via thehill:
These emails come on the heels of a Fauci book that is supposed to be released in November. But after the FOIA-induced emails were released, it’s nowhere to be found on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Perhaps it’s because the last thing a good chunk of the country wants is to read another book from another government official about a pandemic we’d all prefer to forget.
And this goes to a criticism of Fauci that has grown louder in recent months as he continues to contradict himself while delivering ambiguous messages about the virus: He’s addicted to the spotlight. He’s never met a microphone he doesn’t like.
The public, or at least some of it, appears to be growing wise to him: A recent Rasmussen poll showed that nearly two-thirds of voters — 65 percent — say politics have influenced Fauci’s decisions and statements to the media about COVID-19. Only 11 percent — just more than 1 in 10 — believe Fauci hasn’t been influenced by political considerations.
Fauci once was the most trusted man in America on all things COVID-19. That’s clearly no longer the case.
But much of the media still largely treats him as such — even as those reading and watching at home appear to know better.
As Jim Treacher responds to the above article, “‘Despite,’ nothing. The whole point is to deny reality. That makes the other guy mad, which means you’ve owned him.” See also, Dan Rather’s recurring appearances on MSNBC and CNN, despite their knowing how badly he cooked the books in 2004.
Related: Fauci whines to Maddow: Criticism after email release is “very much an attack on science:”
See, he’s not lying about anything, it’s his critics who are lying. The pandemic was politicized from the beginning. It was inevitable because absolutely everything is politicized in life today, including a world health crisis that should have been a unifying event. Remember when Joe Biden was one of the first out of the gate to call Trump’s travel ban an act of xenophobia, a racist reaction to a virus that originated in China? That remark helped set the tone. Even though the early travel bans proved to be good actions to mitigate the spread of the virus, Biden never bothered to acknowledge that. He was more interested in scoring political points with anti-Trumpers. Now Fauci is doing the same – any critics of his performance must be labeled as anti-science mouth breathers.
The head of The New Clerisy is dangerously close to falling from the pedestal his worshipers have built for him.
HOWIE CARR: The rise and fall of Dr. Fauci.
The Panic was a perfect way to tank President Trump’s re-election campaign. But not even the most committed Trump haters were buying the Faucist line, we now learn.
Consider Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm’s physician brother, the “Dr. Death” of the Obama administration. After Fauci’s multiple the-sky-is-falling! appearances on state-run television, Dr. Death emailed him in February 2020 that he had a “hard time seeing this as serious as everyone else.”
“Am I blind?” Emanuel continued. “Yes very transmissible but low mortality like flu in many ways – the elderly, those with comorbidities, and total impact is likely to be less than flu.”
Good thing that wasn’t made public last year, or Dr. Death might have been banned from all social media from promoting such a conspiracy theory.
Two med school professors warned Fauci about COVID lab-leak possibility in February 2020: emails.
h/t Ed