The nation’s top medical adviser (Fauci) during the pandemic has no regrets despite the collateral damage of lockdowns and school closures

See ‘On Call’ Review: Anthony Fauci Makes His Case by John Tierney. He reviews the book On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. Excerpts:

"lockdowns and school closures accomplished little or nothing while causing unprecedented social and economic damage."

"He tells how, after becoming director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, one of his first “crucial lessons” was “how important it was to cultivate relationships with people who are in a position to make things happen.” These people included politicians in the White House and the Capitol, activists demanding bigger budgets, and, especially, journalists eager for stories that would terrify their audiences.

Dr. Fauci’s rise to media stardom began early in the AIDS epidemic, when he published an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association warning that this new disease could possibly be spread by “routine close contact” between children and adults. The resulting headlines inspired a wave of homophobia that infuriated gay activists, but Dr. Fauci quickly placated them by reversing himself, denouncing the idea of infection by routine social contact as “absolutely preposterous.” The memoir doesn’t explain his flip-flop—or even mention the controversy.

Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci found another way to frighten the American public, by joining with other federal officials in warning that AIDS would start spreading among heterosexuals. The much-hyped “heterosexual breakout” never occurred, but widespread fears led to spectacular increases in AIDS spending—and complaints from other scientists that the funding shifts were curtailing research into diseases that claimed far more lives."

"“On Call” details his campaigns to stockpile vaccines against the coming plagues, although again the sagas are anticlimactic: The doomsday pandemics failed to arrive."

"He went on seeking more funding to prepare for a future catastrophic flu pandemic, a threat he considered so dire that it justified “generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory,” as he argued in a 2011 article in the Washington Post.

"In retrospect, given the mounting evidence that Covid-19 was created by just that sort of gain-of-function research in China, does Dr. Fauci have any second thoughts about advocating such a risky endeavor? None worth mentioning in this memoir. In dismissing the “smear campaign” to link him to a lab-created virus, he ignores the obvious possibility that the Wuhan virologists exploited knowledge acquired in the lab’s previous bat-virus research funded by his agency."

"nations and U.S. states that shunned Dr. Fauci’s advice fared as well or better than the ones that locked down. Sweden experienced one of the lowest rates of excess mortality in Europe while keeping businesses and schools open and urging its citizens not to wear masks."

"he alternates between denying responsibility for the pandemic restrictions—because he had no legal authority to impose them—and taking credit for promoting them endlessly in media appearances, meetings at the White House and phone calls with governors. He derides a lockdown opponent, Dr. Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution, for supposedly telling President Trump “exactly what the president wanted to hear,” but he offers no cogent rebuttal to Dr. Atlas’s arguments."

"Dr. Atlas’s own memoir, “A Plague Upon Our House” (2021). At the White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings, Dr. Atlas recounts, Dr. Fauci never presented scientific evidence in favor of his policies, refused to respond to the contrary evidence that Dr. Atlas presented, and never considered the collateral damage from the policies.

In fall 2020 there was ample evidence that schools could reopen safely, but Dr. Fauci kept offering reasons to keep them closed. When Dr. Atlas argued that Americans were irrationally frightened, he writes, Dr. Fauci replied: “They need to be more afraid.” Dr. Fauci’s determination to panic the public astounded Dr. Atlas, but it’s understandable after reading “On Call.” For Anthony Fauci, fearmongering was always an excellent career move."