Dr Anthony Fauci is an American hero. He has dedicated his life and time to medicine and finding ways to stop disease. His actions during the AIDS crisis in the 1980's helped to wake up this country to a deadly disease and deserve a national award. Actually, I'm pretty sure he got a few awards for that work. He helped to keep a lid on the Ebola epidemic back in 2014. Then Zika in 2016. The man is a national treasure, and to see one of our political parties, the one that has rotted from within, try to insult and somehow pin the COVID epidemic on Dr Fauci is surreal in the extreme.
We have got to do better than this. The GOP...people....are better than this. They have to be. Why they are using their power to attack a man who has dedicated his life to serving this country is beyond me and is one of the ugliest things yet from the GOP. Is there worse to come?
The essay below is from Sean Lobdell, another regular American who has decided to stand up and be heard.
Watching the Fauci pile-on this week, I keep thinking America has become very good at misplacing its rage.
I support Dr. Fauci.
That does not mean every COVID policy was perfect. It does not mean every mandate was wise. It does not mean every school closure, mask rule, workplace requirement, or public message aged well. Some people were hurt by vaccine complications. Some people lost jobs. Some families were squeezed by policies that felt blunt, confusing, and sometimes cruel.
All of that deserves an honest accounting.
But that is not what the Fauci circus is giving us.
Rand Paul finally got his hearing, dragged Fauci in, read from his pandemic diaries, made the usual accusations, and then acted shocked when Fauci took the Fifth in a room built to trap him politically and possibly legally.
The MAGA crowd instantly screamed, “Guilty.”
Interesting standard from the same movement built around a man who took the Fifth more than 400 times and then called it smart.
COVID broke something in this country, and a lot of people still have not dealt with it honestly.
So now they need a villain with glasses.
That is easier than remembering the hospitals. Easier than remembering exhausted nurses. Easier than remembering families saying goodbye on iPads. Easier than remembering refrigerated trucks outside morgues. Easier than admitting that a real virus killed more than 1.2 million Americans while the country argued with itself like a drunk family at Thanksgiving.
Fauci did not create that grief.
He stood in front of it.
Was he perfect? Of course not. Nobody who worked through COVID was. The science changed. The virus changed. The guidance changed. Sometimes the messaging was awful. Sometimes the confidence was stronger than the evidence. We should study all of that without worshipping anyone.
But the Facebook version is ridiculous.
Fauci killed people. Fauci made millions. Fauci invented the virus. Fauci forced every shot. Fauci controlled every employer, every governor, every school board, every hospital, every airline, every pharmacy, every mask sign at every stupid grocery-store entrance in America.
Come on.
At some point, conspiracy becomes a way to avoid adult memory.
Trump was president when COVID hit. Trump ran the White House briefings. Trump had the task force. Trump backed Operation Warp Speed. Trump wanted credit for the vaccines when they sounded like a win, then watched his own people turn them into poison once resentment became more useful than pride.
Funny how that part keeps getting deleted from the family album.
And the money claims are always the same swampy mess. NIH royalty transparency is a fair issue. If government scientists or agencies had conflicts, investigate them. Release records. Tighten rules. I am all for it.
But saying Fauci personally made millions from COVID vaccine companies because he pushed shots is a serious accusation. Bring proof.
Not a meme. Not a podcast clip. Not some guy in sunglasses yelling from a truck. Actual proof.
The same people who demand evidence for every Trump scandal somehow accept “Fauci got rich killing people” if the font is angry enough.
That is the part that gets me.
They do not want a pandemic review. They want a ritual. They want someone to punish so they can stop thinking about the mess, the fear, the death, the mistakes, and the way their own side turned public health into a loyalty test.
And yes, vaccine injuries deserve honesty. People with real complications should not be mocked, ignored, or buried under statistics. They deserve care and answers.
But millions of people also survived because science moved fast. Vaccines reduced severe illness. Doctors and nurses saved lives. Researchers worked around the clock. Public health people took death threats while trying to make decisions in fog, pressure, politics, and panic.
There is a difference between reviewing mistakes and trying to jail the nearest scientist because five years of memes taught people where to point.
I watched people online this week call Fauci a murderer while defending Trump’s grift, Trump’s war, Trump’s pardons, Trump’s lies, Trump’s corruption, Trump’s cruelty, and Trump’s daily attempt to turn public office into a personal cash machine.
Apparently expertise is tyranny, but a con man selling coins from the White House is freedom.
That is where part of the country has landed.
So yes, investigate the pandemic response. Investigate the origin. Investigate the funding. Investigate the mandates. Investigate the communications failures. Investigate every agency, every contract, every conflict, every political decision that made things worse.
Do it seriously.
But if the whole argument is “Fauci took the Fifth, therefore throw him in jail,” spare me the courtroom cosplay.
We lost more than a million Americans. We owe them something better than Rand Paul’s theater, Trump’s amnesia, and Facebook epidemiologists who think punctuation is optional but criminal prosecution should be immediate.
Fauci is not the reason COVID became a national trauma.
He is just the man a broken political movement needs to blame so it never has to look in the mirror.
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