What Anthony Fauci's Defenders (and Critics) Get Wrong
His legacy is one of failure.
Anthony Fauci was back in the hot seat this week, facing a new round of grilling from Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The former coronavirus adviser is well aware that Republicans would like to hold him accountable for a variety of failings, and so he pleaded the Fifth Amendment, declining to answer any questions.
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That's understandable from Fauci's perspective, but it's a shame for the country. The public is owed answers to fundamental questions about the origins of COVID-19. Entries from Fauci's diary—published by Paul earlier this week, in advance of the hearing—reveal not-so-subtle discrepancies between Fauci's public and private statements regarding the theory that COVID-19 escaped from a lab. His diary also suggests that Fauci himself had described the U.S.-funded experiments conducted in Wuhan, China as "gain of function." This matters, since Fauci had previously testified before Congress that the U.S. did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan—a vital sticking point, since some scientists believe the molecular composition of COVID-19 looks like something cooked up in a lab.
In fact, Fauci solicited opinions from 12 other scientists as to the possibility of COVID-19 having originated as a result of U.S.-supported, gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan, China. In his diary, he notes that 10 of the 12 had serious concerns. Even so, Fauci steered the expert consensus toward an embrace of the animal spillover theory, which prompted mainstream media to demonize the lab leak theory. At one point, it was common for social media companies to proactively police pro-lab leak posts on Facebook and other platforms—a policy that seems utterly insane from the standpoint of 2026. Fauci's malfeasance helped bring about that act of censorship.
This is all fairly well understood by now, and yet Fauci still enjoys ironclad support from most members of the Democratic Party. Democratic senators used their time to castigate Paul for daring to malign Fauci and hailed him as an ideal public servant.
"Dr. Fauci is a deeply caring physician, a brilliant scientist, an extraordinary public servant, a humanitarian, & a patriot—whose work has helped save tens of millions of lives," wrote Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) on X.
Dr. Fauci is a deeply caring physician, a brilliant scientist, an extraordinary public servant, a humanitarian, & a patriot—whose work has helped save tens of millions of lives.
It is a shame to watch him be dragged in front of Congress in the name of bogus conspiracy theories.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) July 29, 2026
Like his defenders, Fauci's critics also occasionally engage in some hyperbole regarding his role in COVID-19. While Fauci's role in the funding of dangerous scientific research may be grounds for a criminal inquiry—it is a crime to lie to Congress—he can't be imprisoned for merely giving bad advice to Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The government cannot prosecute people for recommending policies that don't work out.
Yet it's important to underscore that much of Fauci's guidance was in fact quite bad. Many liberals continue to revere Fauci for the course he charted through COVID-19 and are in the habit of excusing his mistakes as unfortunate but necessary; this was a once-in-a-century pandemic, they say, and hindsight is 20/20. Maybe so, but if we can't criticize government advisers for being wrong about their specific area of expertise, then we can't criticize anyone.
And Fauci got a massive number of things wrong. He recommended lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, social distancing, and forced isolation. In blue states, Fauci's word was as good as law, and government officials militantly obeyed his guidance. Many red states, on the other hand, eventually told him to take a hike and reopened their economies. This provided a natural experiment, and one we now have the answer to: In the time period before the vaccine rollout, there was little difference in overall mortality between red states and blue states. In other words, vaccines made a difference—in that they made it much less likely that elderly, obese, and health-compromised Americans would suffer severe disease and death from COVID-19. There's not much evidence that the other mitigation efforts—mask mandates, lockdowns, social distancing—had a discernible impact on deaths.
That should be Fauci's legacy. He pushed the nation's leaders to implement heavy-handed social controls aimed at reducing the death toll of COVID-19, and these vexing, perplexing restrictions on personal freedom accomplished very little.
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