Fauci does have some serious faults, however, that did lead to a certain amount of deception and obfuscation of some true situations.
For instance, he should have told this truth from the outset: That everyone needed to be using N-95 (or KN-95) masks right away. I had figured that out early--logic dictated it. He said otherwise because he was trying to protect the supply for the medical community. But that was not his call to make. If he had told the truth about masks up front, it would have created a national impetus to convert industries to make as many masks as needed. Instead, he actually destroyed the market that would encourage industrial conversion to mask production.
The second thing he did wrong was to characterize "flattening the curve" as the goal for government and citizen action. Of course, flattening the curve was another attempt to protect the medical community. It was essentially a lateral pass, a holding action, not a movement toward the goal.
And that was the third thing he did wrong, actually an essential misunderstanding of his actual role. His particular role, as a direct advisor to the president, was to give the president the best advice in how to achieve the goals of the president...which is to keep the country in operation. Fauci was far too tunnel-visioned in thinking that meeting the needs of the medical community was identical to meeting the needs of the nation.
Let me put this into a military context: We have medical people in the military who are experts on biological weapons. If they had the same mindset as Fauci, their advice to the commander about operating in an environment of biological weapons would be, "Make sure all the doctors have all the masks, and don't fight the war until we have defeated the biological danger."
Except that's exactly what the enemy wants you to do. They want you to stand still while they overrun your position and occupy your territory. So the military doctors advise the commander of how can continue to fight in the midst of the contagion while keeping his troops as safe as possible at the same time. Not continuing the fight is not an option.
In the same way, it was clear to my by February of last year that the actual goal was implementation of an effective vaccine, and that would not happen for at least a year, maybe two. It was also clear that there could not be a complete shut-down for that long. Fauci did not give the proper advice for operating the nation in the midst of the contagion.
I think his same tunnel-mindedness has led to his implication in what might have been problems in the Wu Han facility. I don't think he ever really understood that the Chinese scientists he was working with were, first and foremost, operatives of the totalitarian Chinese government, operating within their control, not pure science, and that they would lie to him about their shortfalls in order to support the Chinese government.
