought to manipulate them into the right behavior. He thereby brought expertise itself into disrepute. The Fauci effect was to destroy public health for a generation.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member