St. Anthony of Padua, Patron Saint of Lost Objects

That little ditty is a popular prayer to St. Anthony of Padua, the thirteenth century patron saint of lost objects. Having difficulty finding your keys? Looking for that birth certificate and can’t remember where you filed it? Pray to St. Anthony and the good saint will happily help you retrieve it. I readily confess that I’ve requested the assistance of St. Tony more than once, and have rarely been disappointed in the Franciscan preacher’s peculiar knack for finding lost objects.

But the ditty could just as well be applied to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci has been in the news a great deal of late, what with the revelations coming from his diary, his pleading the fifth over 100 times when recently called to testify before Congress, and his being found in contempt of Congress by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. I’ll have much to say about Dr. Fauci in upcoming posts. This post will focus on what the American people have lost because of Dr. Fauci, along with the NIH and the CDC, and the broader medical community. “What has been lost?” you might ask. Why, our confidence in the objectivity of our medical community and our trust that they have our best interest in mind. How did this come to be lost? Because of the utterly inept management of the greatest health crisis to face our nation and, indeed, the entire world in the last century: the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Institute of Health (NIH), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Fauci’s own National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which he led for 38 years, all gave the American people advice and recommendations that quickly turned into mandates on how to respond to the pandemic that were not supported by scientific studies and contrary to what was already known about the virus, at least in terms of those populations most at risk of suffering severe or deadly consequences from the virus.

On December 2, 2024 the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published its report, After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward. A summary of the report can be found here. The entire report is 520 pages long, and there’s a link to it on the summary website if you want to read all of it. The report delineates the failures and mismanagment of the pandemic policy by those in charge of forming that policy. Dr. Fauci was largely responsible for much of the policy that represented the U.S.’s response to the pandemic. Those responsible for the House Select Subcommitte report insist that, while many of the policies pushed on the American people were based on bad science, no science, governmental overreach, or political, social, or cultural bias, there was no effort to intentionally deceive the American people. In other words, the policies did not represent actions recommended or mandated contrary to what the experts knew to be true about the virus. They may have been wrong about how best to respond to the pandemic, and in some cases even stupid and hypocritical, but there was no effort to wilfully deceive the public about the extent of or danger related to the virus or the efficacy of the vaccine. That’s the conclusion of the report, anyway. Take it for what you think it’s worth.

Where to begin? First, let’s consider the recommendations that quickly turned into mandates regarding management of the public’s behavior during the pandemic:

Six-Feet of Separation: Dr. Fauci eventually admitted that this rule had no basis in scientific research or evidence; it “sort of just appeared.” Yet, people were arrested for violating the six-feet of separation mandate. Granted, they were not often arrested. More often, they were warned or fined. But there were some arrests, and being fined is bad enough.

Masks: The efficacy of wearing masks was hotly debated, even by medical professionals, though the report stated that there was no conclusive evidence that masks protected people from the virus. Certainly cloth masks that became somewhat popular, bearing a person’s favorite sports team insignia or other identifying feature or pattern, were less efficacious than N-95 masks. The debate among “experts” did little to bolster the public’s confidence in the people who were making these policies. Even still, people were arrested for not wearing a mask though, more often than not, they were fined, warned or removed from public spaces if they refused to wear a mask. I, for one, think it’s just common sense that masks, specifically those of the N-95 variety, are going to be at least somewhat effective in decreasing a person’s risk for spreading or contracting an airborne disease. After all, masks have been a standard fixture in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in hospitals for decades. However, the cloth masks, I think, were essentially useless.

Lockdowns: It’s been demonstrated that locking down people in their homes, the elderly in their nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, shutting down schools and businesses, etc. proved much more devastating to the American people than the virus itself. The impact on mental and physical health, not to mention the enormous detrimental effects on the economy and the education of our nation’s children, were far-reaching and disastrous. People were arrested for visiting friends in private homes, for playing softball with their children in nearly empty parks, and for holding church services in violation of stay-at-home mandates. Dr. Heather L. Taylor, lead author of the study linked above and published by the University of Indiana on the unintended consequences of the lockdowns, had this to say: “Our findings challenge us to think beyond infection control as the only marker of public health success. Lockdowns and school closures disrupted social supports that are critical for health, including employment, income, food security and access to health care and education. Because these supports matter more for long-term health, their disruption may have worsened existing health disparities in the United States, particularly for vulnerable populations.” An article at the time reported that, during May of 2020, there were more overdose deaths in Memphis, Tennessee than deaths from COVID. And, once more, the medical community did little to win our confidence or trust when, in spite of some medical professionals protesting anti-lockdown protesters, somehow over 1500 medical professionals had the gumption to sign an open letter insisting that street protests, where hundreds of people marched elbow to elbow, were an appropriate response to the “public health risks” of racism and white supremacy, even in the face of the pandemic. As well, public officials, most infamously California Governor Gavin Newsom and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, insisted on enforcing lockdown and social distancing mandates that they themselves ignored. Several states were sued, accused of applying the lockdown mandates inconsistently. In San Diego, California, strip clubs were allowed to open, but churches were ordered to remain closed. People lost their businesses. The terminally ill were left to die alone in their nursing homes or hospital beds. Most infamously, then-Governor Mario Cuomo adopted a policy forcing nursing homes to take in COVID positive new residents, causing COVID to spread like wildfire among the population most vulnerable to the virus. All in all, the report concludes, the lockdown policy had a significant negative impact on society with minimal benefit.

COVID-19 Misinformation: A great deal of mistrust in our public health officials resulted from their spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 virus and giving conflicting messages. I mentioned above the hypocrisy of medical professionals and politicians related to lockdown policies. The House report acknowledges that a lab-leak from the Wuhan lab in China as the origin of the worldwide pandemic is that theory most supported by the evidence. The Wuhan lab was performing gain-of-function research on the virus and was notorious for lax safety measures. Yet Dr. Fauci, supported by the press and the Biden administration, repeatedly dismissed the lab-leak theory in favor of a natural transfer of the virus from animals to humans via the wet markets in Wuhan. More than that, the report accuses the Biden administration of employing “undemocratic and likely unconstitutional methods – including pressuring social media companies to censor certain COVID-19 content – to fight what it deemed misinformation.” Finally, off-label use of medications found by some doctors to be efficacious in fighting the virus were ridiculed and shouted down as idiotic attempts by amateurs to practice medicine.

Travel Restrictions: Despite all of the bad news, the House report did acknowledge that President Trump’s travel restrictions saved lives, a conclusion agreed with by Dr. Fauci. At the time, many of Trump’s critics deemed the restrictions racist and xenophobic.

This is only the first in a series of posts I plan on the incompetent and hyperbolic response to the COVID-19 pandemic by our government and public health care officials. Dr. Anthony “I am the science” Fauci is on the hot seat at the moment, as I mentioned above, because of revelations from the diary he kept on government issued equipment and because of his refusal to answer any and all questions from the Senate committee that called on him to testify. Of what is Dr. Fauci guilty of? Hubris? Almost certainly. Covering up the origin of the coronavirus? Hmmm … seems like it. Lying to Congress about taxpayer funds being used for gain-of-function research? If Dr. Fauci has his way, that seems to depend on what the meaning of “is” is. Where have I heard that before?

In any case, more coming. Stay tuned.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.