My (longish) thoughts on fauci.
1. We should all be cognizant that late in his career, he practiced about as much medicine as dr oz does now. He became an administrative bureaucrat…not that there’s anything wrong with that.
2. Somewhere along the way, dr fauci really came to love love love seeing himself on tv. I don’t say that based simply on the sheer volume of his appearances, but also based on his diaries and on accounts of people that know him and worked with him personally. Again some of that is part of the job, but for some people it becomes its own end. As I said earlier, vainglory. And vainglory never leads to anything good.
3. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Trump hitched his wagon to fauci at the beginning of the pandemic, to trade on his perceived credibility, when he thought this would all go away in a few months. I actually think Trump did ok in the beginning from a comms perspective and otherwise, but when it didn’t go away immediately, he did the worst thing possible, which was to try to turn it into a political election issue, which included kicking fauci to the curb.
4. I think it’s beyond ludicrous to suggest that fauci was some sort of bioterrorist. Now, might we have funded gof research in wuhan? Sure, but I dont really care if we did, as that might actually be information worth knowing something about from a public health perspective, and well, China is where every other ******* parasite comes from, whether it be a virus, kudzu, or a Chinese lanternfly, so why not there.
5. What I do fault fauci for, and this probably goes back a bit to number 1, is that it’s really bad science to become entrenched in your view and not modify it based on pretty easy observed change, and to trot out the usual playbook that science, in this case taking the form of vaccines, was the only way out. It was pretty clear, pretty early, that if it were as deadly and contagious as suggested, we’d all be dead. (Remember the sneeze blast radius videos?).
6. Ftr, I have no problem with vaccines and I got vaccinated, twice. But as a guy who works in the industry, I managed unknown risks by taking the vaccine that arose from the conventional platform. There are always side effects that emerge at the population level. Always. (Well eventually see them with glp1’s).
7. Now fast forward. I don’t really give a damn if he lied, as long as he didn’t do so under penalty of perjury. I also think given the way Covid became politicized, his pardon might have actually been pretty prudent, in the way that fords pardon of Nixon was prudent. Sometimes you just have to do what’s necessary to move on, and maybe particularly if not doing so could affect people’s willingness to manage crap like this in the future.
8. I am intrigued by the current contempt nonsense, but only in an semi-academic sense. I’m not sure I love the idea that the fifth amendment can be used (post pardon) to prevent someone from even setting a perjury trap (as opposed to springing one tied to a historical but immunized statement). That said, finance raised a good point that he does face theoretical state prosecution risk.