Initially I thought Fauci was great... And then not so much. Excerpts from the Journal editorial below the link. Turns out the Great Barrington Declaration got it right more than the government experts. And then there's this - Director of CDC says their response was botched
Here's the Journal this morning.
His long service is laudable, but his Covid legacy includes more public mistrust.
Anthony Fauci announced on Monday that he will step down from his National Institutes of Health leadership posts in December, and the fact that this is a major news story suggests the problem with his tenure. He became the main symbol of the rule by experts who imposed lockdowns on America and brooked no scientific debate on Covid.
Dr. Fauci has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, and his personal research contributions are impressive. He first became known to the public during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and his agency was an early backer of the mRNA technology that became the platforms for two Covid vaccines.
But the main legacy of his 38-year tenure will be as the public face of government during the Covid pandemic, for better and worse. His reassuring authority won acclaim in the early weeks of the pandemic as Americans struggled to make sense of the threat. “Fifteen days to slow the spread,” he famously said in March 2020, and the Trump Administration and America picked up his refrain.
The two weeks would stretch to two years. The uncertainties of the pandemic’s course weren’t his fault, but the certainty of his policy prescriptions certainly was.
He 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.
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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 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.
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“It’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous,” Dr. Fauci said last November, in a comment that summarizes the view of the public-health clerisy. The public is supposed to let a few powerful men and women define science and then impose their preferred policies and mandates on the country.
The costs of that mindset have been severe, and not merely economic. We know now that states that locked down fared no better, and sometimes worse, than those that didn’t. We also know that the vaccines, while invaluable against serious disease, don’t prevent the spread of Covid—even after multiple boosters. More honest candor would have been better for America’s trust in public-health authorities.
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