Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has served in the American public health sector for more than five decades.
Fauci rose to national prominence during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, when members of the LGBTQ community accused him of spreading hysteria and homophobia.
Now in charge of the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Fauci is once again being accused of inducing panic and spreading misleading information.
Columnist Slams Fauci
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, columnist John Tierney argued that Fauci is repeating the same mistakes he made decades ago during the AIDS crisis.
At the time, experts like Fauci claimed AIDS — which was spreading among drug users and gay men — would "devastate" the entire population.
In fact, in an 1983 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Fauci claimed that AIDS could even infect children because "the possibility that routine close contact, as within a family household, can spread the disease."
We now know, of course, that Dr. Fauci’s theory was wrong.
Flip-Flopping
Less than two months after claiming that AIDS could infect children, Fauci completely changed his mind and said that it was "absolutely preposterous" to suggest that the disease could spread so easily.
Fauci has flip-flopped numerous times amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by Fox News.
For instance, in January 2020 Fauci said that coronavirus was a "very, very low risk to the United States." He also warned people against buying face masks and described them as unnecessary, but then abruptly changed his mind — now he says even fully vaccinated people should wear masks.
AIDS Vs. Coronavirus
"Even at the height of the AIDS panic, there was some skepticism across the political spectrum," Tierney wrote, but there is none today.
According to the columnist, "AIDS fear-mongers" like Fauci were never held responsible. They are now once again spreading fear and panic, promoting draconian laws and mandates, and facing very little pushback.
"The journalistic, political and scientific establishments haven’t merely ignored the lessons of the AIDS epidemic. They’ve repeated and amplified the mistakes, spreading more needless fear and eliminating more civil liberties than the AIDS alarmists ever imagined."
Is Tierney Right?
Though many agree with Fauci’s current recommendations and believe he is doing a good job leading the response to the pandemic, some believe political elites are consolidating power under the pretense of fighting COVID-19.
The founder of the Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research Jeffrey A. Tucker wrote in a recent op-ed that the fight against coronavirus is actually "starting to look like an old-fashioned political purge, whether justified by fake science or theology."
"It is happening at many levels of society," Tucker added.
