The recent release of Dr Anthony Fauci’s diary, emails and text messages, and his selectively muted appearance on 29th July before a US Senate hearing on the origins of Covid-19, have animated those few of us who remain embittered by the Covid pandemic experience.
As a bona fide US citizen, Fauci repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution— whereby a witness cannot be compelled to potentially incriminate themselves through answering questions. Unintentionally, “America’s Doctor” appears to have parodied the medical heuristic that silence is golden, sage advice which is meant as an injunction for doctors to give patients time and space to speak in the consulting room, not to remain silent when in court. Dr Fauci’s sudden bout of omertà has earned him a referral to the Department of Justice for possible contempt of Congress.
Fauci parodied the doctors’ heuristic that silence is golden, which is meant for the consulting room, not the courtroom.
At heart, it is alleged that as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Fauci helped fund gain-of-function research on coronaviruses undertaken by US and Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and it is further alleged that said bioengineering was the real origin of the Covid-19 pandemic: this is the so-called “lab-leak” hypothesis. It contrasts with the widely and aggressively propagated zoonotic “wet market” hypothesis for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Such was the propaganda for the wet market hypothesis that it not only became the accepted narrative, but even to question it publicly just a few years ago would be to risk ridicule and social death, as not only a conspiracy theorist, but also a racist. I shall leave it to the sophisticated reader to make their own mind up whether claiming the source of a disease is from advanced biotechnology used by Chinese researchers, or from the food preparation habits of their compatriots, is the more racist accusation.
Is claiming the source of a disease is from advanced biotechnology used by Chinese researchers, or from the food preparation habits of their compatriots, the more racist accusation?
Perhaps neither is the true origin, and perhaps both hypotheses carry unsavory Yellow Peril undertones, but intriguingly Fauci’s former senior aide at NIAID, Dr David Morens, has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the USA by concealing records related to research grants on coronaviruses at the WIV. “Conspiracy” means Morens was not acting alone, and he is likely going to talk as part of a plea bargain. Fauci is so far not directly implicated and is not one of the unnamed co-conspirators of the charge Dr Morens faces. At all events, Fauci has already been given a preemptive federal pardon, backdated to 2014, by outgoing former President of the United States Joe Biden, so the charges against Morens may turn out to be irrelevant.
What is certain is that Fauci served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump (2016-2020) and as Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden during the Covid-19 pandemic (January 2021- December 2022). As I and others have argued, it was social retreat that gave the green light for authorities to push through draconian state coercive measures. If there had been no retreat of society, the response likely would have been very different, so there are plenty of failures to apportion around. Yet it is unquestionable that Fauci was a preeminent authority not just in the US, but for the global Covid response. He and other international key opinion leaders are largely responsible for generating and handing down the received wisdom that lockdown, business and school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and so forth, were “settled science” rather than a reckless social experiment. Which, lest we forget, authorities introduced piecemeal as temporary measures to flatten the curve.
Fauci and other international key opinion leaders are largely responsible for generating and handing down the received wisdom that lockdowns were “settled science” to flatten the curve.
Fauci’s private diary, made public by Senator Rand Paul, reveals him as bureaucrat adept at playing the political game and besotted with his nascent celebrity. Many of his journal entries and text exchanges with colleagues do not marry with his public pronouncements on the “settled science”. Much has already been written, in eye-watering detail, about what Fauci really thought, so here I will only remark that the portrait which emerges from this diary is of a vainglorious doctor accustoming himself to noble lies so eagerly that he resembles more a Pinocchio than a Plato.
Predictably the discourse has cleaved along culture-war lines. Personally, I found Fauci’s Senate testimony and haranguing by Republicans a circus. Unbridled anger and grandstanding may have made some Senators feel righteous, but it will likely lead to entrenchment of views rather than help build a space for contrition. Solely focusing on Fauci also risks excusing politicians, including Republicans, who elevated him and other Public Health figures to such a position of authority in the first place. On cue, Fauci’s defenders and most of the liberal media that championed lockdown have continued to circle the wagons.
Whatever the origin of SARS-CoV-2, some level of accountability for the disastrous Covid response is direly needed, yet does not feel any closer. Most of the key players remain in positions of power, and the scale of institutional abuse was so massive, and so pervasive in nearly every sector of society, that it is still too much for many to even contemplate, let alone reckon with. Depressingly, historical medical scandals such as Tuskegee, Thalidomide, lobotomies, or even more recent examples such as Vioxx, the opioid crisis or the NHS contaminated blood scandal, show that it can take years, or even decades, before medical and state institutions publicly face up to what has been common knowledge for some time.
The scale of institutional abuse was too large for many to even contemplate, let alone reckon with.
Duty of candor is a worthy ideal intended to maintain trust in the medical profession when things go wrong. It acknowledges the inherent asymmetry of information and power within all physician-patient relationships (including when physicians are attending entire populations). With trust in the medical establishment in tatters, now would be a good time for those who are accountable for the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic to start practicing what all competent doctors do when challenged by difficult patients—not just simply shut up, but also listen.
