Fauci Pleads the Fifth
Dr. Anthony Fauci is one of the most esteemed and well-known figures in the field of public health. Following his time as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, chief medical advisor to President Biden, and as a crucial responder during the HIV/AIDs crisis in the later part of the twentieth century; he is attending a senate hearing. So, how did it get to the point of his career where at a senate hearing, being questioned about the COVID-19 pandemic, he repeatedly invokes his fifth amendment right- refusing to answer questions for fear of criminalization? I believe that in our nation’s history, we’ve come to a point where we doubt public health more than ever. We question our physicians, our health advisors, and our responders and we doubt medicine. I stand that the system has regularly failed several communities, and must make reparations now, but as a whole does this mean it’s a criminal system requiring an admission of guilt? It’s important to examine how our nation’s culture shifted, making Fauci plead the fifth.
Beginning by examining previous public health crises in America, we can start more than a hundred years ago with the influenza pandemic of 1918. This public health crisis was so far-reaching that a third of the world’s population had gotten infected. The response from medical officials at this time: quarantines and social distancing, according to the NIH. Yet, due to a lack of vaccines, delayed responses, and misunderstandings of the conditions people were enduring that may lead to greater risk of disease made the pandemic difficult to address. As a direct result of the influenza pandemic, new or updated health ministries emerged globally.
Then, looking at the HIV/AIDS epidemic: truly one of the biggest public health failures. A community already isolated by societal stigma did not get adequate and immediate response to a deadly disease. Millions of loved ones taken and no idea on how to address it. Anthony Fauci wrote about the crisis in his novel detailing how sad he was to have lost so many activists to the cause and agreed that it should have been addressed much earlier.
Looking to the COVID-19 pandemic now, it has taken a lot from so many families. It’s taken graduations and years away from friends for students and it’s taken loved ones. In the political climate, there is a lot of blame and doubt for the officials who have allowed these regulations (that’s getting a lot of the anger). I know it is natural to feel angry and to feel doubtful. I have to insist that there is nobody who deserves to hold all of that blame.
In the insightful blog, Your Local Epidemiologist, the author describes how she was assaulted in a coffee shop during the height of the pandemic- it’s a poignant sign of the deteriorating trust we have in our officials. Fauci has become a symbol of that. When he pleaded the fifth, controversial though it was due to his presidential pardon, it was a sign of the splitting of our country. We have so much fear and anger due to the climate, and though public health has made its mistakes, it is in no way a department that deserves to hold all of it. It is still a system that works to ensure that measles don’t kill your children, that the illnesses you dream never touch your family never really do. If we as a nation feel we need a scapegoat for the pandemic, we’re looking the wrong way because there is never going to be one.
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