Volkswillem Dafoe™

QUESTION: First, I’m not defending #Fauci. The government and his legal team can sort that out. But I have a question or two… There’s a strange contradiction in the Fauci narrative, isn’t there? For years, many voices in the anti-mitigation, anti-vax and anti-mask movement argued that #COVID was exaggerated, comparable to the flu, that death numbers were inflated, and that masks, closures, distancing and other interventions were unnecessary. Yet some of the same political movement now portrays Fauci as responsible for staggering numbers of COVID deaths. Both arguments cannot simply be asserted at the same time without explaining the contradiction. If COVID was never much of a threat and attempts to contain it were unnecessary, how did Fauci supposedly cause millions of deaths from that same disease? If, on the other hand, you believe COVID really was that dangerous, then efforts to slow its spread, reduce severe illness and protect vulnerable people presumably saved lives rather than contributed to mass death. There are completely legitimate questions about pandemic policy, research oversight, transparency and mistakes made by public-health officials. David Morens, a former senior NIAID adviser, has now been indicted on federal charges involving the concealment and destruction of records. Those allegations deserve scrutiny. But Morens is the person charged, not Fauci. That leaves a separate question of executive responsibility. Fauci headed #NIAID, so it is fair to ask what he knew, what oversight failed and what responsibility comes with leadership. But that standard has to be consistent. If Fauci is accountable for misconduct or failures occurring several levels beneath him simply because he led the agency, then presidents likewise cannot claim credit for successes under their administrations while disclaiming responsibility for everything controversial carried out by their task forces, appointees and agencies. And at the end of the day, who was actually in charge of the federal response? Fauci was an adviser and agency director. He did not possess unilateral authority over the entire federal pandemic response. The White House Coronavirus Task Force was an administration body created to lead the federal response and was led by Vice President Pence. #Trump himself publicly disagreed with Fauci at various points, and the administration made the ultimate executive decisions. So if we are going to apply the “buck stops at the top” standard to Fauci for everything that happened beneath him at NIAID, then where does that same standard leave the President of the United States, who was actually running the executive branch? You cannot make Fauci simultaneously the bureaucrat who should have been ignored and the all-powerful mastermind responsible for the entire pandemic response. #Accountability is fine and important. Just apply it consistently.