Francis Collins

Francis Collins, then head of the powerful National Institutes of Health, got right to the point. In a closed-door meeting with pharmaceutical manufacturer Edwin Thompson, Collins demanded Thompson back off his campaign to drastically cut back the use of prescription opioids for chronic, long-term pain. According to Thompson, Collins admitted healthcare regulators knew there was no science showing opioids were effective for anything but acute, short-term incidents. There was at the same time credible research showing the longer a patient remained on opioids, the greater the risk of addiction. Some studies even suggested long-term use increased pain sensitivity. But on that day in 2019, none of that mattered to Collins.

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.

Anyone wishing to appreciate the nature of our two-tier society needs only to contrast the fate of St Anthony Fauci with that, say, of General Mike Flynn or any of the dozens of political prisoners who are, many of them, being held without charge in appalling conditions in a Washington, D.C. prison even as I write. Fauci has been a carbuncle on the countenance of American life at least since he help spread the myth of heterosexual transmission of AIDS in the 1980s. The new Chinese flu was custom made for his brand of panic-mongering and totalitarian posturing. Just a few weeks ago, he was saying that it was “too early” to say whether we would be allowed to gather for Christmas.