When America's “germ czar”, Anthony Fauci, 85, stepped down as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after 38 years in 2022, he was somewhat at a loose end. “I asked myself what I could do over the next few years while I am still filled with passion and energy and blessed with good health,” he wrote in his 2024 memoir – deciding that the answer was “to share my experiences with the world and particularly the younger generation”.
What Fauci didn't expect, says The Atlantic, was the complete “unmaking” of his reputation and emergence as a polarising public figure so reviled in some quarters that he's received death threats. Recent events – including an appearance before a Congressional committee at which he pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times – haven't helped.
But what has really sunk Fauci in the eyes of many was the exposure of his self-indulgent private journals covering the pandemic years, which were seized upon by opponents after he foolishly saved them on a government server. As Peggy Noonan summed up in The Wall Street Journal, the diligent doctor stands before us unmasked. “His diaries make clear that he saw the pandemic less as a historic emergency than a media opportunity.” During Covid's darkest days, Fauci was more interested in detailing every glowing profile and accolade and a growing list of celebrity fans.
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The nation is completely split, says The Times. Fauci's enemies – led by the Republican senator Rand Paul, who subpoenaed him to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month – claim Fauci's sins extend further than personal vanity. They accuse him of suppressing discussion of the causes of Covid to protect fellow scientists “who were doing dirty deals with Chinese labs”. Or, at the very least, encouraging lockdowns and vaccine mandates that were “unnecessary and harmful”.
His supporters, by contrast, view his hounding as “McCarthyism”. Fauci had no choice but to take the fifth, says The Atlantic, because of “what seems to be an effort to catch him in a lie” – not covered by the “blanket presidential pardon” granted by Joe Biden to head off expected lawfare.
Anthony Fauci – America's fall guy
Anthony Fauci was born in Brooklyn in 1940 and received his medical doctorate from Cornell University in 1966. He opted almost immediately to specialise in immunology and enter government service, rising to become head of the NIAID in 1984. By the time Covid hit in 2020, he was viewed almost universally as a “national treasure” – a distinguished practitioner, whose “deep expertise, avuncular demeanour and direct style of communication” made him “a source of trust for hundreds of millions of people” through national emergencies from HIV onwards. Considered consummately non-partisan, he served under six US presidents on both sides of the aisle.
Anthony Fauci was richly rewarded for his services, says The New York Post. By the time he retired, he was “the highest paid federal employee in the nation”, earning $480,654 annually – “more than the president's salary”. Since then, the “divisive doctor” has added multi-millions to his war chest – supplementing a top teaching job at Georgetown University with lucrative book deals and speaking engagements. Tickets for his “next gig”, scheduled in Florida in September, are going for $160 each. Whether Fauci will make that engagement is now up in the air, says CNN. Last week, the Senate committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress, potentially opening the way for an appointment with the Department of Justice. For all his vanity, it seems a harsh fate, says The Times. “There was always going to be an explosion” after Covid. Anthony Fauci has become “the fall guy”.
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