Dr. Anthony Fauci was lauded at the beginning of the pandemic as a calm, stable voice in the midst of a lot of confusion and rapidly changing information.

As time has gone on, Fauci has proven to be the equivalent of the school nerd who suddenly finds himself prom king. The media, desperate to keep yelling Orange Man Bad, pitted Fauci against Trump and hoped for fireworks. And Fauci, finding himself to be the center of attention, began to believe his own press. He had RESPECT. He got his own bobblehead! He was on the cover of Vanity Fair! Celebrities wanted to talk to him! He got to throw out the first pitch at a Nationals game!

As the information on COVID changed, so did Fauci, but he never admitted that he had actually changed his mind. We have seen examples of this with mask-wearing especially, where he discouraged people from wearing masks, and then months later admitted to “the noble lie” – he had lied about masks in order to make sure hospitals and other care facilities had enough PPE. He also did this in regards to schools, first advising to close them all, then hedging his bets even as the evidence rolled in about how the virus was not nearly as much a danger to children as it is to the elderly, to finally pushing for reopening.

Is it really any wonder that trust in public health officials has steadily eroded? And, as a friend of mine pointed out, Fauci is NOT a public health doctor. He’s an immunologist. His area of expertise is in figuring out how viruses like HIV (his previous work) and COVID-19 work, not creating the public health policy to go with it. Public relations is not part of what Fauci has ever learned to do. But thrust into the spotlight and high on his own glowing media coverage, Fauci began to spin with the best of them.

And now, caught again in another lie about moving the goalposts on herd immunity, the New York Times is willing to give Fauci a pass, because, again, it is a “noble lie” for “the greater good.”

When you can't just "trust the science" because the scientists keep lying to you and then saying, "oh, that was just a noble lie, sorry about that."https://t.co/2SKAiGiBto pic.twitter.com/hl06rjM7tA

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) December 24, 2020

Why is Fauci lying to the American public on what it will take to get us to herd immunity? Because we’re all too stupid to accept his version of the truth, and we all need to fall in line like sheep.

This quote, which has been rightfully making the rounds, really tells the whole tale. Asked why he changed his mind about how much vaccination would result in herd immunity, Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent … Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here …. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

This is a problem. Fauci is clearly admitting that he was not simply telling the American people what he believed to be true, he was instead trying to manipulate us into behaving how he wants. And it’s not the first time. Back in March, Fauci told Americans not to wear masks. He now claims he did so largely because he feared a shortage. So, once again, instead of just giving us the unvarnished scientific truth, as he understood it, he told us only what he thought it was good for us to know.”

And politicians like Marco Rubio are paying attention. You can disagree with Rubio about a lot of things, but he isn’t wrong about Fauci.

Dr. Fauci lied about masks in March

Dr. Fauci has been distorting the level of vaccination needed for herd immunity

It isn’t just him

Many in elite bubbles believe the American public doesn’t know “what’s good for them” so they need to be tricked into “doing the right thing”

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 27, 2020

You know who else is paying attention to what Fauci said then versus what he’s saying now? CNN’s Dana Bash. Yes, stop the presses, someone on CNN committed an act of journalism and made Dr. Fauci squirm.

.@DanaBashCNN presses Dr. Fauci on his comments about “moving the goal posts” on herd immunity based on polling. "Why weren’t you straight with the American people about this to begin with?” she asks.

He deflects multiple times. She presses and he says it’s just a “guesstimate." pic.twitter.com/kquQvlwZ8j

— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) December 27, 2020

Fauci’s credibility took a hard hit with that one, and kudos to Dana Bash for pushing him about this. Why should anyone, the media included, listen to what Fauci says now, when they aren’t sure if he will be straight with them in order to serve “the greater good.” (For the record, the media doesn’t care if Fauci lies to the American public. THEY just don’t want to be lied to, so if Fauci had told them that he was moving the goalposts for “the greater good,” they would have been fine with that. They want to be in on the lie.)

This pandemic has proved to be fatal to the trust in many public institutions, and public health is one of them. COVID exposed so many of these cracks in society that I don’t know how we ever really get back to normal again. But one way to start would be for those who purport to be advocating for our best interests to tell the whole, unvarnished truth up front. Of course, Fauci and others actually doing that would expose yet another problem. This was never about telling the truth. This was all about power and control.

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Featured image: Dr. Anthony Fauci at a press briefing, March 31, 2020 (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks, public domain)