In the 1978 comedy Animal House, the character Flounder is distressed to find his 1964 Lincoln Continental badly wrecked following a string of hijinks with his fraternity brothers .
A friend jokingly consoles the blubbering Flounder, telling him, “You f***ed up. You trusted us.”
JUST AS HE MAKES HIS REELECTION ANNOUNCEMENT, BIDEN APPROVAL HITS ALL-TIME LOWThe line was meant as a joke, a bit of tongue-in-cheek ribbing for the role Flounder’s fraternity brothers played in the trashing of his car. It’s a perfectly outrageous thing to say in a perfectly outrageous comedy. It’s funny because it’s a sentiment that should never be uttered in sincerity. Certainly, one wouldn’t dare to use it as a real-life defense for the mismanagement of a real-life public health debacle.
But this is exactly what we got this week from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who, more than anyone else in public health, is responsible for the federal government’s ham-handed, dimwitted, and completely backward response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He really suggested — in all sincerity — that it’s your own damn fault for taking him seriously.
More disturbing than Fauci’s absurd and self-serving defense for his garbage "leadership," however, is the rise of the bureaucratic state that empowered him in the first place and continues — to this day — to shield him from responsibility. Incompetence and bureaucracy are both bad, yes, but one is far more pernicious and permanent than the other. So, while Fauci may be a miserable little mistake of a public official, he’s merely the symptom of a far worse disease.
And make no mistake about it: Fauci is responsible for what happened during those very, very stupid years. He directed and advised the governmentwide response under both then-President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. His word was practically gospel (the Fauci votive candles certainly seem to support this point). But you try telling a man chronically incapable of introspection and humility, a man who quite literally believes he is Science, that he bears responsibility for misdirecting the federal government during the pandemic and, well, good luck.
“When people say, ‘Fauci shut down the economy’ — it wasn’t Fauci,” Fauci told the New York Times in April, referring to himself for some reason in the third person. “The C.D.C. was the organization that made those recommendations. I happened to be perceived as the personification of the recommendations.”
Fauci continued:
I mean, anybody who thinks that what we or anybody else did was perfect is not looking at reality. Nothing was done perfectly. But what I can say is that, at least to my perception, the emphasis strictly on the science and public health — that is what public-health people should do. I’m not an economist. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not an economic organization. The surgeon general is not an economist. So we looked at it from a purely public-health standpoint. It was for other people to make broader assessments — people whose positions include but aren’t exclusively about public health. Those people have to make the decisions about the balance between the potential negative consequences of something versus the benefits of something.
He added, “But show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other.”
Unfortunately, this sort of arrogance and gaslighting is typical for Fauci, who revealed himself long ago to be a liar and an outright partisan. The sheer outrageousness of his self-serving comments is likewise typical.
One of Fauci’s many public spars with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) proves as much. During one of the earlier congressional hearings on the pandemic, Paul warned of nationwide school closings in 2020, saying, “If we keep kids out of school for another year, what’s going to happen is the poor and underprivileged kids who don’t have a parent that’s able to teach them at home will not get to learn for a full year.”
“As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci,” Paul continued, “I don’t think you’re the end all. I don’t think you’re the one person who gets to make the decision.”
In response, Fauci shot back, “I’m a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice on the best scientific evidence.”
He added that officials should not be “cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects” of COVID-19.
And who could forget Fauci’s delirious declaration that he was a martyr for “science”?
“They’re really criticizing science because I represent science,” he said in 2021, referring to his conservative critics. "That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me. I’m not going to be around here forever, but science is going to be here forever. And if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society long after I leave. And that’s what I worry about.”
It's quite a thing, juxtaposing these earlier remarks with the ones he made in April to the New York Times. From “I am the science” to “You f***ed up. You trusted me” in just a few short years.
The amazing thing is that Fauci almost certainly doesn’t see the contradiction or preposterousness of his shifting positions, from claiming his was the only opinion that mattered, asserting he was really more of a bystander. He really is that in love with his own image. To Fauci, Fauci can do no wrong.
Elsewhere in the New York Times interview, Fauci casually admits that mandated masking, which he aggressively advocated, was mostly useless insofar as preventing the spread of COVID-19 is concerned. “From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level,” he said, “masks work at the margins — maybe 10%.” It would’ve been nice of him to let parents and schools know this back when it mattered, back when he actively fought to keep schools closed all while promoting lockdown and masking culture.
As bad as Fauci’s revisionism and total lack of character are, what’s far more disturbing than one supremely incompetent government apparatchik is the bureaucratic state that made his reign of error possible. It’s one thing to suffer the indignity of incompetent leadership. It’s another thing entirely to suffer the existence of an entrenched bureaucracy, vested with enormous powers, insulated from outside scrutiny and criticism by elite political and media institutions — one whose leaders can defer responsibility and absolve themselves of wrongdoing simply by rewriting history. The former we can do away with with relative ease. The latter, well, not so much.
Fauci will ride off into the sunset, a supposed hero with a hefty retirement pension estimated at around $350,000 tucked away in his pocket. He will continue to give self-serving interviews, rewriting the history of the pandemic. There will be no lessons learned from those few years. There will be no recriminations for Fauci’s disastrous “leadership,” even despite the long-term damage he caused.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICABecket Adams is a columnist for the Washington Examiner and National Review. He is also the program director of the National Journalism Center.