The media made Fauci a saint, and has not held him accountable to the American people

One cardiologist reflects

Clearly, community masking does not work— that was the Conclusion of the 2020 Cochrane report and my conclusion, when my colleagues and I reviewed the evidence in 2020.

School closure was not appropriate for sars-cov-2 and pre-pandemic guidance explicitly called against closure under COVID-like circumstances (i.e. a disease not very lethal to kids). Lab leak remains the likely possibility. The authors of Great Barrington Declaration were largely correct about the failures of lockdown, and the need for young people to resume life. Vaccines should have been tested to see if they halt transmission in RCT, and never mandated to young people. Herd immunity was not possible, and the reason coronavirus vaccines were not developed pre-pandemic was fear that the virus would rapidly escape any vaccine—- which is what has happened repeatedly. Finally, people who have had COVID have never been proven to benefit from additional doses of vax, and this runs counter to basic principles in immunology.

Yet, on all these fronts, Anthony Fauci made false or exaggerated claims, and, on some occasions, lied.

The real question is: why did the media not push back. Dr. Marine, offers one explanation

Dr. Marine is correct. Any journalist will tell you that technical issues don’t sell, stories sell. We need heroes and villains. Trump is the villian, and Fauci is the hero. The puff pieces and constant media interviews turned Fauci into a saint. The person for whom we make bobble head dolls.

And yet, this adoration was precisely what we did not need. Instead we needed careful questions and accountability. Fauci supported the policy of masking 2 year olds. This harmful measure was in part driven by his fabrications and misstatement of mask literature. The media has never asked him critically why he pushed cloth masking toddlers except when they nap.

The media has largely failed to hold Fauci accountable. Hopefully, we get more balanced journalism in the years to come.