The Insight: What We Learned From the Fauci Hearing

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who became the face of the government’s response to COVID-19, sat before Congress last week and faced questions about his handling of the pandemic. Here’s what to know.

The Insight provides you the full picture of facts and viewpoints on a top issue for Americans each week, powered by your questions and balanced answers from our multipartisan news team.

The Questions

Did the hearing reveal anything genuinely new?

During the course of the hearing, Fauci refused to answer any of the questions posed to him, instead electing to invoke the 5th amendment more than 110 times. Due to the lack of testimony, nothing new came out as a result of the hearing.

However, shortly before the hearing, over 1,000 pages of a diary belonging to Fauci were shared online.

Some of the findings from the diary included:

• Fauci’s belief that the COVID-19 fatality rate was “more like 0.2-0.3% rather than 2.0%,” while telling a House Oversight Committee in MArch 2020 the fatality rate was “about three percent.”
• Fauci also ruled out COVID-19 originating at a wet market in Wuhan, China, saying “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.”
• Several entries showed that scientists were divided over the possibility of “deliberate insertion,” the idea that Wuhan lab workers intentionally added a protein spike to the COVID-19 virus.
• An entry in which Fauci said he “convinced” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff closed schools, bars and restaurants, despite telling an interviewer he had “nothing to do” with public closures.

According to Fox News (Right bias), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also handed a copy of Fauci’s COVID-era cellphone to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).

However, it is yet unclear what information the phone holds and whether Johnson or Chairman of Senate Committee on Homeland Security Rand Paul (R-KY) have access.

Why is public perception of Fauci so split?

Opinions on Fauci have been mixed since the COVID-19 pandemic, both in how people trust (or mistrust) him and how they perceive his values. Though some of Fauci’s criticism certainly stemmed from a mistrust of the scientific information he had access to or was sharing, other criticism may have reflected disagreement with the values behind some of the COVID-19 restrictions, such as the priority of reducing deaths at the cost of the economy.

USA Today (Lean Left) published an opinion piece from a doctor who treated COVID-19 patients during the pandemic who concluded that while Fauci may not have gotten everything right, his recommendations still came “in good faith.” Dr. Thomas K. Lew wrote that the “witch hunt” against Fauci “breeds and lends credence to the distrust and the conspiracy theories that shake the pillars of sound science.” Looking further into the past than COVID-19, Lew highlighted Fauci’s work during the HIV and Ebola epidemics, noting Fauci’s repeated dedication to science and American public health.

Another doctor writing for the Des Moines Register similarly noted Fauci’s long history of medical success, including his revolutionary contributions to the AIDS crisis, but argued that Fauci’s mix of failures and successes during the COVID-19 pandemic make him a difficult figure to analyze. Dr. Christopher R. Crossett wrote that he is “skeptical of any account that portrays him as either flawless or irredeemable,” and argued that the continual evaluation and criticism of public figures is an important part of democracy. He also, however, concluded that when looked at for Fauci’s whole career, and not just the COVID-19 chapter, “humanity is healthier because he lived.”