Anthony fauci

A short list of people who said the lab leak theory was a conspiracy

With the Energy Department joining the lab-leak party, will the apologies ever roll in to those so thoroughly excoriated for questioning the animal-human theory of Covid's origins? Cockburn has done a little digging and would like you to join him on a trip down memory lane, to revisit the litany of enlightened elites who proclaimed the lab-leak theory a conspiracy. From scientists to media talking heads, the condemnation of the lab-leak hypothesis was pretty universal in the early months of the pandemic, even going so far as to proclaim it racist.

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Anthony Fauci cashing in as $100k ‘motivational speaker’

When Cockburn turns on the television these days, something is missing. Then he realizes — that (very) little something is Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose 400-plus media events during the Covid pandemic made him a fixture of the tube. Then one day, after we made him the highest paid employee in the federal government, Fauci upped and left, abandoning us to figure out on our own if we should stay home when we’re sick. or if coughing on our ancient relatives is a good idea or not. But if you thought you’d seen the last of Fauci, never fear — the man has reemerged like an Omicron variant, this time as a motivational speaker.

anthony fauci

Twilight of the Democrats’ gerontocracy

As President Biden plans to launch his reelection campaign, he is whistling past a graveyard of recently discarded Democratic Party icons, who have either left the scene willingly or are being gracelessly kicked out. Nancy Pelosi. Steny Hoyer. Pat Leahy. Jim Clyburn. Anthony Fauci. Dianne Feinstein. Their combined age is 500 — and until a few months ago, they were running the country. Now they’re shadows of their former selves, headed to the greener pastures of retirement, book deals or the backbenches of the House of Representatives. Over the past few months, the Democratic Party’s leadership has transitioned from the Silent Generation to a mixture of baby boomers and Gen Xers.

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Anthony Fauci’s conveniently foggy memory

Dr. Anthony Fauci sat for a seven-hour deposition last week as part of a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The suit claims that the Biden administration colluded with social media platforms to censor information surrounding the origins and circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as information that went against CDC guidelines and mandates around vaccines and efficacy masks. Fauci, the NIAID and chief medical advisor to President Biden (and others), didn’t say much. In fact he used the term “I cannot recall,” or some variation, over 190 times.

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When will Fauci admit the ‘open schools’ parents were right?

“Was it a mistake in so many states, in so many localities to see schools closed as long as they were?” an ABC reporter asked Dr. Anthony Fauci on October 16. His response: “I would say that what we should realize, and have realized, that there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that…” That was news to all of us parents who were called racists for raising the issue when it counted. For speaking of “deleterious consequences” during the height of the pandemic, we “open schools" parents were demonized and shut down. As the Chicago Teachers’ Union put it in a characteristic (but now deleted) tweet from December 2020, our push to reopen schools was “rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.

Could DeSantis actually ‘chuck’ ‘little elf’ Fauci across the Potomac?

Dr. “Saint” Anthony Fauci — credited with bringing about the “Fauci ouchie” (a vaccine that was such a “miraculous” cure that we needed several of them) and masks that made Granny look like a member of the Insane Clown Posse — is retiring. Fauci’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic was confusing at best and contradictory at worst. Cockburn will not miss him, but there is perhaps none so eager to see Fauci depart as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. These two have gone at each other like Marvel comic book characters — DeSantis as a self-fashioned Captain America and Fauci as his archnemesis, perhaps the “wayward psychiatrist Dr. Faustus.

Trump’s pandemic failures will haunt his 2024 bid

In all likelihood, Donald Trump will soon announce his re-entry into the presidential stakes — a decision that, with the exception of Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt, is largely unique to American history. In so doing, he plans to build on the success he had in office, the Supreme Court's decisions on abortion and other matters, and the Biden administration's mistreatment of the economy, the border and the culture. But one thing that will absolutely prove to be problematic for Trump when it comes to a primary — which he will absolutely have, given the machinations of multiple politicians who take issue with his approach or who will seek to supplant him — is a defense of his own performance in the last year of his presidency, facing a global pandemic.

Dr. Fauci: don’t let the door hitcha…

Dr. Fauci has announced that he will retire soon — and Cockburn is popping Champagne. Anthony Fauci, surely the most (in)famous scientist in the United States, has decided to call it quits by the end of Joe Biden’s first (and hopefully last) term. As he departs from his monopoly on mainstream media health consultancy, he’ll pass go and collect a whopping $350,000 per year, the largest federal retirement package in US history. So cue up the in memoriam reel of everything that made the Fauci regime suck. While churches had to close starting in March 2020, somehow Fauci was OK with Tinder hookups. A year later, he waged a war on Christmas gatherings worse than the Grinch himself.

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Florida’s Covid numbers were obviously right all along

In the first year or so of the pandemic, the sane among us pointed to Florida as the best argument against strict lockdowns. Florida governor Ron DeSantis began the state’s first phase of reopening as early as April 2020 and declared all businesses open by September. Though critics declared him “DeathSantis” and media outlets flew drones over crowded beaches with ominous background music, Florida had some of the lowest Covid hospitalization and death rates in the entire country. Still, if you mentioned Florida's success, you would inevitably hear from some left-wing loudmouth that the numbers were cooked. It couldn't be possible to ignore the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Dr.

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Embrace the gerontocracy

America is a young nation — and young at heart. Our national ethos is centered on those four words in the Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.” In order to pursue anything, you need a certain vigor. America had vigor even before the youth culture of the Sixties revolutionized how we thought about age. That decade ushered in the famous slogan “don’t trust anyone over thirty.” We’re not nearly so politically incorrect now, but the mentality still holds. America is forever prodding and poking its young, waiting for some wellspring of Talmudic wisdom to come gushing forth. What does Gen Z think?! Gen Z would just like to finish high school, thank you very much.

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The Harvard connection

On the morning of Sunday February 2, 2020, Anthony Fauci, then in the middle of putting together America’s pandemic response, received an unusual email with a highly unusual request. The email, revealed as part of a tranche of FOIA documents requested by the Intercept, was from George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School. “Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost, and I met yesterday with a team led by Jack Xia, the CEO of China’s Evergrande Company, and Dr. Jack Liu, Evergrande’s chief health officer,” Daley wrote. Addressing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as “Tony,” he asked for “whatever information you are willing to share on your current efforts to coordinate a response.

The march of the ‘experts’

Historically Americans have had little, if any, respect for college and university professors, for whom they felt a mild though distant and tolerant contempt. As more and more members of the professoriat have been recognized as “experts” in their respective fields, or at least at the edges of them, since World War Two, they have naturally presented themselves to the public under the guise of “specialist,” a vast improvement over their previous reputation as absent-minded eggheads barely able to afford the Ford Motor Company’s cheapest product and a shabby house on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.

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Masks on planes are making me sick

At the start of this year, I took a flight from London to DC. For its duration, I wore a cloth mask that I had been given for free at a bookstore — the kind of mask that Most Experts now say does not meaningfully prevent viral spread. At one point, shortly after I’d finished eating, a tall male flight attendant asked me to pull my mask up — I, of course, did as asked. A few hours later, while the lights were dimmed and I was drifting off for a nap, my mask slipped to just below my nose, the same flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a pamphlet from the airline.

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How ‘questioning authority’ gave us wokeness

When I was in high school in the late 1960s, a bumper sticker, “Question Authority,” became a common sight, as did a button saying the same thing, usually worn on a tie-dye T-shirt or denim jacket. I was among those contrary teenagers who wanted to know, “On whose authority am I commanded to question authority?” The answer wasn’t hard to find. The man who most visibly pushed the slogan was former Harvard clinical psychologist and ardent LSD proponent Timothy Leary. He was known for his counsel “Drop out, turn on, tune in,” which was adopted by his League of Spiritual Discovery, which turned LSD into a sacrament. Whether Dr. Leary originated “Question Authority” or just promoted it is unclear, but that seems apposite.

Good riddance to Dr. Fauci

Covid is beginning to spike in parts of Europe again — and sewage data indicates rising cases in the US are imminent. Online and on television, talking heads and tweeters are asking, “Where’s Dr. Fauci?” They’re posing this question to rile up the masses and show that Anthony Fauci’s omnipresence on cable news over the last few months was largely political, and happened in concert with the Biden administration, with whom he appears to be in lockstep agreement on everything from masks to mandates. It’s a salient point not without merit, but I would take it a step further and ask: who cares where Anthony Fauci is?

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Joy Behar’s strange mask religion

Joy Behar made a predictable announcement last week on ABC’s The View. While discussing how the CDC may ease mask guidance in the near future, she explained the depths of her neurosis to her co-hosts. "So if I go on the subway, if I go in a bus, if I go into the theater... a crowded place, I would wear a mask, and I might do that indefinitely," she added. "Why do I need the flu or a cold even? And so I'm listening to myself right now. I don't think it's 100 percent safe yet.” A few hours later, a photo emerged on Twitter of Behar sitting in a booth with two friends at a restaurant. She was sans mask. Worse yet, journalist Libby Emmons, who posted the photos, added, “I hear that she also walked out of the restaurant unmasked, though her companions dutifully donned theirs.

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A plague of phony experts and elites

Quick: what do you think when someone tries to convince you of something by prefacing their remarks with the phase “Experts say”? I think of that rude, two-word imperative of Germanic origin that ends in “You.” As Laplace said in another context, it is par expériences nombreuses et funestes that I have this almost Pavlovian reaction. The “experts,” alas, are not expert, i.e, “possessing a high degree of skill in or knowledge of” a certain subject. For proof of my contention I offer the name of Anthony Fauci or the organization that glories in the acronym CDC, that is, the Centers for Disease Control. They are both a bit like Michael Avenatti, once championed everywhere as a genius and presidential material, but now universally exposed and discredited.

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The tragic kingdom of Anthony Fauci

Neither the political left nor the political right understands Anthony Fauci. To the left, Fauci is a patron saint to be thanked and worshipped. They fashion candles, hymns and magazine covers after him. They canonize him much the same way they canonized Ruth Bader Ginsburg, though I suspect that if you stopped them on the street and asked for details of a Ginsburg opinion, they would come up empty beyond screaming “Notorious RBG.” Anthony Fauci is venerated much the same way. The right has compared Fauci to Nazi ministers of information, a Luciferian demigod drunk on pandemic power, a liar and hypnotist willing to do anything to retain his newfound celebrity and near-total grip on pandemic messaging — a grip that only solidified after Joe Biden’s presidential election.

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The media blackout on Fauci’s damning emails

Last week saw another batch of emails drop from Anthony Fauci, and another media blackout as to their contents. The strategy by the press in cases like this has been pretty straightforward: ignore the story, wait for right-leaning media or Republicans to pick it up, then frame any attacks on the subject as tainted by partisanship. Last week, when confronted once again by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Fauci responded with more hyperbole and ad hominem. The media, meanwhile, framed the exchanges as “Rand Paul Attacks!” and “Anthony Fauci defends!” They refused to look at the information in the emails that Paul was asking about, refused to ask questions about them, refused to even report on them. They are interested in the bloodsport, not the truth.

anthony fauci health

New Year’s resolutions for the political class

If you think politics was insufferable in 2021, just wait until the New Year. The midterms are around the corner, so before the incessant campaign ads begin, I’d like to suggest a few New Year’s resolutions for our political class. Let’s start at the top with the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Perhaps Joe, who as usual is on vacation in Delaware, could begin 2022 off by firing his speechwriters. I have long suspected that saboteurs lurk in the White House. Who in his right mind would put the word “Galapagos” into a Biden speech? There is a double agent in the Biden-Harris administration who is trying to trip up the 79-year-old — so whoever it is needs to hear two of the last president’s favorite words: “You’re fired.