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[00:00]
Daniel Engber
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[00:33]
Aaron Wary
Hi, I'm Aaron Wary, in for Jamie. Six years ago, Anthony Fauci was probably the most famous doctor in the world. As the face of America's Covid response, he became an almost constant presence in American life and in some corners, a revered figure. But to a growing movement on the American right, he eventually became a villain, accused not simply of mishandling the pandemic, but of misleading the public about its origins and even bearing some responsibility for Covid itself.
[01:08]
Rand Paul
I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards so a man made epidemic never happens again.
[01:26]
Aaron Wary
This week Fauci testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. After receiving a subpoena and with the threat of possible criminal proceedings hanging over the testimony, the hearings took an unusual turn.
[01:40]
Rand Paul
Can you explain to the committee why you chose to fund this dangerous research in China?
[01:47]
Daniel Engber
On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment of the Constitution.
[01:55]
Aaron Wary
Years after the pandemic ended, why is part of America so eager to put Anthony Fauci on trial? Daniel Engber is a senior editor at the Atlantic. He co wrote the piece what Anthony Fauci didn't say. Daniel, thanks so much for joining us.
[02:16]
Daniel Engber
Thanks for having me.
[02:17]
Aaron Wary
We should begin with what happened on Wednesday because it was a pretty extraordinary scene. Anthony Fauci, as I said, was brought before a Senate committee investigating the COVID response. And rather than answer senators questions, Fauci repeatedly invoked the fifth amendment of the US Constitution, more than a hundred times in all. Why did he do that? What did Fauci and his legal team believe he risks if he had answered those questions?
[02:45]
Daniel Engber
Well, to understand this, we really have to go back to the beginning of last year, President Biden's really final hours in office.
[02:54]
Rand Paul
President Biden has just issued preemptive pardons saying, quote, these public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutors. So, again, this is Anthony Fauci. This is the committee members and staff of the January 6th Committee.
[03:15]
Daniel Engber
He gave Fauci, among others, a blanket pardon for any offenses committed against the United States for Fauci since the start of 2014, in association with his role as director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, or any of the various roles he had in the White House coronavirus pandemic response. So Fauci has this blanket pardon covering anything that might have gone wrong during that time, but only up until the moment that presidential pardon was signed, which is in late January of 2025. So any new crimes he commits associated with, again, his involvement with the pandemic response, he could be prosecuted for. So that possibility was apparently on his mind and on the minds of his attorneys going into that hearing. And in particular, if he was deemed to have lied to Congress during the hearing this week, he could be prosecuted for that pardon, notwithstanding, for those who
[04:21]
Aaron Wary
look at Anthony Fauci as some kind of guilty party or with general skepticism and suspicion, and we're going to get to why that might be the case shortly. But I guess the risk for Fauci is that critics can now say, first Joe Biden pardoned him, now he's pleading the Fifth. If he did nothing wrong, what is he afraid of? Legally, that isn't necessarily how either a pardon or the Fifth Amendment works, but politically or reputationally, I guess. Do you think there are implications for him in deciding to take this route?
[04:57]
Daniel Engber
I mean, I think implications for his public image, implications for his legacy. This question of legal implications is a little bit complicated, as far as we could tell from our reporting. But in terms of. Yeah, how does it look? Senator Paul makes the point that, you know, leaving aside the question of what he might have done wrong during the pandemic, he was at no legal risk, says Paul, if he just answered every question truthfully, you know, he's. There's only this risk of prosecution for lying to Congress with, you know, a fresh lie, if he lies, so why not tell the truth? But I think, you know, there's just such a track record of these calls for his prosecution. And, you know, one could easily have the sense that, you know, there was a plan here to find some excuse to prosecute him. That's certainly how Fauci himself put it in his opening statement. The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars. Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. That's the setup for the hearing. But I agree with you. For someone who's just coming to this fresh and hasn't followed this whole back and forth over many months and even years now, it does seem weird. Why is Anthony Fauci refusing to answer any questions? Why does he have this pardon?
[06:34]
Aaron Wary
And we should work through what the committee, or certain members of the committee, I guess, are alleging here. Senator Rand Paul has accused Fauci of misleading Congress about research connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and about his role in discussions concerning the origin of COVID 19. The Trump administration has gone considerably further. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence now alleges Fauci helped manipulate intelligence assessments, lied to Congress, and that US Funded research ultimately produced the virus that caused the pandemic. Those are obviously pretty extraordinary allegations. What evidence actually exists for them?
[07:16]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, that's a very complicated and many layered question. Let me start with as clearly as I can say what is actually known to have happened. Okay, so the US Government, through the institute that Anthony Fauci led, did give money through a third party organization called EcoHealth to researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who were studying bat coronaviruses somewhat similar to the one that eventually caused the pandemic. That is known. That is true. Now, everything else is disputed to one degree or another. And the allegations against Fauci are many. One of the things that Fauci and Paul have sparred over in the past is this question of, well, what was the nature of that research that received US funding in Wuhan? Senator Paul has said it's gain of function research. These are experiments that were making bat coronaviruses potentially more dangerous to humans. And there is some evidence that research of that type was being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was connected to this grant support from EcoHealth, which in turn can be traced back to the National Institutes of health in the U.S. so there was this kind of semantic question in 2021 when Fauci was first testifying before Paul's committee was, did you fund gain of function research in Wuhan? And Dr. Fauci said, no, I didn't. And Senator Paul said, this was a lie. They later had, you know, a very heated exchange where Senator Paul invited Fauci to retract that statement. And Fauci said, you know, I'm not the one who's lying. You're the one who's lying. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. Okay, you get one person.
[09:21]
Rand Paul
Let's read from the nih. Can I gain a function? This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among mammals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increase their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function? It is not. It's a dance. And you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic.
[09:53]
Daniel Engber
It seems to come down to what's your definition of gain of function research. My assessment of it is that Fauci was kind of splitting hairs in the definition of the term. So a lot of this, of everything that's followed has flowed from this one moment. But this is a very, very minor technical point in a sense. And it only becomes very important if you also believe that the research that was going on in Wuhan did actually lead to creation of the virus that caused the pandemic. And so there's kind of this two step process, like, are we fixated on almost this technicality of whether Fauci lied about this grant, or are we implying that actually the US Government caused the pandemic through this multi step process? And so that's just that whole thing is hanging over all of this. And one of the things that happened in the hearing is that you saw, especially the Republican members, just kind of stipulating that we know how the pandemic started. And it started with the release of the virus from a lab in Wuhan. And then it's this question of like, okay, whose fault is that? And now we can connect the dots and make the case that was actually Anthony Fauci's fault.
[11:15]
Rand Paul
Publicly, Anthony Fauci promoted the theory that the virus arose naturally. But while privately he was well aware of a mountain of evidence suggesting the virus originated in the lab. The American people deserve answers.
[11:28]
Daniel Engber
But even that is so tendentious because it is not the case that everyone agrees this is how the pandemic starts. This is sort of the official position of the White House at this moment. But it's certainly not the case that this is the consensus view among virologists. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. Most virologists I talk to think there's a natural origin. And if you look at the Intelligence assessments conducted by various component agencies in the US Government. There's kind of a split. But how one chooses to resolve that uncertainty in one's own mind colors what you think of this whole question of like, what Fauci did wrong and what it means.
[12:21]
Aaron Wary
Adding to all this is that Rand Paul has made public Fauci's pandemic diary entries authored between 2019 and 2022, a diary that was apparently provided to Paul by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Health Secretary. These diary entries are Fauci writing contemporaneously about Trump, the media, Covid's origins, his own public profile, and the extraordinary political world he suddenly inhabited. Paul and others have seized on portions about the origins of COVID 19 and whether or not it originated in a laboratory. Can you explain what they're latching onto and what they say it demonstrates?
[12:59]
Daniel Engber
I mean, I think that a lot of what is being latched onto by everyone is just how embarrassing these diaries are. Separate from the question of what did Fauci write about his own thinking on salient points about the source of the pandemic. There's just a lot of really cringe inducing material in there where he's essentially preening over all the attention he's getting. To me, that is the substance in quotes of the diary and what role they played both in the public reaction to the hearing in the lead up to it, and also it even played out in some of the questions that he was asked. He was taken to task for his tone and focus on the issues that really mattered. There are a few things in the diary that were, you know, picked out, I think, and used to justify the release of the diary and claimed to be smoking gun evidence about what Fauci really thought. I didn't find any of that evidence convincing in any way. One of them that you alluded to, I think, in January of 2020. So very early on there's a line about how the outbreak of COVID at this wet market in Wuhan was not the start of the pandemic, but an amplifying event. And then he was saying something different later on, more in line with the conventional hypothesis that in fact this spillover event did happen at the market. So does that mean that he was spilling his true thoughts directly onto the page in January and then lying to the American public later on? I mean, maybe, or maybe everyone was just trying to figure out what was going on in January of 2020 and hadn't landed on a more considered opinion or opinions were changing every week, every day during that Period, and continued to do so for months. So, I don't know. There's a lot of stuff like that that has been pulled out of the diary. Look, this is what he wrote here and this is what he said there. And it could be a difference between what he was willing to say in public and in private, or it could be just, you know, time passes, opinions change.
[15:12]
Aaron Wary
We've talked about it a bit already here, but the lab leak theory. Early on, that theory became entangled with genuinely conspiratorial claims and Trump's rhetoric about China. Major platforms and media organizations sometimes treated it as a fringe idea. But subsequently, it does feel like, as you say, some American intelligence agencies themselves have arrived at different assessments about the plausibility of a laboratory associated incident. You've written extensively about this debate. Is there credible evidence, would you say, to back up the theory that Covid was or could have been a lab leak?
[15:51]
Daniel Engber
There's arguments over what should count as evidence in quotes, but, yes, I think there is a reasonable debate to be had. I don't think this is 100% resolved. More to the point of the Fauci hearings, there was a lot of reason to be uncertain at that time in 2020, again, if we can all agree, it was most likely a natural origin. Now then, all this stuff seems sort of silly, like, who cares what Fauci was saying back then? But to me, one of the things that is alarming, that comes out in the evidence, not just of the questions asked of Fauci that he refused to answer, but some of the documentary evidence that Paul has released is you can see that in this group of kind of elite virologists that were consulting with Fauci at the time, in the spring of 2020 and on into the summer, there was a lot of concern that there was a laboratory experiment gone wrong, had been the source of this. And I really do think that this concern was sort of buried. Might be too strong a word, but it might not be too strong a word. I mean, it was just happening behind the scenes, and then there was a public message being presented to the American people. I think that part of the Rand Paul narrative rings true to me when you look at the private messages being exchanged among these virologists and perhaps even some of the entries from Fauci's diary. So the question becomes, first of all, is this a crime? Second of all, why did it happen? There was a lot of stuff was happening in public health at that time where there was uncertainty behind the scenes. But kind of a single Simplified, more coherent message was presented to the public. An example of this is masking. And a lot of people are very angry at Fauci about his advice on face masks in the beginning of the pandemic. At first he said no one should be wearing a mask. And then all of a sudden he flipped around and he said, everyone should be wearing a mask. It's not like the evidence that the public health experts had behind the scenes went from this is a bad idea to this is a good idea. And there was a sense, and I think this is often the case with public health. You want to have a simple message that you can tell everyone, and then if such time comes, that you need to change the message, you change it. But you don't show your hand if you're having doub. So on that level, you can understand why. Well, maybe there's some debate behind the scenes about what really caused the pandemic, but you're going to get this simplified message presented to the public. On the other hand, if they really were concerned that NIH funded research may have led to a laboratory accident that started the pandemic, I mean, it does make sense that there'd be some very serious reputational damage. Or maybe there are practical considerations, like if we come out and say blame a Chinese researcher for having started the pandemic, it's going to make it really hard to do further research on exactly how this started. We'll lose any hope of cooperation with the Chinese on this. So, again, there's many explanations for why this might have happened. But I do think there is reason to believe that Fauci and others had doubts, that they didn't share on that
[19:16]
Aaron Wary
last point, the last sort of extension of the idea or the narrative that's, that's being pushed in some cases, based on what we know right now, how much of it is a leap still to say that Anthony Fauci is somehow responsible for the leak or for the pandemic?
[19:34]
Daniel Engber
I mean, it's a huge leap. Again, there's multiple steps. First you have to believe that, you know, that actually this was a lab leak caused pandemic. I think that's a huge leap. No one knows that for sure. And I think there's very good reason to think that that is unlikely. Okay, so that's leap number one. Then leap number two is, you know, somehow, specifically, this work that was funded by NIH led to the construction of the pathogen. There's just a lot of steps. I mean, there's other versions of the theory out there. One of them is that the virus was actually created in a lab in North Carolina and then aerosolized in Montana and then shipped to Wuhan. I don't. I'm not bringing that up to say that, you know, our listeners should believe it. I'm just saying there's many leaps can be made and are made, and it's sort of. It's like, where. Where do you choose to hop on this moving train that is the lab leak? The.
[20:43]
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[21:40]
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[21:57]
Aaron Wary
Just to go back in the Anthony Fauci story. He had gained real prominence as a public health official during the AIDS epidemic.
[22:06]
Daniel Engber
The public Health service has received reports of about 5,800 cases of AIDS with
[22:10]
Aaron Wary
a case fatality ratio of 45%.
[22:13]
Daniel Engber
Dr. Anthony Fauci is hopeful that the answer to this dreaded disease may be in sight. I believe now that we have the agent in hand that the amount of effort and energy that's being put into it by biomedical sciences that within a reasonable period of time will have a lot of these answers.
[22:31]
Aaron Wary
But he wasn't quite a household name in America, I don't think, before the pandemic. He served presidents of both parties, going back many decades. Then Covid happens, and almost overnight, he becomes one of the most famous people in America. There was a time when people were wearing Fauci T shirts, selling Fauci prayer candles. Brad Pitt played him on Saturday Night Live.
[22:53]
Rand Paul
Good evening. I'm Dr. Anthony Fauci. First, I'd like to thank all the older women in America who have sent me supportive, inspiring, and sometimes graphic emails.
[23:05]
Aaron Wary
There was a real celebrity constructed around a public health bureaucrat do you think in a way that Lionization contributed to the backlash that came?
[23:16]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, I mean, definitely. It's interesting to think back. There's no particular reason ahead of time why if we were faced with a pandemic, Anthony Fauci would be marched on stage as the face of the US Public health response. Typically, you might expect the head of the Centers for Disease Control to be in that position, or maybe the Secretary of Health and Human Services. But instead, this is not the person who runs the National Institutes of Health, but someone who runs one institute within the National Institutes of Health. Kind of in some ways an unlikely choice, but that's the choice that was made. And Fauci does love the spotlight, so I think he embraced the role. But having embraced the role, he was in this weird position because as time went on, a lot of people got really angry about the pandemic public health response. And that became politically polarized, where Republicans were much more angry than Democrats. Democrats were kind of, this is, I'm broad strokes here, but Democrats were kind of signed on with the pro establishment institutionalists, like, public health is great. I'm going to put on my mask and do whatever I'm told. And Republicans were more likely to be in this kind of anti establishment mindset of don't tell me to put on a mask, don't tell me to take a vaccine. You've destroyed the economy by, you know, putting restrictions on what businesses can be open. So you had this politicization of the response to what measures had been taken. And then that created, I think, a kind of cognitive dissonance, because if you were, let's say, a MAGA Republican who is really mad about the initial response to Covid, well, who was running the country at the time that happened, it was Donald Trump. So you couldn't just blame the administration because you were very supportive of the administration. So, okay, well, no, it was the conniving deep state scientists who caused the problem and who was on stage representing that part of government. It was all being channeled through Anthony Fauci. So I think in a way, not only was he the face of the coronavirus response, but he also became a way to be furious at the government when you were supportive of the president. And I think that dynamic was really important. And then you had this kind of ironic outcome. Ironic in the sense that Fauci had spent his entire career trying to be non political, a completely non political person is how he would put it. And then all of a sudden he became one of the most political people in America where there could be polling that would show, based on the respondents political affiliation, they either treated Fauci as a saint or as a demon.
[26:21]
Aaron Wary
I think it's fair to say, you know, more than six years after the pandemic began, Covid remains a kind of an enormous sort of unresolved trauma. More than a million Americans died. More than 7 million people died worldwide. Children had their schooling interrupted. People lost their jobs. Families were separated from dying relatives. The government imposed extraordinary restrictions on everyday life. And Americans still profoundly disagree about which of these sacrifices were necessary. Is it possible that a catastrophe of that magnitude was always going to produce a search for individual culpability? That there was always going to be a desire for a singular villain?
[27:11]
Daniel Engber
I mean, I would have hoped not. And to be clear, I don't think it is a singular villain. Fauci is the best known. But it seems to me that there's actually a broader effort within the government to go after not just Fauci, but his various associates and other people who are thought to have been associated with the alleged lab leak. One of Fauci's advisors is under federal indictment. Virologist associated with NIH is under a federal indictment. There's a virologist in North Carolina. I mentioned that aspect of the lab leak theory before. He's been fired and barred from getting any government grants. So there's like a broader effort at what I've called lab leak payback. So it's not just Fauci, but yeah, it's being directed at individuals. And I think part of that is just filling the gap of any kind of more comprehensive institutional response. You know, when we were in the midst of the pandemic, I assumed that when it was over, we would get some kind of almost like, if anything, an over response to, like, how can. Let's throw all our money at the possibility of another coronavirus outbreak, you know, at the expense of thinking about what other kinds of viruses might cause a pandemic or what other kinds of, you know, surprises could upend the global economy and. And cause great harm and suffering. It's not at all what's happened in the U.S. i mean, it's. If anything, there's been. The idea of pandemic preparedness is now just in shadows. A whole team was brought in to Health and Human Services, almost like with a mission to dismantle anything associated with responding to a pandemic with vigorous public health response to anything. So it's kind of just this like, shocking reality that just after sustaining those million deaths in the US and 7 million overall. We're running away from any kind of big thinking. Instead, we're focusing on prosecuting individuals. It's a lot harder to do the complicated policy work and figure out the trade offs that come with regulating this kind of research. I mean, this research isn't done for fun. The research is done because someone thinks it has a better chance of helping protect us from the next pandemic than causing the next pandemic. So it's tough to figure out what kinds of studies should be done and how to oversee them. But that's not where we are. Where we are is going after individuals,
[30:09]
Aaron Wary
You know, even beyond sort of a response that is aimed at preventing the next pandemic. Do you think that essentially putting Anthony Fauci on trial is happening in lieu of a real reckoning with the mistakes and the handling of the pandemic in the United States by multiple layers of government and political actors, has this sort of pursuit of Anthony Fauci and as you say, others sort of come in place of that sort of backwards looking reckoning with what exactly happened there?
[30:51]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, I mean, I do think it has been. It has come in place. I don't think it has to be in place of it. Right. If it is true that US Funded research caused the pandemic, I do think there should be consequences. If I put my mind in the place of someone who is absolutely certain about how the pandemic started and Anthony Fauci's role in it, I can understand how infuriating and upsetting it must be to watch this guy skate on having done that and just continue to go around the country giving lectures. I mean, he still has to travel with private security, he still gets death threats. But the impunity with which he is living in his retirement from government service, I can see how that would just drive people crazy again if they are certain of what happened. So I guess I just want to leave open that I think it does matter. I've heard some people say, who cares how the pandemic started? Who cares who's responsible? I think it does matter. I think we ought to know. I wish we did know. And I think it's reasonable to hold people to account in one way or another if we know they actually are responsible. But that can happen while also doing all the other things that one might want to do to address systemic failings in 2020 and before that might have led to that predicament. Right.
[32:26]
Aaron Wary
I'm imagining that you might have imagined instead of what we're seeing. With Anthony Fauci some kind of commission or bipartisan or review of America's handling of the pandemic and the lessons learned.
[32:40]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, and, I mean, there have been bipartisan efforts to do just that. There have been bipartisan investigations into Covid origins. So, you know, I guess there's a question of have we gone as far as we can go in that kind of work? Is there anything new to find out? I think, you know, the generous interpretation of what happened this week was, okay, we're going to force Anthony Fauci to testify. Since he has the pardon, maybe he'll be able to just really say everything he knows. Again, I think that's a generous interpretation, but from what I'm seeing, we're not making a lot of progress. In fact, I thought the hearing this week was almost like negative progress because Fauci wasn't saying anything. The senators were saying a lot. Some of what they were saying was untrue, and there was no one to correct them because Fauci himself kept pleading the Fifth. So he couldn't. Even when there were clear distortions of fact, he just said his one line.
[33:39]
Aaron Wary
All right, thanks very much, Daniel, for joining us.
[33:41]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, thank you.
[33:50]
Aaron Wary
That's all for today. Front burner was produced this week by joetha sengupta, matthew umha, kevin sexton, sam mcnulty, dev modi and mackenzie cameron. Our YouTube producer is john lee. Our music is by joseph chaves. Our senior producers are elaine chao and imogen burchard. Our executive producer is nick mccabe. Lokos. I'm aaron wary. Jason markusoff will be hosting next week. Thanks so much for listening.
[34:22]
Daniel Engber
For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.

Summary7 min read

Podcast Summary:

Front Burner (CBC)
Episode: Republican revenge against Anthony Fauci
Date: July 31, 2026
Host: Aaron Wary (in for Jayme Poisson)
Guest: Daniel Engber, Senior Editor at The Atlantic

Episode Overview

This episode explores the dramatic escalation of Republican-led efforts to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for the U.S. COVID-19 response, culminating in his recent and extraordinary Congressional testimony where he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Host Aaron Wary and guest Daniel Engber unpack the latest hearing, the political motivations behind targeting Fauci, the controversy over U.S.-funded research in Wuhan, and why the lab leak theory remains a political flashpoint. The conversation delves into the evidence—or lack thereof—fueling the allegations, the broader implications for public health, and the search for a singular villain in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Extraordinary Senate Hearing and Fauci’s Refusal to Testify

Fauci’s Historic Fifth Amendment Invocation
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, facing a subpoena, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during a Senate committee hearing on the U.S. COVID-19 response. (02:17)
- Why? The risk: although Biden issued a blanket pardon for actions taken until the end of his presidency, any new crimes, especially perjury during the hearing, remain prosecutable.
- Daniel Engber: "If he was deemed to have lied to Congress during the hearing this week, he could be prosecuted for that." (03:14)
- Political Optics: Critics can now argue, "If he did nothing wrong, what is he afraid of?"
- Senator Rand Paul: "If he just answered every question truthfully… why not tell the truth?" (04:56)

2. The Allegations Against Fauci: Evidence & Counterpoints

Republican Allegations
- Senator Rand Paul and others accuse Fauci of misleading Congress about U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and even claim this research resulted in the creation of COVID-19. (06:34)
- The Trump administration escalated, alleging Fauci manipulated intelligence assessments and lied to Congress.
Parsing the Evidence
- The U.S. did fund research on bat coronaviruses at Wuhan via EcoHealth Alliance (07:16), but everything beyond this is contested.
- The dispute centers on whether the research constituted "gain of function" (making viruses more dangerous).
- Rand Paul: "They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increase their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function? ...it's a dance. And you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility..." (09:20)
- Engber’s Take: "Fauci was kind of splitting hairs in the definition of the term." (09:52)
- The theory's plausibility depends on two big leaps: (1) that a lab leak happened, (2) that this specific research caused it. Neither step is proven. (19:33)
- Notably, there is no consensus among virologists or U.S. intelligence on lab leak theory vs. natural origin. (11:28)

3. The "Pandemic Diary" and Inside Accounts

Fauci’s Diary Released
- Entries from 2019–2022 were made public, revealing his private thoughts on COVID's origins, Trump, and his own celebrity status. (12:21)
- Daniel Engber: "There's just a lot of really cringe inducing material in there where he's essentially preening over all the attention he's getting." (12:58)
- Critics seized on perceived inconsistencies between his diary and public statements about COVID’s origins, but Engber dismisses these as unconvincing—opinions were genuinely evolving during the early chaotic days. (13:50)

4. The Lab Leak Debate, Public Messaging, and “Simplified Narratives”

Evidence for a Lab Leak?
- At best, says Engber, there are reasons for debate and some private concern among virologists, but no conclusive proof of a lab leak or U.S. responsibility. (15:50)
- “One of the things that is alarming...you can see that...there was a lot of concern that there was a laboratory experiment gone wrong.” (16:45)
Why Was Public Messaging So Different?
- Early in the pandemic, public health officials downplayed uncertainty and presented unified (sometimes overconfident) messages to avoid confusion. (17:50)
- Example: The flip-flop on mask guidance, done for messaging clarity.
- Engber: "There was a sense, and I think this is often the case with public health. You want to have a simple message..." (17:53)
Motivations for Blame
- The impulse to “find a villain” after great trauma, like a pandemic, is powerful. Fauci, thanks to his media persona, became that focal point, especially for those who wanted to defend the Trump administration but still blame “the establishment.” (23:16)

5. The “Lab Leak Payback” and Broader Targets

Broader Prosecutions & Fallout
- It's not just Fauci: other advisors, NIH-connected virologists, and even researchers in North Carolina have faced indictments or career-ending sanctions. (27:10)
- Engber describes a climate less of institutional reform and preparedness, and more of individual retribution: "We're running away from any kind of big thinking. Instead, we're focusing on prosecuting individuals." (29:19)

6. Is Individual Blame Masking Systemic Failures?

Avoided Reckoning
- The pursuit of Fauci is happening "in lieu of a real reckoning" about what went right and wrong systemically during America’s pandemic response. (30:08)
- Engber: “I do think it has been. It has come in place. I don't think it has to be in place of it...if it is true...I do think there should be consequences...” (30:50)
Lack of Institutional Learning
- There have been some bipartisan investigations, but little has been accomplished in terms of learning or policy reform.
- Engber notes this week's hearing arguably set back understanding, because Fauci’s silence allowed unchecked misstatements by senators. (32:40)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Fifth Amendment Silence:
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.” – Dr. Fauci, as quoted by Daniel Engber (01:46)
On Political Motivation:
“The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, 'behind bars.' Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.” – Daniel Engber quoting Fauci’s opening statement (05:29)
On the difficulty of systemic reform:
"It's a lot harder to do the complicated policy work and figure out the trade offs that come with regulating this kind of research...But that's not where we are. Where we are is going after individuals." – Daniel Engber (29:19)
On America’s polarized response:
“Democrats were kind of signed on with the pro establishment institutionalists, like, public health is great... Republicans were more likely to be in this kind of anti establishment mindset... So you had this politicization of the response to what measures had been taken.” – Daniel Engber (24:44)
On the origins of the lab leak theory backlash:
“If you were, let's say, a MAGA Republican who is really mad about the initial response to Covid...well, who was running the country at the time that happened, it was Donald Trump. So you couldn't just blame the administration... No, it was the conniving deep state scientists who caused the problem and who was on stage representing that part of government. It was all being channeled through Anthony Fauci.” – Daniel Engber (24:54)
On the lack of consensus in the scientific community:
“It's not the case that everyone agrees this is how the pandemic starts. This is sort of the official position of the White House at this moment. But it's certainly not the case that this is the consensus view among virologists. In fact, I would say the opposite is true.” – Daniel Engber (11:28)

Important Timestamps

00:32 – Introduction; Fauci’s transformed public image
01:26 – Senate hearing and Fauci pleading the Fifth
02:44 – Explanation of why Fauci invoked the Fifth, including Biden’s blanket pardon
04:21 – Political implications of pleading the Fifth
06:34 – Breakdown of allegations against Fauci
09:20 – Rand Paul and the “gain of function” debate
12:21 – Fauci’s private diary: public vs. private messaging
15:50 – Evaluating the evidence for the lab leak theory
17:53 – The public messaging dilemma during the pandemic
19:33 – The leaping logic required to pin responsibility on Fauci
22:52 – Rise of Fauci’s celebrity and cultural role
24:44 – The politicization of Fauci and Covid response
27:10 – Broader Republican pursuit of “lab leak payback”
30:08–32:40 – Discussion on real vs. scapegoat accountability and lessons not learned

Tone and Style

The tone is analytical, cautious, and direct, matching the careful, journalistic style of both Aaron Wary and Daniel Engber. While Engber acknowledges Republican motivations and frustration, he consistently grounds the conversation in the complexity and uncertainty of both the public health response and the continuing debates over COVID’s origins.

Conclusion

This episode provides a thorough, clear-eyed look at the current efforts to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci (and others) responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, unpacking the evidentiary gaps, the politics of blame, and the risks posed by scapegoating individuals instead of reckoning with complex public failures. The conversation underscores the high political stakes and deep societal divides that continue to shape America’s pandemic memory and policy future.

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Transcript48 lines

[00:00]
Daniel Engber
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[00:33]
Aaron Wary
Hi, I'm Aaron Wary, in for Jamie. Six years ago, Anthony Fauci was probably the most famous doctor in the world. As the face of America's Covid response, he became an almost constant presence in American life and in some corners, a revered figure. But to a growing movement on the American right, he eventually became a villain, accused not simply of mishandling the pandemic, but of misleading the public about its origins and even bearing some responsibility for Covid itself.
[01:08]
Rand Paul
I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards so a man made epidemic never happens again.
[01:26]
Aaron Wary
This week Fauci testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. After receiving a subpoena and with the threat of possible criminal proceedings hanging over the testimony, the hearings took an unusual turn.
[01:40]
Rand Paul
Can you explain to the committee why you chose to fund this dangerous research in China?
[01:47]
Daniel Engber
On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment of the Constitution.
[01:55]
Aaron Wary
Years after the pandemic ended, why is part of America so eager to put Anthony Fauci on trial? Daniel Engber is a senior editor at the Atlantic. He co wrote the piece what Anthony Fauci didn't say. Daniel, thanks so much for joining us.
[02:16]
Daniel Engber
Thanks for having me.
[02:17]
Aaron Wary
We should begin with what happened on Wednesday because it was a pretty extraordinary scene. Anthony Fauci, as I said, was brought before a Senate committee investigating the COVID response. And rather than answer senators questions, Fauci repeatedly invoked the fifth amendment of the US Constitution, more than a hundred times in all. Why did he do that? What did Fauci and his legal team believe he risks if he had answered those questions?
[02:45]
Daniel Engber
Well, to understand this, we really have to go back to the beginning of last year, President Biden's really final hours in office.
[02:54]
Rand Paul
President Biden has just issued preemptive pardons saying, quote, these public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutors. So, again, this is Anthony Fauci. This is the committee members and staff of the January 6th Committee.
[03:15]
Daniel Engber
He gave Fauci, among others, a blanket pardon for any offenses committed against the United States for Fauci since the start of 2014, in association with his role as director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, or any of the various roles he had in the White House coronavirus pandemic response. So Fauci has this blanket pardon covering anything that might have gone wrong during that time, but only up until the moment that presidential pardon was signed, which is in late January of 2025. So any new crimes he commits associated with, again, his involvement with the pandemic response, he could be prosecuted for. So that possibility was apparently on his mind and on the minds of his attorneys going into that hearing. And in particular, if he was deemed to have lied to Congress during the hearing this week, he could be prosecuted for that pardon, notwithstanding, for those who
[04:21]
Aaron Wary
look at Anthony Fauci as some kind of guilty party or with general skepticism and suspicion, and we're going to get to why that might be the case shortly. But I guess the risk for Fauci is that critics can now say, first Joe Biden pardoned him, now he's pleading the Fifth. If he did nothing wrong, what is he afraid of? Legally, that isn't necessarily how either a pardon or the Fifth Amendment works, but politically or reputationally, I guess. Do you think there are implications for him in deciding to take this route?
[04:57]
Daniel Engber
I mean, I think implications for his public image, implications for his legacy. This question of legal implications is a little bit complicated, as far as we could tell from our reporting. But in terms of. Yeah, how does it look? Senator Paul makes the point that, you know, leaving aside the question of what he might have done wrong during the pandemic, he was at no legal risk, says Paul, if he just answered every question truthfully, you know, he's. There's only this risk of prosecution for lying to Congress with, you know, a fresh lie, if he lies, so why not tell the truth? But I think, you know, there's just such a track record of these calls for his prosecution. And, you know, one could easily have the sense that, you know, there was a plan here to find some excuse to prosecute him. That's certainly how Fauci himself put it in his opening statement. The sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars. Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. That's the setup for the hearing. But I agree with you. For someone who's just coming to this fresh and hasn't followed this whole back and forth over many months and even years now, it does seem weird. Why is Anthony Fauci refusing to answer any questions? Why does he have this pardon?
[06:34]
Aaron Wary
And we should work through what the committee, or certain members of the committee, I guess, are alleging here. Senator Rand Paul has accused Fauci of misleading Congress about research connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and about his role in discussions concerning the origin of COVID 19. The Trump administration has gone considerably further. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence now alleges Fauci helped manipulate intelligence assessments, lied to Congress, and that US Funded research ultimately produced the virus that caused the pandemic. Those are obviously pretty extraordinary allegations. What evidence actually exists for them?
[07:16]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, that's a very complicated and many layered question. Let me start with as clearly as I can say what is actually known to have happened. Okay, so the US Government, through the institute that Anthony Fauci led, did give money through a third party organization called EcoHealth to researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who were studying bat coronaviruses somewhat similar to the one that eventually caused the pandemic. That is known. That is true. Now, everything else is disputed to one degree or another. And the allegations against Fauci are many. One of the things that Fauci and Paul have sparred over in the past is this question of, well, what was the nature of that research that received US funding in Wuhan? Senator Paul has said it's gain of function research. These are experiments that were making bat coronaviruses potentially more dangerous to humans. And there is some evidence that research of that type was being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was connected to this grant support from EcoHealth, which in turn can be traced back to the National Institutes of health in the U.S. so there was this kind of semantic question in 2021 when Fauci was first testifying before Paul's committee was, did you fund gain of function research in Wuhan? And Dr. Fauci said, no, I didn't. And Senator Paul said, this was a lie. They later had, you know, a very heated exchange where Senator Paul invited Fauci to retract that statement. And Fauci said, you know, I'm not the one who's lying. You're the one who's lying. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. Okay, you get one person.
[09:21]
Rand Paul
Let's read from the nih. Can I gain a function? This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among mammals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increase their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function? It is not. It's a dance. And you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic.
[09:53]
Daniel Engber
It seems to come down to what's your definition of gain of function research. My assessment of it is that Fauci was kind of splitting hairs in the definition of the term. So a lot of this, of everything that's followed has flowed from this one moment. But this is a very, very minor technical point in a sense. And it only becomes very important if you also believe that the research that was going on in Wuhan did actually lead to creation of the virus that caused the pandemic. And so there's kind of this two step process, like, are we fixated on almost this technicality of whether Fauci lied about this grant, or are we implying that actually the US Government caused the pandemic through this multi step process? And so that's just that whole thing is hanging over all of this. And one of the things that happened in the hearing is that you saw, especially the Republican members, just kind of stipulating that we know how the pandemic started. And it started with the release of the virus from a lab in Wuhan. And then it's this question of like, okay, whose fault is that? And now we can connect the dots and make the case that was actually Anthony Fauci's fault.
[11:15]
Rand Paul
Publicly, Anthony Fauci promoted the theory that the virus arose naturally. But while privately he was well aware of a mountain of evidence suggesting the virus originated in the lab. The American people deserve answers.
[11:28]
Daniel Engber
But even that is so tendentious because it is not the case that everyone agrees this is how the pandemic starts. This is sort of the official position of the White House at this moment. But it's certainly not the case that this is the consensus view among virologists. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. Most virologists I talk to think there's a natural origin. And if you look at the Intelligence assessments conducted by various component agencies in the US Government. There's kind of a split. But how one chooses to resolve that uncertainty in one's own mind colors what you think of this whole question of like, what Fauci did wrong and what it means.
[12:21]
Aaron Wary
Adding to all this is that Rand Paul has made public Fauci's pandemic diary entries authored between 2019 and 2022, a diary that was apparently provided to Paul by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Health Secretary. These diary entries are Fauci writing contemporaneously about Trump, the media, Covid's origins, his own public profile, and the extraordinary political world he suddenly inhabited. Paul and others have seized on portions about the origins of COVID 19 and whether or not it originated in a laboratory. Can you explain what they're latching onto and what they say it demonstrates?
[12:59]
Daniel Engber
I mean, I think that a lot of what is being latched onto by everyone is just how embarrassing these diaries are. Separate from the question of what did Fauci write about his own thinking on salient points about the source of the pandemic. There's just a lot of really cringe inducing material in there where he's essentially preening over all the attention he's getting. To me, that is the substance in quotes of the diary and what role they played both in the public reaction to the hearing in the lead up to it, and also it even played out in some of the questions that he was asked. He was taken to task for his tone and focus on the issues that really mattered. There are a few things in the diary that were, you know, picked out, I think, and used to justify the release of the diary and claimed to be smoking gun evidence about what Fauci really thought. I didn't find any of that evidence convincing in any way. One of them that you alluded to, I think, in January of 2020. So very early on there's a line about how the outbreak of COVID at this wet market in Wuhan was not the start of the pandemic, but an amplifying event. And then he was saying something different later on, more in line with the conventional hypothesis that in fact this spillover event did happen at the market. So does that mean that he was spilling his true thoughts directly onto the page in January and then lying to the American public later on? I mean, maybe, or maybe everyone was just trying to figure out what was going on in January of 2020 and hadn't landed on a more considered opinion or opinions were changing every week, every day during that Period, and continued to do so for months. So, I don't know. There's a lot of stuff like that that has been pulled out of the diary. Look, this is what he wrote here and this is what he said there. And it could be a difference between what he was willing to say in public and in private, or it could be just, you know, time passes, opinions change.
[15:12]
Aaron Wary
We've talked about it a bit already here, but the lab leak theory. Early on, that theory became entangled with genuinely conspiratorial claims and Trump's rhetoric about China. Major platforms and media organizations sometimes treated it as a fringe idea. But subsequently, it does feel like, as you say, some American intelligence agencies themselves have arrived at different assessments about the plausibility of a laboratory associated incident. You've written extensively about this debate. Is there credible evidence, would you say, to back up the theory that Covid was or could have been a lab leak?
[15:51]
Daniel Engber
There's arguments over what should count as evidence in quotes, but, yes, I think there is a reasonable debate to be had. I don't think this is 100% resolved. More to the point of the Fauci hearings, there was a lot of reason to be uncertain at that time in 2020, again, if we can all agree, it was most likely a natural origin. Now then, all this stuff seems sort of silly, like, who cares what Fauci was saying back then? But to me, one of the things that is alarming, that comes out in the evidence, not just of the questions asked of Fauci that he refused to answer, but some of the documentary evidence that Paul has released is you can see that in this group of kind of elite virologists that were consulting with Fauci at the time, in the spring of 2020 and on into the summer, there was a lot of concern that there was a laboratory experiment gone wrong, had been the source of this. And I really do think that this concern was sort of buried. Might be too strong a word, but it might not be too strong a word. I mean, it was just happening behind the scenes, and then there was a public message being presented to the American people. I think that part of the Rand Paul narrative rings true to me when you look at the private messages being exchanged among these virologists and perhaps even some of the entries from Fauci's diary. So the question becomes, first of all, is this a crime? Second of all, why did it happen? There was a lot of stuff was happening in public health at that time where there was uncertainty behind the scenes. But kind of a single Simplified, more coherent message was presented to the public. An example of this is masking. And a lot of people are very angry at Fauci about his advice on face masks in the beginning of the pandemic. At first he said no one should be wearing a mask. And then all of a sudden he flipped around and he said, everyone should be wearing a mask. It's not like the evidence that the public health experts had behind the scenes went from this is a bad idea to this is a good idea. And there was a sense, and I think this is often the case with public health. You want to have a simple message that you can tell everyone, and then if such time comes, that you need to change the message, you change it. But you don't show your hand if you're having doub. So on that level, you can understand why. Well, maybe there's some debate behind the scenes about what really caused the pandemic, but you're going to get this simplified message presented to the public. On the other hand, if they really were concerned that NIH funded research may have led to a laboratory accident that started the pandemic, I mean, it does make sense that there'd be some very serious reputational damage. Or maybe there are practical considerations, like if we come out and say blame a Chinese researcher for having started the pandemic, it's going to make it really hard to do further research on exactly how this started. We'll lose any hope of cooperation with the Chinese on this. So, again, there's many explanations for why this might have happened. But I do think there is reason to believe that Fauci and others had doubts, that they didn't share on that
[19:16]
Aaron Wary
last point, the last sort of extension of the idea or the narrative that's, that's being pushed in some cases, based on what we know right now, how much of it is a leap still to say that Anthony Fauci is somehow responsible for the leak or for the pandemic?
[19:34]
Daniel Engber
I mean, it's a huge leap. Again, there's multiple steps. First you have to believe that, you know, that actually this was a lab leak caused pandemic. I think that's a huge leap. No one knows that for sure. And I think there's very good reason to think that that is unlikely. Okay, so that's leap number one. Then leap number two is, you know, somehow, specifically, this work that was funded by NIH led to the construction of the pathogen. There's just a lot of steps. I mean, there's other versions of the theory out there. One of them is that the virus was actually created in a lab in North Carolina and then aerosolized in Montana and then shipped to Wuhan. I don't. I'm not bringing that up to say that, you know, our listeners should believe it. I'm just saying there's many leaps can be made and are made, and it's sort of. It's like, where. Where do you choose to hop on this moving train that is the lab leak? The.
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[21:57]
Aaron Wary
Just to go back in the Anthony Fauci story. He had gained real prominence as a public health official during the AIDS epidemic.
[22:06]
Daniel Engber
The public Health service has received reports of about 5,800 cases of AIDS with
[22:10]
Aaron Wary
a case fatality ratio of 45%.
[22:13]
Daniel Engber
Dr. Anthony Fauci is hopeful that the answer to this dreaded disease may be in sight. I believe now that we have the agent in hand that the amount of effort and energy that's being put into it by biomedical sciences that within a reasonable period of time will have a lot of these answers.
[22:31]
Aaron Wary
But he wasn't quite a household name in America, I don't think, before the pandemic. He served presidents of both parties, going back many decades. Then Covid happens, and almost overnight, he becomes one of the most famous people in America. There was a time when people were wearing Fauci T shirts, selling Fauci prayer candles. Brad Pitt played him on Saturday Night Live.
[22:53]
Rand Paul
Good evening. I'm Dr. Anthony Fauci. First, I'd like to thank all the older women in America who have sent me supportive, inspiring, and sometimes graphic emails.
[23:05]
Aaron Wary
There was a real celebrity constructed around a public health bureaucrat do you think in a way that Lionization contributed to the backlash that came?
[23:16]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, I mean, definitely. It's interesting to think back. There's no particular reason ahead of time why if we were faced with a pandemic, Anthony Fauci would be marched on stage as the face of the US Public health response. Typically, you might expect the head of the Centers for Disease Control to be in that position, or maybe the Secretary of Health and Human Services. But instead, this is not the person who runs the National Institutes of Health, but someone who runs one institute within the National Institutes of Health. Kind of in some ways an unlikely choice, but that's the choice that was made. And Fauci does love the spotlight, so I think he embraced the role. But having embraced the role, he was in this weird position because as time went on, a lot of people got really angry about the pandemic public health response. And that became politically polarized, where Republicans were much more angry than Democrats. Democrats were kind of, this is, I'm broad strokes here, but Democrats were kind of signed on with the pro establishment institutionalists, like, public health is great. I'm going to put on my mask and do whatever I'm told. And Republicans were more likely to be in this kind of anti establishment mindset of don't tell me to put on a mask, don't tell me to take a vaccine. You've destroyed the economy by, you know, putting restrictions on what businesses can be open. So you had this politicization of the response to what measures had been taken. And then that created, I think, a kind of cognitive dissonance, because if you were, let's say, a MAGA Republican who is really mad about the initial response to Covid, well, who was running the country at the time that happened, it was Donald Trump. So you couldn't just blame the administration because you were very supportive of the administration. So, okay, well, no, it was the conniving deep state scientists who caused the problem and who was on stage representing that part of government. It was all being channeled through Anthony Fauci. So I think in a way, not only was he the face of the coronavirus response, but he also became a way to be furious at the government when you were supportive of the president. And I think that dynamic was really important. And then you had this kind of ironic outcome. Ironic in the sense that Fauci had spent his entire career trying to be non political, a completely non political person is how he would put it. And then all of a sudden he became one of the most political people in America where there could be polling that would show, based on the respondents political affiliation, they either treated Fauci as a saint or as a demon.
[26:21]
Aaron Wary
I think it's fair to say, you know, more than six years after the pandemic began, Covid remains a kind of an enormous sort of unresolved trauma. More than a million Americans died. More than 7 million people died worldwide. Children had their schooling interrupted. People lost their jobs. Families were separated from dying relatives. The government imposed extraordinary restrictions on everyday life. And Americans still profoundly disagree about which of these sacrifices were necessary. Is it possible that a catastrophe of that magnitude was always going to produce a search for individual culpability? That there was always going to be a desire for a singular villain?
[27:11]
Daniel Engber
I mean, I would have hoped not. And to be clear, I don't think it is a singular villain. Fauci is the best known. But it seems to me that there's actually a broader effort within the government to go after not just Fauci, but his various associates and other people who are thought to have been associated with the alleged lab leak. One of Fauci's advisors is under federal indictment. Virologist associated with NIH is under a federal indictment. There's a virologist in North Carolina. I mentioned that aspect of the lab leak theory before. He's been fired and barred from getting any government grants. So there's like a broader effort at what I've called lab leak payback. So it's not just Fauci, but yeah, it's being directed at individuals. And I think part of that is just filling the gap of any kind of more comprehensive institutional response. You know, when we were in the midst of the pandemic, I assumed that when it was over, we would get some kind of almost like, if anything, an over response to, like, how can. Let's throw all our money at the possibility of another coronavirus outbreak, you know, at the expense of thinking about what other kinds of viruses might cause a pandemic or what other kinds of, you know, surprises could upend the global economy and. And cause great harm and suffering. It's not at all what's happened in the U.S. i mean, it's. If anything, there's been. The idea of pandemic preparedness is now just in shadows. A whole team was brought in to Health and Human Services, almost like with a mission to dismantle anything associated with responding to a pandemic with vigorous public health response to anything. So it's kind of just this like, shocking reality that just after sustaining those million deaths in the US and 7 million overall. We're running away from any kind of big thinking. Instead, we're focusing on prosecuting individuals. It's a lot harder to do the complicated policy work and figure out the trade offs that come with regulating this kind of research. I mean, this research isn't done for fun. The research is done because someone thinks it has a better chance of helping protect us from the next pandemic than causing the next pandemic. So it's tough to figure out what kinds of studies should be done and how to oversee them. But that's not where we are. Where we are is going after individuals,
[30:09]
Aaron Wary
You know, even beyond sort of a response that is aimed at preventing the next pandemic. Do you think that essentially putting Anthony Fauci on trial is happening in lieu of a real reckoning with the mistakes and the handling of the pandemic in the United States by multiple layers of government and political actors, has this sort of pursuit of Anthony Fauci and as you say, others sort of come in place of that sort of backwards looking reckoning with what exactly happened there?
[30:51]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, I mean, I do think it has been. It has come in place. I don't think it has to be in place of it. Right. If it is true that US Funded research caused the pandemic, I do think there should be consequences. If I put my mind in the place of someone who is absolutely certain about how the pandemic started and Anthony Fauci's role in it, I can understand how infuriating and upsetting it must be to watch this guy skate on having done that and just continue to go around the country giving lectures. I mean, he still has to travel with private security, he still gets death threats. But the impunity with which he is living in his retirement from government service, I can see how that would just drive people crazy again if they are certain of what happened. So I guess I just want to leave open that I think it does matter. I've heard some people say, who cares how the pandemic started? Who cares who's responsible? I think it does matter. I think we ought to know. I wish we did know. And I think it's reasonable to hold people to account in one way or another if we know they actually are responsible. But that can happen while also doing all the other things that one might want to do to address systemic failings in 2020 and before that might have led to that predicament. Right.
[32:26]
Aaron Wary
I'm imagining that you might have imagined instead of what we're seeing. With Anthony Fauci some kind of commission or bipartisan or review of America's handling of the pandemic and the lessons learned.
[32:40]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, and, I mean, there have been bipartisan efforts to do just that. There have been bipartisan investigations into Covid origins. So, you know, I guess there's a question of have we gone as far as we can go in that kind of work? Is there anything new to find out? I think, you know, the generous interpretation of what happened this week was, okay, we're going to force Anthony Fauci to testify. Since he has the pardon, maybe he'll be able to just really say everything he knows. Again, I think that's a generous interpretation, but from what I'm seeing, we're not making a lot of progress. In fact, I thought the hearing this week was almost like negative progress because Fauci wasn't saying anything. The senators were saying a lot. Some of what they were saying was untrue, and there was no one to correct them because Fauci himself kept pleading the Fifth. So he couldn't. Even when there were clear distortions of fact, he just said his one line.
[33:39]
Aaron Wary
All right, thanks very much, Daniel, for joining us.
[33:41]
Daniel Engber
Yeah, thank you.
[33:50]
Aaron Wary
That's all for today. Front burner was produced this week by joetha sengupta, matthew umha, kevin sexton, sam mcnulty, dev modi and mackenzie cameron. Our YouTube producer is john lee. Our music is by joseph chaves. Our senior producers are elaine chao and imogen burchard. Our executive producer is nick mccabe. Lokos. I'm aaron wary. Jason markusoff will be hosting next week. Thanks so much for listening.
[34:22]
Daniel Engber
For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.