Less than a third of the country has confidence in the nation’s medical system, and while former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci is not entirely to blame, his repeated refusal to accept any responsibility for the duplicity of the medical establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic is a big part of the explanation.

Fauci was given opportunities to come clean and apologize in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday, but he declined to do so.

A week after the subcommittee released emails showing his senior adviser, Dr. David Morens, intentionally evaded federal transparency laws to conceal the government’s role in funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China where COVID-19 may have originated, Fauci claimed Morens did not have regular access to him and behaved in a way that was “wrong” and “inappropriate” but also an “outlier.”

Fauci supervised Morens but said he was not to blame for his subordinate’s malfeasance. At NIAID, the buck does not stop at Director Fauci’s desk.

Fauci’s denials might have been more believable if he were not also so transparently deceptive about his efforts to quash suggestions that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan lab. 

He claimed he has an “open mind” about COVID-19’s origins, but this is contradicted by emails showing Fauci helped orchestrate a scientific paper signed by co-conspirator EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak. “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Daszak emailed Fauci in April 2020.

Fauci also tried to distance himself from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance that people keep 6 feet apart to minimize the spread of the virus. Fauci admitted there was no scientific basis for this recommendation, which teachers unions used to shut down schools, greatly harming millions of children. Fauci passed the buck to the CDC, claiming, “It is not appropriate to be publicly challenging a sister organization.”

But the CDC was not just a sister organization. Fauci was the president’s chief medical officer. If he knew the CDC recommendation was baseless and bankrupted businesses and harmed schoolchildren, he should have spoken up.

Instead, he gave interviews to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in which he proposed a scientific logic behind the rule: “Most of the droplets, when people speak and you see that little spray come out, are greater than 5 micrometers. Those are heavy. They don’t go any more than 3 feet, at the most 6 feet, which is why we say when you’re outside, stay at least 6 feet apart from someone.”

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Fauci was against using masks in public before he was for them. He said 60% of the public needed to be vaccinated before we could end lockdowns, then raised himself to 80%. He was for 6-foot social distancing but now admits it was baseless. He undermined the lab leak theory but now says he has an open mind. 

These are not harmless falsehoods. These are words and policies supported by a powerful man that were implemented and hurt millions of people. If we are to restore the public trust in public health, Fauci must be held accountable for his deceptions.