Floridians gathered to protest Anthony Fauci’s two lectures at the acclaimed Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota Monday, in a two-part rally across southwest sections of the state. The event demonstrates increasing public skepticism about Covid lockdowns and Fauci, lockdowns’ foremost champion.
Fauci refused to make himself available to media at the Florida event, another reversal for the famous TV and publicity hound. While Fauci retired in 2022, his wife was recently laid off by the Trump administration’s cuts to Fauci’s former agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Five years on from unprecedented lockdowns, the evidence of their damage continues to grow. A new book documenting those harms for school children comes out on April 22.
The Florida event is the latest in a string of lectures Fauci is giving this spring to rehab his image and promote his book. Demonstrators held anti-Covid-vaccine posters just outside the building where the former NIAID director spoke before a sold-out crowd. One man in a Fauci mask wielded new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.”
In a parallel event dubbed “FreedomFest,” physicians, health freedom advocates, and community leaders spoke at Five Points Park, calling out the devastating directives that cost livelihoods, freedoms, and lives during the Covid outbreak under Fauci’s misguided leadership.
Keynote speaker Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo emphasized the importance of the grassroots effort to attendees. Called the “Anti-Fauci” by The New York Post in 2021, Ladapo has consistently stressed the value of data and preventive treatment, despite intense criticism and ridicule from left-leaning outlets.
“We were told some people are essential and some are not. We were told we couldn’t sit on the beach. We were told we couldn’t work independently with our physicians. It completely ruined everything we considered American,” said Michelle Pozzie, director of operations for Hollow Alliance and host of Open Mic on Patriot TV. “And you look at the driving force who pushed all of those policies, the driving force behind all of that was Anthony Fauci, and I didn’t elect him.”
Fauci’s “hero” persona couldn’t be a more false representation, said Kimberly Overton, an ICU nurse and founder of Nurse Freedom Network. She witnessed the weaponization of public health during the lockdowns and promoted the Sarasota event.
Fauci not only misled the American public, but pushed policies that caused irreparable harm to individuals, families, and public trust in medicine, Overton said in an email. Rather than face accountability, Fauci’s speaking tour is an attempt to rewrite history and falsify his legacy, she said.
The event was sponsored by Vic Mellor’s health non-profit, We the People Health and Wellness Center. Mellor, a well-known local philanthropist and retired Marine, created a haven in the state for physicians who refused to follow abusive government and business directives and treated patients independently during lockdowns. His “medical freedom” sanctuary, The Hollow, drew patients and physicians seeking health freedom during national closures and censorship and has grown from a 10- to 40-acre retreat space.
Mellor now runs his clinic and advocates for truth in what he calls today’s “media war.” He said he sees the paid Fauci event as disappointing, but also as an opportunity to expose the former presidential advisor. Pozzie called the event a “collaboration of groups, organizations, and businesses who are like-minded that we as citizens must have the loudest voice in our government, the way people are elected and the way our government works.”
“If the city is going to bring him in and give him accolades, we want to present the other side of the coin,” Pozzie said.