OPINION:
“Fauci fixated on fame as COVID deaths mounted, diary reveals” (Web, July 27) exposes some of the new revelations and damning evidence concerning the lies, suppression of truth and disastrous policy decisions of former COVID-19 czar Anthony Fauci.
The ongoing congressional inquiry and this week’s hearings offer Americans a chance to calibrate their view of public health according to evidence rather than presumed reputation. The latter is what medical professionals depend on for exercising their authority.
As I noted in the Washington Times n 2022, many Americans have been schooled in the dubious doctrine that scientists — unlike every other human being — somehow transcend personal bias and can be depended upon to deliver objective, evidence-driven advice bereft of personal or political ambition. Dr. Fauci’s diary revelation leaves no doubt that such an assumption is naive and dangerous.
It is time we viewed medical professionals with a healthy dose of caution and held them accountable the same way we do politicians, police and every other person in a position of power.
In my federal health policy work, I had many opportunities during the pandemic to meet and converse with COVID-19 response leaders Drs. Fauci, Francis Collins and Deborah Birx. At times, I took the opportunity to ask challenging questions, even though the physicians who headed the medical organization I worked for took a more sycophantic approach with such supposed luminaries.
I wrote critically of Dr. Fauci’s suppression of the Wuhan lab leak theory, pointing to the Chinese Communist Party’s hegemonic goals as a potential motive to use the crisis as an opportunity to destabilize the world economy and reset the balance of power among nations.
Yet any who dared doubt the wizard behind the curtain were prone to censorship and sidelining.
Now that the truth is being revealed, it is reinforcing the axiom that all conspiracy theories are crazy — except the ones that turn out to be true.
Maybe next time Americans will follow their instincts and remember three cautionary truths: Science is objective, but scientists are not; evidence can be shaped and shifted to fit any agenda; and, when objections are disallowed and opposition suppressed, someone is hiding the truth.
JONATHAN IMBODY
Quinton, Virginia
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