In any interview with CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday, Anthony Fauci demonstrated why he should be removed from his position as the nation’s COVID czar.
The full transcript is available here.
Fauci attacks his critics claiming that they are “really criticizing science because I represent science”. Fauci’s statement demonstrates both an arrogance and a willful misrepresentation of what science really is.
Science is not a person. Nobody speaks for science. Rather, science is a process of discovery.
Science can tell you things about physical or natural phenomena. Science cannot make value judgments. Science cannot weigh one risk against another. Science cannot tell you whether masks or vaccines should or should not be mandated. Those are political questions.
When Fauci claims that the science answers these questions, he is plainly misrepresenting what science is. He’s also discrediting the credibility of science and the scientific method in the mind of the public.
Fauci also used the interview to attack the investigation into the CDC’s role in gain-of-function research and funding of the Wuhan lab. Fauci’s claims regarding gain-of-function research and the Wuhan lab have been contradicted by documents obtained by the Intercept, Congressional investigators, and others.
Indeed, when asked about gain-of-function research by Margaret Brennan, Fauci launched into a rant about the events on January 6. Whatever happened at the capital on that date has no bearing on public health questions.
In contrast, what the CDC knew about what was going on at the Wuhan lab and the origins of the COVID virus clearly does. If the COVID virus did come from a lab, which is increasingly likely, then greater safety precautions and stringent prohibition of gain of function research are warranted.
Rather than representing science, Fauci should be viewed as a thoroughly political animal. That Fauci is lashing out at Senators Paul and Cruz shows that Republicans in Congress are getting closer to the truth.
UPDATE: More today from senator Cruz. From the Daily Mail.
Referring to that interview, Cruz continued: ‘(Fauci) said, I represent science. I am science. I was laughing. It’s like Louis XIV, the sun king in France saying “I am the state.” It is this delusion of grandeur.’
Louis XIV ruled France between 1643 and 1715, and was given the insulting nickname because he believed the Kingdom of France revolved around him.
Cruz also highlighted what he claims was a breach of a US law – 18USC, Code 1001 – made by Fauci when he told a Senate hearing in May that the National Institutes of Health, of which he serves as a director, did not fund ‘gain of function’ research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab that COVID may have leaked from.
But in October, the National Institutes of Health admitted it had funded gain of function research, which seeks to make viruses more potent to try and find treatments for them.