Anthony Fauci, objectively, did a bad job: Media coverage of his book has fallen short of engaging with his actions/ words

Is it too much to ask for journalists to be journalists?

There are extreme views about Anthony Fauci, and some consider him a devil or a saint. He is now making the rounds in the media, discussing his new book, and defending his COVID19 policy choices.

Almost no one has appraised him accurately. By that I mean, given the information he had at the time (and not judging in retrospect or utilizing ad hominem), what did he do correctly and what did he do incorrectly? I will provide 12 examples of his policy decisions to build the case, that, objectively, he did a bad job.

1. Masking. Fauci has made many problematic statements to the American people on masks. According to Fauci, he lied initially (saying cloth masks don’t work), to protect the health care worker supply, but later told the truth: when he endorsed community cloth masking. Of course, his endorsement of community cloth masking was incorrect. Not merely in retrospect, but based on all available data at that time (the 2020 Cochrane review establishes that). Cloth masking simply does not work. Fauci’s story is also problematic as cloth masking would never have disrupted the health care worker supply (it’s cloth, after all). Worst, although Fauci was director of NIAID, and controlled a 5 billion dollar research budget, he commissioned precisely 0 randomized studies of masking— not in the community, not in health care facilities— not cloth vs nothing, not n95 vs kf94— not adults or kids. He failed to generate any evidence, and merely made louder assertions in the media. He currently is incorrect to claim there was no equipoise to study masking in kids. Given divergent guidance from Europe and US, there was.

2. Fauci repeatedly said that people who had already had COVID19 benefit from vaccination. Again, with his NIAID budget, he could have commissioned a randomized trial testing this question. He never did so. It is unlikely they benefit with respect to hard endpoints (hospitalization or death).

3. Fauci supported vaccine mandates AFTER he had evidence that vaccines could not halt transmission. This displaced many employees from the work force, and is not consistent with medical ethics— you can’t compel a medical intervention unless its benefits on third parties exceed the harm of loss of autonomy. Worse, the policy targeted low risk individuals <65 yo (in the work force), and not older, un-immune individuals.

4. Fauci defends his decision to close schools in March 2020, but omits the fact that Sweden never did. He did not follow or learn from Swedish data in the spring of 2020. He did not support rapid reopening. In fact he repeatedly went on TV in the Spring of 2020 to criticize Ron DeSantis for reopening. While Europe largely reopened by fall 2020, many US schools did not till fall 2021.

   

5. Fauci repeated the 6ft social distancing advice, while now admitting it never had scientific basis. Again, although he was NIAID director, he commissioned 0 randomized trials testing any variation in distancing or cohorting.

6. Fauci refused to engage with critics of his policy positions. When the Great Barrington Declaration authors opposed lockdowns, he did not reach out to engage them or set up dialog. Instead, he coordinated with Francis Collins to disparage them in the media.

7. Fauci now claims that lab leak was a real possibility, while at the time working with scientists to create the illusion of consensus it was not. This was a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people. Even Zeynep, who was spectacularly wrong about masking, agrees in the NYTimes:

Joseph Marine puts it well

8. Fauci repeatedly lied to Congress about NIAID funding coronavirus research aimed to increase pathogenicity of the virus in Wuhan. He just referred to one scientist who suggests lab leak is possible as “fuzzy”. He continues to disparage rather than engage with critics.

   

9. Fauci failed to read or understand the results of EPIC-SR which suggest this claim is about as true as a person who slaughters a goat and thinks it kept him out of the hospital

10. Fauci did not support randomized trials of kids covid shots powered for clinical endpoints. Instead, he supported a protocol amendment to a trial that sought to estabilish non-inferior Ab titers. This is scientifically incorrect. Protocol amendment should have been disallowed.

11. This was wrong at the time. Delaying dose 2 would save many lives. Many people said so, and this was UK policy.

12. Fauci was wrong about the risk of J&J, and I predicted at the time it would be withdrawn, and finally both companies folded their programs for adenoviral vector vaccines

These 12 examples are ones where Fauci was wrong with readily available information at the time, or did not embody principles of open scientific exchange, or failed to conduct necessary experiments to reduce uncertainty. As such, his overall performance is grade D-/F. Journalists should consider learning about these issues and asking harder questions