Fauci Hearing Reveals Covid Response Was About Politics, Not Science

House Republicans compelled Dr. Anthony Fauci to address inconsistencies in his approach to Covid-19 during his testimony on Monday morning before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The hearing marked Fauci’s first public appearance since announcing his retirement. Several committee members called for Fauci to face prosecution over the stringent and unsupported measures he advocated during the pandemic.

Leading the charge, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called for an investigation into Fauci’s role in creating and promoting unfounded restrictions during the pandemic.

“You know what this committee should be doing? We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene said. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci.”

Monday’s hearing highlighted the inconsistencies and questionable judgment calls made by Fauci during his tenure. It emphasized that the pandemic policies and regulations initiated by Fauci did not align with what the studies would have justified and demanded. Transcripts of Fauci’s January 2024 closed-door testimony, released over the weekend by Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, further outlined the failures of Fauci’s pandemic-era domestic policy.

Subcommittee members questioned Fauci on one of the most critical aspects of his Covid-19 stance — his opinion and handling of the lab leak theory. When asked about the lab leak theory in the January hearing, Fauci stated, “Well, it’s a possibility. I think people have made conspiracy aspects from it. And I think you have to separate the two when you keep an open mind, that it could be a lab leak or it could be a natural occurrence.”

In Monday’s public hearing, Fauci denied any attempts to downplay the theory.

“Do you agree that there was a push to downplay the lab leak theory?” Rep. Jim Jordan asked.

Fauci responded, “None on my part.”

Fauci’s response is troubling, given that in 2020 he used unconfirmed data to dismiss the lab leak theory — a theory now proven to have a solid scientific and factual basis and widely accepted by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Fauci’s role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his rise to power as the nation’s chief Covid expert granted him considerable authority. He used this authority to insist that lawmakers and the public trust his judgment on treatments, prevention, and the virus’ origin. Nonetheless, Democrats continue to lionize Fauci and criticize those who question him.

During Monday’s hearing, California Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia led Fauci into condemning alleged conspiracy theorists. He asked, “Do you think the American public should listen to America’s brightest and best doctors and scientists, or instead listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes?”

Fauci stated, “Listening to people who you just described is going to do nothing but harm people because they will deprive themselves of life-saving interventions. People who refuse to get vaccinated, for any variety of reasons, probably are responsible for an additional two to three hundred thousand deaths.”

Fauci continued to blame the unvaccinated even when his testimonies indicated his own culpability. A study from the National Institute of Health revealed, “After 9 months of follow-up, the cumulative risk of new SARS-CoV-2 infection was 21.8%, 22.0%, and 25.9%, respectively, among exposed to natural immunity, vaccine-induced immunity and unexposed.”

Despite these findings being published over a year ago, Fauci remained firm in both the January and June hearings that unvaccinated individuals are the issue. Fauci continues his crusade against the unvaccinated, as if the Covid-era fearmongering weren’t already damaging to national morale in 2020.

The subcommittee played a recording of Fauci, in which he claimed that all objections to coronavirus vaccinations could be resolved if corporate and government policies made it difficult for people to return to normalcy.

“It’s been proven that, when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullsh-t,” Fauci said in the recording.

Fauci has repeatedly changed his stance regarding the harmful policies he enforced and the rhetoric he spread while failing to take responsibility for his role in the American pandemic response. However, one consistent factor in the Fauci hearings was that politics, not science, dictated Covid-era policies. Fauci’s “expert” epidemiological opinion often lacked a research foundation.

Asked about social distancing rules, Fauci said, “You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever.”

When questioned if any studies supported that claim, he admitted no studies exist to justify it, adding that conducting such a study would be challenging.

Rep. Michael Cloud pressed Fauci in Monday’s hearing on the reasoning and effectiveness behind other Covid policies, such as school closings, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates.

Though Fauci struggled to justify these measures, he did say, “These were important when we were trying to stop the tsunami of deaths that were occurring early on. How long you kept them going is debatable.”

The push to implement and extend those policies stemmed from Fauci’s advice, which he seems to forget.

Congressman Rich McCormick, an emergency room physician and veteran, pressed Fauci on the dangers of his unfounded policy decisions and the rhetoric spread about doctors who treated Covid yet were ridiculed and silenced by the government.

“I’m being told by bureaucrats what’s right and wrong,” McCormick said. “And what’s funny is that everything I was censored on, I was proven to be right.”