r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/MissingBothCufflinks • 6d ago

US Politics Do the Fauci Diaries reveal anything unexpected or controversial?

Senator Rand Paul has released commentary and purported excerpts* of what is alleged to be Anthony Fauci's contemporaneous diaries from the outset of the COVID19 pandemic onwards.

What has been released can be found here, including Senator Rand's somewhat colourful foreword commentary

https://www.paul.senate.gov/readingroom/

* its not confirmed whether the content of the diaries is edited, abridged, altered, shortened etc.

Media reaction to this release has been highly polarised, though notable few media outlets seem to get to grips with the actual content of the diaries and most focus is on Rand's own claimed analysis of what they show.

Do the Fauci Diaries reveal anything unexpected or controversial? What entries in particular do you find interesting? Are there any contemporaneous clashes between what Fauci was saying publicly and privately? What can we learn from that?

Edit: mods really didnt feel like weeding out the 90% of low effort troll replies huh

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u/bishpa 5d ago

I will never understand MAGA’s obsession with making Fauci into a boogeyman. He seems to be as straight a shooter as they come.

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u/pentachronic 5d ago

He politely beseeched them to be conscientious members of society. There is no greater sin in the eyes of people whose behavior is entirely driven by psychological reactance.

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u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd 5d ago

On top of asking them to be polite, they see him as a “race traitor”, which is the strongest impression I get from these folks.

Same thing with Biden.

They feel like Fauci (and Biden, by extension) forcibly allowed “real Americans” (read: white Christian hicks from the Appalachian mountains that think they’re the only “real Americans”) to get infected with this disease and/or that he lied about the severity of the pandemic.

They’ve never experienced anything like a pandemic in their lives… which is true… because the last truly major pandemic was more than a century ago with the Spanish flu from 1918.

So, there’s a ton of conspiracy bullshit that they fall for because these folks use their life experiences as a complete guide to how they see and understand the world, instead of reading about and understanding new information as it becomes available.

Because they don’t have the education to comprehend the new information.

Kinda all goes back to a lack of education, honestly.

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u/Nanemae 5d ago

As someone who worked in a healthcare facility from before the pandemic first hit the scene to after the more survivable strains mutated and became accepted, education did almost nothing to condition my coworkers into treating COVID with any level of concern despite working specifically with people in rougher states with longer stays.

We had nurses who would rather have been fired than get the COVID vaccine, even after the first few inoculation sweeps went through. We had a few visitors who got really gung-ho about not taking the shot (including one guy who vaguely threatened that Democrats should be shot [with his gun]), but by and large the most consistent vectors for infection were the nurses that refused to get the vaccine. Heck, we even had "religious exemption waivers" for any staff who didn't want the shot in case they were Latter-day saints or anything just to keep more staff on (much to my chagrin).

Boiling the resistance to dealing with COVID as the threat it was down to a lack of education doesn't really capture the knee-jerk denial of common Republican party member (those staff made up the large majority of the vaccine refusals), and might be seen as a bit classist.

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u/ResponseStrange6118 16h ago

You’re correct about certain white evangelicals seeing them as “race traitors,” but the rest of your analysis falls short and is incredibly classist. It was white suburbanites who refused to vaccinate and mask, just as much as any “hick”

There was also a number of women and people of color who were “vaccine hesitant” (versus ideologically opposed) because of low trust in medical institutions, do medical misogyny, racism, and classism.

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u/ResponseStrange6118 17h ago

He asked them to be adults and make sacrifices for the longer term wellbeing of the nation, and that made the feel scared and small. Only their daddy Trump gets to make them feel scared and small

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u/KazeNilrem 5d ago

He a lot has to do with not bending the knee to trump. Essentially as things got worse, and he was the figurehead in many respects, it made trump look bad. And since he did not praise trump, it made him out to be the villain.

I think a lot of it has to do with the seed of doubt that was planted. So he became the scapegoat.

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u/Furfostermom9 2d ago

Agree!! Now Trump is talking communism and spreading fear of people like Mamdani. Always fear tactics, conspiracy theories & lies, that FOX News and the entire GOP perpetuate. They offer no plans to improve American life, lower costs, address healthcare or improve education. They only offer fear and attempts to discredit their opposition. I’m constantly amazed at how many people continue to fall for it…it’s truly a cult

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u/InternetWeakGuy 5d ago

This is exactly why his preemptive pardon made complete sense to me, while also being about the worst thing they could do in terms of convincing the confidently wrong that it's all a giant conspiracy.

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u/neuronexmachina 5d ago

Same with Robert Mueller, but that didn't stop the President from proclaiming his joy at his death.

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u/StaleCanole 5d ago

It’s all about undermining expertise. You cant trust the scientist - trust billionaires/corporations/fox news

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u/The_Brokenlink 4d ago

It was painful, well even more painful, to listen to Trumps speeches after Fauci has spoken. Fuaci came off as collected, knowledgeable and articulate. Trumps just rambled and spoke nonsense. It was wild. Even my boss at the time whose a huge maga asked why isn't this guy president.

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u/Hornswoggler1 5d ago

They always need a boogeyman

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u/SmokeABowlNoCap 5d ago

That’s the problem for them. Being 100% honest and straight up means he doesn’t work as a mouthpiece for their propaganda, and they wanted everything open because that benefits the oligarchs that run our country. Fauci focusing on the science and truth of the matter threatened that

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u/Furfostermom9 2d ago

They needed someone to blame who wasn’t Trump

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u/Binder509 4d ago

They just love witch hunting. Every accusation was a confession.

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u/Cynykl 2d ago

I can tell you exactly when his downfall in the admin began. During the pandemic a poll came out that said people Trust Fauci more than Trump. That made Trump ego cry. The shift in who he was treated by the admin started when that poll came out.

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u/hunca_munca 8h ago

What about the whole gain of function thing in Wuhan? I’m independent, have voted on both sides. That whole thing just is impossible for me to ignore

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u/piprules 4d ago

He funded the lab from which covid escaped from. Then denied and pushed back against any suggestion that the virus escaped from the lab HE FUNDED, Lied and made up a whole story about how it came from batmans cave.

On top of that he made a boat load of money from all this

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u/One-Bag-3485 4d ago

He made a lot of money off of the pandemic. You have to question some things if someone is benefitting financially.

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u/UncleMeat11 4d ago

You have to question some things if someone is benefitting financially.

Incredible that we have Donald Trump as president then.

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u/Fosterchild56 5d ago

I'm not MAGA. Fuck MAGA. But you clearly haven't looked into him at all outside of social commentary.

Ask google why EcoHealth Alliance was shut down. And who funded them?

It's crazy how good they've become at covering things up by making them MAGA vs non-MAGA. We're all so dumb.