Dr. Anthony Fauci. Image: YouTube

At first, Dr. Anthony Fauci seemed too good to be true. Increasingly, it appears that he was.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is of course a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The most visible doctor--and arguably the most trusted--in America at this strange moment in time.

For a growing number of conservatives, his actions of late have rubbed the shine off his image. Judged on his recommendations in the last week, plus some new evidence about his past, Fauci appears to be nothing more than a Big Pharma shill, and/or an anti-Trump DC insider.

Fauci, a veteran of past outbreaks, was perceived by most as a steady hand on the tiller when news broke that Chinese coronavirus had come to America. Citizens eager for perspective listened carefully to his predictions and warnings.

https://twitter.com/TVNewsHQ/status/1242467199274663936

Especially comforting was Fauci's refusal to be drawn into a media-created narrative that he was at loggerheads with President Trump. "I wish that would stop," he said, exhorting reporters to temper their remarks at a press conference on March 25.

The alleged rift concerned, among other details, Trump's embrace of chloroquine as a treatment for the virus, and Fauci's more cautious approach. Was it simply prudence on Fauci's part? As CDMedia and others have noted, the pharmaceutical industry stands to gain mightily if a new drug or drugs are created as opposed to using a trusted, existing option.

More to the point, we know chloroquine works. Listen to the naysayers--it's always a vague excuse about the "flawed" study, or they quote a Chinese study, or create a straw man. World famous virologist Didier Raoult demonstrated chloroquine's efficacy early on, presenting his findings in a peer-reviewed study three weeks ago, only to be ignored by the US media.

So Dr. Raoult ran another, larger study. In both cases, the results were stunning. In both cases, the media ignored him. No established news source appears in search engine results until the second page regarding the second study. Why?

  1. Search engine bias is real, and the folks at Google and Bing are clearly anti-chloroquine.
  2. Reporters are rarely experts on scientific matters. Naturally, they take their cues from the respected figures in a given field. In this case, no one is more visible than Fauci, and his temperature regarding chloroquine has been anywhere between lukewarm to dismissively cool.

The world is in the middle of a global pandemic and an economic crash. The chloroquine + azithromycin + zinc drug cocktail is inexpensive, and quickly and widely available. The ethical thing to do is mass production and distribution while scientists search for a better solution (if one exists). To some extent, this has happened, but only in the private sector, with donations of pills from pharmaceutical giant Bayer, for instance.

What hasn't happened is government-approved dosage advice or protocol.

If you have a life vest to throw to a drowning man, but you suspect it might not fit his torso perfectly, you throw it anyway. The argument that the drug is dangerous falls flat: it has been used for fifty years. Since the outbreak, it has been in successful trials and private practices in several locations globally and domestically.

On these grounds alone, Fauci is suspect. But there's much more.

"...we all love her and are very proud to know her."

It turns out Fauci has gone to bat for none other than Hillary Clinton. The doctor defended Clinton's health based on her performance at a single public appearance in 2013. He claimed that Clinton "hit it right out of the park" during the infamous Benghazi hearings. Worse, he went on to say he's "very proud" of her, and that he "love[s] her."

It's not a doctor's note, it's a love letter. To a woman who let Americans die at the hands of terrorists.

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In another email, Fauci states that a Clinton speech on global health "brought him to tears," and that he "love[s] her more than ever".

Inconsistency On Display

This partisan theory appears all the more plausible when we look back to the H1N1 outbreak in 2009. Fauci and the Obama administration took a much different tack then. Fauci didn't bristle at the lack of national response. He went along for the clandestine ride, staying virtually silent in the press as the first wave of deaths spread across the country.

The reason so few people recall H1N1? It was the one they slipped past us. Fauci was as quiet then as he is outspoken now.

In this 2009 video, Fauci is quite casual in his advice in a video unearthed by American Thinker. Also, and this would be funny if it weren't sad, he says, "You can't isolate yourself for the whole flu season." And yet, with an outbreak that is very comparable to H1N1, that's precisely his advice today.

Contrast that with daily press conferences and recommendations that have collectively crashed the economy, one of Trump's signature achievements.

The Fauci Gambit: Operation "Doctor Deep State"

The plan has emerged like a figure in the fog. Invisible at first, it slowly takes form. Is that a rock? No, a pony...no, a dog...oh $#*!--it's a wolf!

Step 1: appear to be a team player. Fauci wore a poker face at first. He was nice to Trump, and the liberal media questioned him for that, claiming he was in the tank for the president, or that Trump had somehow "muzzled" him. An effective ploy, if intentional: clap back at the biased press, unpopular even among many Democrats.

Sharp-eyed viewers caught the mask slipping once. On March 20th, Fauci smirked and covered his face when Trump referred to the State Department as the "deep state department." In retrospect, this was a red flag.

Step 2: terrify the nation with gargantuan death toll numbers based on an the utterly flawed IMHE model (the high end of the death toll was supposed to be 2.2 million American casualties). Policy decisions based on such frightful numbers drive the economy to shutter. Millions of lost jobs, stock market carnage.

Step 3: in the midst of the panic, fast-track new drug experiments and put promising available treatment on the side burner. Only wonks notice.

Panicked, low-info citizens: "Chloro-what?"

This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) 

Dr. "It actually is just the flu, bro" Fauci in the New England Journal of Medicine

Step 4: reduce the severity of predictions due to lack of supporting evidence. Do so only after several weeks of national television exposure as the indispensable expert (the president himself singing Fauci's, and the team's praises, daily).

To reduce the case fatality rate by a factor of ten is stunning. Fauci's current prediction of 100,000 to 200,000 U.S. fatalities does just that. That he did so after Neil Ferguson, father of the Imperial College Study, lowered his estimates drastically (Ferguson initially predicted 500,000 dead Britons, and now claims under 20,000 is possible), makes Fauci look inept.

One doubts he cares. To the people he answers to, he likely looks cunning and sly.

After all, their plan worked.