EDITORIAL: We followed science and got a little lost

It seems Fauci was as concerned about his media stardom as he was with the virus.

Published Aug 02, 2026  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

Former NIH Director Anthony Fauci listens during a hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29, 2026 in Washington. Photo by Anna Moneymaker /Getty Images

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The release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 diaries and his testimony — or lack thereof — to a Senate committee has been disturbing. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 50 times under questioning from senators.

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This has added fuel to the fire for those who believe the response to the pandemic was woefully overwrought.

As we sat on our couches watching Netflix, we were told to “follow the science” as Fauci became the face of the U.S. response to COVID-19. His pronouncements were akin to Moses being handed the Ten Commandments. He was infallible. Except he wasn’t.

It seems Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, was as concerned about his media stardom as he was with the virus.

“The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,” he wrote in his diary in the early depths of the pandemic in May 2020.

“It is not without hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked-about person in the country and one of the most recognizable (people) in the world.”

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While he preened about conversations with celebrities, his diaries reveal he was less than forthcoming about COVID’s source. While he publicly dismissed the Wuhan lab leak theory, privately he acknowledged it was the likely cause.

He dismissed the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration — from three highly regarded academics from the U.K. and the U.S. — who said lockdowns were causing societal harm. They said a better way forward would be to protect only those at greatest risk.

This is like the way politicians in the U.K. ignored warnings about the vaccination of healthy children.

Dr. Ros Jones, convenor of the Children’s COVID Vaccines Advisory Council, wrote in her statement to Britain’s COVID inquiry that there was “never any justification for authorizing or recommending the use in healthy children of novel technology gene-based vaccines with no long-term safety data.

“To give such vaccines to children for the possible protection of vulnerable adults is a clear breach of our ethical duty,” she said. Her evidence wasn’t published in the report.

COVID was devastating and left deep societal and medical scars on communities. We followed the science. Sometimes it led us astray.

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