By Judson Berger
Friday, July 31, 2026
“Anthony Fauci’s diary” is not a phrase we had on our
bingo card. But published entries from his personal, voluminous notes prompted
yet more recriminations this week over the Covid era’s excesses and deceptions.
The famous immunologist, frustratingly but predictably, invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions
Wednesday when he appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee led by Rand Paul, who released the documents.
The Covid czar cited the senator’s “unhinged obsession with me” and the
possibility of being prosecuted for perjury. The senator accused the Covid czar
of myriad contradictions and peppered him with questions on gain-of-function
research and more, to no avail (Paul is planning a contempt vote in committee
next week).
Indeed, there is plenty to get spun up about. As National Review’s editorial summarizes, though Fauci
insisted he was not responsible for strict lockdown policies at the state and
local level, the notes say he convinced the mayor of New York City to “close
the NYC schools” and pressed him to “close the bars and restaurants.” He “had a
similar call” with a top California official. Fauci seemed to revel in his own rising fame and the media attention that came with it. At a
time when the so-called lab-leak theory was often downplayed or dismissed,
Fauci wrote early on that a Chinese wet market was “not the source, it was the
amplifier.” As Jim Geraghty recalls, Fauci’s “public comments throughout
2020 emphasized the likelihood of a ‘natural origin’ and rejected the notion
that the virus could have leaked from a lab.”
This follows a separate document dump of messages showing
that scientists at the time were not nearly as confident in ruling out a lab leak as they
seemed.
And yet, I’m afraid these developments will simply be
absorbed into the cyclone of unresolved angst over the pandemic. I still think those awaiting a Covid reckoning will do so
indefinitely, and not just because Fauci pleaded the Fifth.
Similar revelations have been delivered piecemeal for
years, without making much impact. In 2023, former NIH head Francis Collins acknowledged that public health officials
took a “narrow view” by placing all emphasis on stopping the disease and saving
lives and “zero” on the disruption to lives, businesses, and students’
education, an approach he called a “mistake” in hindsight. In 2024, testimony emerged raising questions about the
science behind social-distancing rules and child-masking. Around the same time,
the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that the pandemic probably started in a lab. Numerous reports have documented
the educational harm from remote learning, which persisted in some
jurisdictions long after the risk associated with in-person class had been
minimized; other Western nations had a much better record on reopening.
Amid this slow but steady release of information, “we
have had no national reckoning with that traumatic event,” M. Anthony Mills wrote in NR magazine last year. We still
haven’t.
A select subcommittee issued its final report on the pandemic in 2024. That the Fauci
drama played out this week is a sign of how conclusive that process was seen to
be. That Randi Weingarten hasn’t been driven out of public life by now is
another. No aha moment is on the horizon, it seems, perhaps because people are
too dug in, or too much time has passed, or the updates are too diffuse or too
contested.
As Mills’s piece put it, it’s not just that science got
politicized; “politics got scientized” in such a way that “suppressed the moral
and political dimensions of pandemic decision-making,” as many lost faith in
institutions.
Jim notes that Fauci’s image in the media may be suffering
these days, and Noah Rothman observes “indifference” toward him on the
left. But even now, coverage of his notes simply varies by tribe. (The Washington
Post sent a push alert on Monday that highlighted Fauci’s thoughts on a
“rambling” Trump.)
Rand Paul’s Musk-like conduct online hasn’t done his
cause any favors either. While the senator has done important work in bringing
these Covid documents to light, the rollout leading up to the hearing was, to
put it mildly, unserious: His office presented Fauci’s notes below a page dressed up to look
like a child’s diary. He trolled Fauci on social media with an image
of him as a ’90s girl writing in a unicorn diary. He mocked his pitching.
It’s hard to imagine anyone being persuaded by this.
So the warfare goes on over the pandemic that killed 1
million Americans and spawned untold schemes to stop it that soon calcified into
articles of partisan faith whether they made sense or not. Resentment built
into a crisis of distrust that persists today. “A thorough accounting of that
period would be an elementary act of civic hygiene,” Noah writes. And Fauci, as NR’s editorial notes, “reinforced the
public’s suspicions about the honesty of public health officials.” When the
next pandemic hits, will health officials strike a better balance? If they do,
would the public listen?
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