Three COVID-19 questions Dr. Fauci needs to answer

Uprisings in China against the failed "Zero COVID" strategy pushed Dr. Anthony Fauci's retirement from the headlines, but the two events are interconnected. Despite never having been elected to anything, the 81-year-old Fauci has imposed his iron will on Americans for nearly three years. After a half century on the taxpayer dole, he has become highest-paid employee in the federal government, overseeing the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and its $6 billion budget.

The incoming House Republican majority would be wise to shed light on Fauci’s efforts to undermine the practice of medicine during the pandemic. Here are three specific areas worthy of investigation.

First, get to the bottom of the mask masquerade. During his final press conference, Fauci stressed the importance of facial accessories by cracking a joke about "looking terrific." Early in the pandemic, he was singing a different tune, acknowledging in private emails, "the typical mask you buy at a drug store is not really effective at keeping out a virus."

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Less than a year later, Fauci was calling double masking "common sense." Even last week while sitting for a deposition brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, Fauci implored a court reporter to don a mask after sneezing – despite not being able to name a single study supporting their use. This in November 2022, more than two months after President Joe Biden declared the pandemic "over."

Second, explore Fauci's constant shifting of the goalposts with COVID-19 vaccines. Alongside Biden, Fauci has become the face of the vaccine push. In fact, his parting words were a final plea to "get your updated COVID-19 shot." Never did he offer a shred of remorse for all his failed claims about the efficacy of the vaccines.

In December 2020, Fauci marveled at the purported 90% efficacy rate of the Pfizer vaccine, heralding the development as "just extraordinary." As the pandemic wore on and "breakthrough cases" became the new norm, Fauci shifted to, "even if a vaccine fails to protect against infection, it often protects against serious disease." In May 2021, he referred to vaccinated people as "dead end to the virus." Today, as Fauci continues his push for more and more boosters unabated, even the New York Times is publishing stories carrying headlines such as, "Will COVID boosters prevent another wave? Scientists aren’t so sure." Vaccinated Americans accounted for a majority of COVID-19 deaths for the first time in August.

Making matters worse was Fauci’s relentless disinformation campaign against the use of safe, effective re-purposed generic drugs in favor of high-priced, patented pharmaceutical products. Fauci dismissed critics as opponents of science, even at one point claiming to represent science itself. Yet when data have countered his preferred narrative, science has faced no greater foe than Dr. Anthony Fauci.

For example, Fauci denigrated ivermectin, a readily available over-the-counter drug that has proven effective as a COVID-19 treatment, despite his and the media’s constant citing of less than five of the 93 controlled trials in order to claim that ivermectin is ineffective. Ditto with hydroxychloroquine, labeled as "dangerous" with "toxic" side effects, according to Fauci, who has provided no evidence to support his claims despite an even larger evidence base in support. Or fluvoxamine, another cost-effective generic drug that decreased COVID-19 hospitalizations and death in randomized-controlled trials published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet.

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The fact is the FDA Emergency Use Authorization could only be granted for expensive new pharma treatments and vaccines if there were no alternatives – so Fauci did his part to ensure alternatives were discredited.

Finally, as the Chinese people revolt against their government’s draconian measures, the American public deserves to know exactly which elements Fauci borrowed from the Chinese Communist Party playbook. In 2020, Fauci described himself as "very impressed" with how the "Chinese were handling the isolation." Before long, social distancing became a way of life here in America. So, too, were mandated testing and periods of isolation.

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Thankfully, we have not yet experienced a single incident on par with the Xinjiang apartment fire that killed 10 people, including three children. Even as Fauci slinks to the exit, the untold collective impact of his misguided policies will be felt for generations. People deserve to know if our government was following the lead of the CCP. Even today, Fauci is leaving the door open to future school closures. The administration in which he serves refuses to speak out against brutal Chinese lockdown policies.

It’s possible we have not seen the last of Fauci. He has pledged to cooperate with Republican investigations. Let’s hope his enthusiasm for congressional inquiries is on par with fawning long-form mainstream media interviews. The new Congress was elected in part to provide oversight, not for the sake of embarrassment or public humiliation, but to better avoid falling down the path during the next public health crisis. Let’s hope they heed that mandate.

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