Commentary
“I think there’s no doubt that we are and have been undercounting” the number of COVID-19 deaths, Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters on May 9. On the other hand, when it comes to the origin of the pandemic, Fauci harbors plenty of doubts and uncertainties.
“What is your opinion on how COVID became so well adapted to humans?” Margaret Brennan of CBS News asked Fauci, on March 28. “You know, Margaret, that’s an argument that goes back and forth,” said Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. “A very plausible explanation for this is that this virus jumped from an animal host, a bat to maybe an intermediate host and then to a human.”
The “other theory” is that the virus “accidentally escaped” from “a lab.” As Fauci concluded, “I think the most likely one that in nature, in the wild, it adapted itself.” No word from the NIAID boss about dangerous “gain of function” research.
According to the Office of Science Policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), gain of function research can “enhance the pathogenicity or transmissibility of potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs)” and that can raise “biosafety and biosecurity concerns.” In 2012, Fauci cited the risks of such research, wondering, “what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?”
The NIH banned gain of function research in 2014 but revived it in 2017 with no objection from Fauci. His NIAID also funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Communist China, where gain of function research could be conducted in secret, with no accountability, and which received shipments of deadly pathogens from a lab in Canada.
Fauci’s August 2020 “Emerging Pandemic Diseases: How We Got to COVID-19” paper, co-authored with adviser Dr. David Morens, does not probe the dangers of gain of function research and its possible role in the pandemic. The paper does call for “strengthening the United Nations and its agencies, particularly the World Health Organization.” That is not a scientific statement, and neither was the claim the virus somehow “adapted itself” to humans.
Fauci earned a medical degree in 1966 but his bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. Strictly speaking, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden is not a virologist. The late Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel prize for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), believed Fauci should not even be a government bureaucrat. Mullis, who earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from UC Berkeley, contended that Fauci “doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.”
Mullis contributed a foreword to “Inventing the AIDS Virus“ by UC Berkeley molecular biology professor Peter Duesberg, whose media appearances Fauci blocked. As Michael Fumento showed in ”The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS,” Fauci was wrong that AIDS would ravage the nation. Even so, Fauci duly continued at the helm of NIAID.
In early 2020, Fauci recommended the destructive lockdowns that crushed the powerful Trump economy and infringed on Americans’ constitutional rights. Fauci shied away from hard scientific data and instead leaned on computer models, a trend that continues in 2021.
“Sometimes the models are right on line. Sometimes they’re a bit off,” said Fauci when he proclaimed “no doubt” that COVID-19 deaths had been undercounted. Fauci provided no data on co-morbidities, and he has declined to comment on needless deaths caused by politicians forcing elderly patients into nursing homes.
With a University of Washington analysis estimating 900,000 COVID-19 deaths, Fauci showed little, if any, lamentation for the massive loss of life. For Biden’s top medical adviser, that is not a new development.
As Raymond S. Greenberg explains at Historynet.com, the mid-1960s were the days of “a compulsory draft of American physicians,” to serve in military hospitals in Vietnam. Instead of attending wounded American soldiers, Fauci took one of the few alternatives, the clinical associate program at the National Institutes of Health.
Those doctors became known as “yellow berets,” the opposite numbers of the special forces Green Beret troops in Vietnam. As Fauci told Greenberg, the yellow beret tag was “very much derogatory,” because those who declined to serve in military hospitals had a “cushy job” at the NIH. Fifty-three years later Fauci’s job is as cushy as it gets.
With a salary of $417,608, more than the president of the United States, Fauci is America’s highest paid bureaucrat. Fauci’s NIAID now boasts a budget of more than $6 billion, an increase of 3.1 percent from the previous fiscal year. In effect, Dr. Anthony Fauci is a powerful politician who never has to face the voters. If embattled Americans perceive that as white coat supremacy, then it would be hard to blame them.
Lloyd Billingsley is the author of “Yes I Con: United Fakes of America,” “Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation,” “Hollywood Party,” and other books. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Frontpage Magazine, City Journal, The Wall Street Journal, and American Greatness. Billingsley serves as a policy fellow with the Independent Institute.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
