Tangle - Dr. Fauci's testimony before Congress.

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s congressional testimony. On Monday, Dr. Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and former chief White House medical advisor, sat for a three-and-a-half hour hearing before the special House subcommittee investigating the origins of Covid-19. You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can find the internship application page for writing and research here, communications and PR here and business development here.Thank you! We did it! We hit 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. Huge congratulations to our YouTube executive producer Jon Lall and the team — and thank you to everyone who subscribed yesterday. Don't forget to go check out our channel.In episode 3 of our podcast series, The Undecideds, our focus shifts from Donald Trump toward President Joe Biden. Our undecided voters share their observations on the current commander in chief and how his decisions on the world stage affect their decision in the voting booth. You can listen to Episode 3 ⁠⁠here.⁠⁠Today’s clickables: 10K Subs on YouTube, Thank You!! (0:48), Quick hits (1:43), Today’s story (4:24), Left’s take (9:32), Interview with Faye Flam (12:17), Right’s take (21:48), Isaac’s take (25:58), Listener question (34:06), Under the Radar (34:28), Numbers (35:19), Have a nice day (36:45)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Do you approve or disapprove of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s performance during the pandemic? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Dr. Anthony Fauci's testimony for Congress that happened on Monday. Going to get into some of the nitty gritty on COVID and his record. And I'm going to share some pretty strong opinions because I have strong opinions about how this hearing went. Before we jump in, though, I have to give a big special shout out to Tangle's executive producer, John Lull, who runs this podcast and also our YouTube channel,

which just broke 10,000 subscribers. That is an awesome milestone to hit in its very early days. Super excited about this channel. If you have not yet subscribed to the Tangle News YouTube channel, I encourage you to go look it up. We've got lots of exciting and fun content in the pipeline, and John has done an awesome job shepherding us to this point. So congratulations, John. Super happy for you. Super stoked about what we were building and excited for what's to come. And with that, I'm going to pass it off to the man himself, John Law, to introduce today's quick hits and our main topic. And I'll be back with my take. Thank you, Isaac, for those extremely kind words.

I am so proud of the work that we do here at Tangle and excited to be part of the team every single day. And I just also want to give a big thank you to our audience. Every single person who tunes into the podcast, who watches the YouTube, our incredible readership, all the support that you guys throw our way is what makes this job just that much more incredible to know that the hard work that we're doing is

appreciated. So 10,000 milestone hit, let's get to 100,000. Let's get to a million. I think with the audience that we have, anything's possible. All right, let's get to these quick hits. First up, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that will halt asylum requests at the U.S. southern border once a seven-day average of illegal crossings hits 2,500 per day. In April, the average was 4,296 per day, and the policy is expected to go into effect immediately. Number two, a federal advisory board voted not to recommend the psychedelic drug MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment, citing inadequate data and the drug's risk of abuse and causing heart issues. Number three, Representative Andy Kim, the Democrat from New Jersey, and Republican entrepreneur Curtis Bashaw won their Senate primary races in New Jersey on Tuesday. They'll face off with current Senator Bob Menendez,

who is facing bribery charges and filed to run for re-election as an independent. Number four, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears likely to win a third term, though his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party lost its outright majority. And number five, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Call brought felony charges against three associates

of former President Trump for their fake elector scheme in 2020. Today, a special House subcommittee looking into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic pressed the man who helped lead the nation's response, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease. Republican lawmakers are questioning Fauci over his leadership at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They claim lab work funded by the agency is what led Chinese scientists to develop the coronavirus in their Wuhan lab.

The accusation being circulated that I influenced these scientists to change their minds by bribing them with millions of dollars in grant money is absolutely false and simply preposterous. false and simply preposterous. On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief White House medical advisor, sat for a three and a half hour hearing before the special house subcommittee investigating the origins of COVID-19. In Fauci's first congressional hearing in nearly two years, he faced questioning on whether the COVID-19 virus originated in a virology lab in Wuhan, China, the possibility of whether National Institutes of Health funding could have contributed to a potential lab leak, and his relationship with a longtime advisor accused of misconduct. Republican committee members also questioned and criticized Fauci on mask mandates,

six-foot social distancing recommendations, vaccine development, his potential usage of a private email, and his public messaging during the pandemic. Fauci insisted that he maintains an open mind about the origins of the virus, though he had previously endorsed the theory that it spread from animals to humans and still believes that it is more likely the explanation. He was also defensive against questioning from Republicans alleging the NIH funded and covered up a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The accusation being circulated that I influenced these scientists to change their minds by bribing them with millions of dollars in grant money

is absolutely false and simply preposterous, Fauci said. In one representative exchange, Representative Brad Winstrup, the Republican from Ohio, asked pointed questions about government protection protocols put in place during the pandemic. Dr. Fauci, you oversaw one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the U.S. has ever seen, including mask mandates, school closures, coerced vaccination, social distancing of six feet and more, Winstrup said. It actually came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC was responsible for those kinds of guidelines for schools, not me, Fauci said. It had little to do with me, since I don't make the recommendation. And my saying there was no science behind it means there was no clinical trial that proved that. That's just one of the things that got a little distorted. Committee member Representative Marjorie Taylor

Greene, the Republican from Georgia, accused Fauci of crimes against humanity and suggested he belonged in prison, comments that would later be admonished by the committee's chair. Fauci responded to questions about social distancing measures by saying that COVID was a moving target and the science was constantly changing, at one point arguing that without measures to slow it down, another million people might have died. Much of the hearing was spent discussing former NIAID senior advisor David Morins and EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research group that collaborated on studies with Wuhan and was recently funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. Congressional investigators found that Morins, who worked with Fauci for several decades,

attempted to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests by using his personal email account to communicate with EcoHealth president Peter Daszak. In correspondences with Daszak, Morins suggested that Fauci sometimes used a private email to conduct government business and that he was seeking to protect EcoHealth from losing a grant. Fauci distanced himself from both Morins and Daszak during questioning, saying he supported HHS's decision to defund EcoHealth. He insisted that Morins was not an advisor to him and that the two did not work closely, despite their 24 years spent together at the agency Fauci headed. Democrats mostly use their time for questioning to praise Fauci as an American hero or ask him questions about the many threats he

and his family received during his time serving the country. In an interview with CNN's Caitlin Collins following the hearing, Fauci bemoaned the partisan fervor of the hearing. The level of vitriol we see now, not just in the country in general, but actually played out during this hearing, was really quite unfortunate, Fauci said. Fauci, who served as director of NIAID for more than 38 years, retired at the end of 2022 after working in both the Trump and Biden administrations during the pandemic. Today, we're going to take a look at some of the arguments from the left and the right about the testimony, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. For those of you looking for other interesting podcasts, a few weeks ago, I was on Zach Elwood's podcast, People Who Read People, which is mostly

psychology-focused. Zach is a former professional poker player who's written some well-known books on reading poker tales and is interested in behavior in general. But he also focuses sometimes on political polarization and has written some books aimed at reducing our toxic divides. I appreciate his work, and it very much jives with my own thoughts on how we lower divides. Anyway, if you're like me, and you want to reduce some toxicity, you might like checking out that talk I had with Zach, and maybe some of his other polarization related episodes. Again, his podcast is People Who Read People, and his name's Zach Elwood, and I encourage you to go check him out.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. All right, first up, we're going to start with what the left is saying. The left defends Fauci against claims that he misled the public about COVID. Some say the committee had nothing of substance to ask Fauci. Others say both parties missed a chance to ask meaningful questions about the United States' COVID response. In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik wrote, Fauci faces the House GOP's clown show about COVID. Fauci is revered in the communities of immunologists and virologists.

Even after Trump sidelined him because he was speaking truths about COVID that Trump didn't like, he was a prominent spokesman for a scientific approach to the pandemic, Iltsik said. Here's how he was depicted by Republicans during a hearing Monday of the GOP-dominated Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus, as the mastermind of dogmatic policies that resulted in school closings and business failures, of forced vaccinations, of one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the U.S. has ever seen. None of those accusations has the slightest relationship with the truth. They're all elements of a campaign among Republicans and right-wingers aimed at painting Fauci, 83, who retired from NIAID in December of 2022,

as a comic book supervillain, Heltzig wrote. Why are they doing this? One answer must be that conspiracy theorists always need a target to attack in order to attract followers. At the core of his campaign is the Republican conviction that COVID escaped from a Chinese laboratory. Since there is absolutely no evidence for this theory that anyone has yet to produce, plan B has been to smear anyone in the firing line. Unfortunately for Fauci, anyone in the firing line. Unfortunately for Fauci, he's the designated it. In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank called the hearing, another committee to confirm our conspiracy theories. Last fall, Representative Brad Winstrup, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, made an incendiary

public accusation that Anthony Fauci was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency headquarters without a record of entry and participated in the analysis to influence the agency's review to say that COVID-19 did not originate from a lab leak, Milbank said. Fox News, the New York Post, and the rest of the right-wing conspiracy machine ran with it. And then, nothing. The subcommittee came up with no evidence to support the claim. And so when Fauci appeared before Congress on Monday, Republicans on the panel hit him with whatever else they could come up with, Milbank wrote. The constant repetition of the conspiracy theories is anything but amusing for, as Fauci testified, it has caused endless

harassment of him and his family. Yet Republicans on the panel, rather than focusing on lessons about masks, vaccines, and school and business closures that could save lives in the future, kept returning to the same conspiracy theories that are endangering Fauci's life in the present. In Bloomberg, Faye Flam said Congress just blew its chance to offer closure on COVID. Isaac got a chance to sit down with Faye and discuss her article. Faye Flam, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So I want to just start by giving you a chance to kind of give us the maybe two-minute rundown of your position and reflection on Dr. Fauci's testimony on Monday, because I actually think you happen to have a

perspective that's, you know, pretty similar to my own about kind of an opportunity missed here, but by Congress. Yeah, well, I've been covering the pandemic and covering a lot of the issues that were discussed at that hearing, you know, since 2020. And so I was drawing a lot on things I've learned over the years. But there were, I think, a lot of open questions that either weren't addressed, or Fauci would actually start explaining something, and then our representatives wouldn't let them finish. And both sides seemed to be more interested in how their questions looked than whether they actually got any useful information out of Fauci. want to know why we had so many severe restrictions and still lost more people per capita than most other countries. And why, you know, what went on behind the scenes? Why did we have the six-foot rule? And why is that now considered not, you know, not as scientific as maybe it should have been? And I think people are still really, really curious

about where this pandemic came from and want to know what everything Fauci knows. Yeah, I'm curious, I guess, if we learned anything new from the hearing. I mean, I know there was a lot of, there were a lot of questions about the origins of COVID, about some of the restrictions we had in place. There's this whole controversy about this advisor from Dr. Fauci's agency who was basically communicating with a research group

in a way on his personal email to avoid FOIA oversight. There seem to be a lot of different elements in the air and different narratives people are trying to inject. I'm wondering if anything kind of stuck out to you in terms of maybe new information or new insights about this whole saga. was a lot of anger and maybe they wanted to shield themselves from people that had already decided they caused the pandemic or this lab caused the pandemic and they wanted to be able to to communicate more freely but they also owe owe us transparency and so i think um this was the first time i'd really seen him admit that there was you know that there was intentional evasion. I think it's a big stretch to say that that has any bearing on where the pandemic came from, but it tells us something about why there's still so much disagreement about it. Yeah, I'm curious about one element of your

piece that I found resonant, at least, which is you wrote that Republicans could have questioned whether vaccine and booster mandates should have been lifted once it was clear the shots prevented serious illness only and had little ability to protect others against infection. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about why you wanted to hear questions like that asked and what we might have left on the table in this hearing in terms of, you know, valuable information for the public. Yeah, I think that the vaccine mandates get conflated with the vaccines. And, you know, Fauci, I felt like was being deceptive when he was answering questions about mandates by saying vaccines save lives, because

lots of things in medicine save lives, and we don't force people to do them. And so I think the original assumption that the public made during the summer of 2021 was that mandates were important because either we were going to get herd immunity and get rid of the virus. That was something that even Fauci promoted at one point. Or that we would be less likely to get a mild or asymptomatic case and give it to other people. So we sort of owed it to the community to get this vaccine, that it would protect the more vulnerable people who, for whatever reason, might not be as protected by it. And so that seemed to be the rationale, and that rationale started to disappear, and yet the mandates actually got, we were told,

I actually got a mandatory second booster to go on a field trip. And I couldn't seem to get a straight answer about why I had to get this second booster, which a lot of the scientists I was interviewing at the time were not getting. Interesting. I'm curious, I guess, you know, looking ahead, if this hearing is going to have any kind of impact on the committee or its findings, what you think this committee might do next. I mean, where do we go from here? I got the sense going into this hearing that maybe we would get some kind of closure or there would be some loose ends tied up, I suppose. I left the hearing not

feeling like any of that happened in any real tangible way. And I guess I'm curious about what happens next. I mean, Fauci's out of government, he's retired. I just guess I don't know what to do now or what to expect going forward. And Fauci, you know, he is one scientist. He had the spotlight during the pandemic, but I think he has become kind of a lightning rod for controversy. And in some ways, also the focus of these competing political narratives, you know,

I think people were so caught up emotionally in the pandemic that they wanted heroes and they wanted villains and Fauci became the villain on the right and the hero on the left. And people were having a lot of trouble, I think, letting go of some of that and trying to see that the reality was a lot more complicated. Yeah. Well, I am certainly curious to see what happens down the road. I mean, I don't know that we're going to see him testify before Congress again, but I do think he raised a lot

more questions that need to be answered, and I hope the committee pursues them. So maybe we'll get some more hearings or some more information down the road. But for now, I left feeling a little bit disappointed with just kind of the partisan rancor we had to witness. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Democrats, I thought, took the, they, that their attitude was that somehow it was insulting to even ask him any questions. And that's, you know, I, I have interviewed many, many scientists, they, they were attacks. But the Democrats really didn't ask anything really serious. They just kept sort of flattering him and apologizing for the Republicans. So it felt like there's a lot of political posturing. You know, the six foot rule is sort of interesting, because I think it speaks to how we responded. And there were scientists at the time who had very specific expertise in disease transmission who were

arguing against that as early as March of 2020, saying, no, it's transmitted a different way. I think the Republicans were making this assumption that the six-foot rule was the reason we did all the restrictions. And if we had let go of that earlier, we would have gotten rid of the restrictions. But that's actually not the reality. The reality is that it's transmitted by different size particles, including very small ones that can go further than six feet. And then time spent indoors with people is actually a bigger factor than distance away from them. So we would have still had to change our behavior, but just not in the same way. And I think there was a period of time when people seemed to be stuck on that six-foot rule rather than adapting to what scientists were learning and weren't able to sort of switch

gears and have more effective policy and more effective restrictions that maybe would allow people to do more things so it would be more sustainable and also save more lives. Faith Flam, I appreciate you coming on the show. If people want to keep up with your work, where's the best place for them to do that? That would be at Bloomberg Opinion on Twitter. That's B Opinion. And I also am at Faith Flam on Twitter. That's be opinion. And I'm I also am am at faith lamb on Twitter and try to

share my pieces and discuss them there. So that would be the best place to live. Awesome. Thank you so much for the time, Faye. I appreciate it. Thank you, Isaac. Isaac? All right, that's it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right says the hearing showed many of Fauci's most restrictive COVID policies were also the most arbitrary. Some expressed disappointment that Fauci won't face formal consequences for his COVID missteps. Others criticized Fauci for failing to take accountability for NIAID's mistakes. In the New York Post, Kristen Fleming said, Fauci's God complex destroyed trust in American institutions.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, I admired and trusted Fauci, thinking he stood for continuity, experience, and restraint. In such an unprecedented time, it felt like for continuity, experience, and restraint. In such an unprecedented time, it felt like having a steady hand at the wheel. But as two weeks to stop the spread turned into two years of moving the goalposts and making up different metrics until we could return to normal, it was clear the doctor was developing a God complex, and much of our media became higher clergy genuflecting for him at every turn, Fleming wrote. Many adherents found in Fauci a religious purpose, with a mask and a needle serving his virtue symbols and trust the science as their main recitation.

Anyone with questions or objections was a heretic to be shamed. The six-foot method shaped our mentality on everything from business to social gatherings, effectively making connections impossible and creating a pandemic of loneliness. People lost their jobs for refusing to get a jab, Fleming said. COVID-19 was a novel virus, and we were all learning in real time. But there was no humility, no openness from Fauci and company, only suppression and control. He leaves in his wake a tidal wave of American distrust in institutions and an absolute inability to see his role in dissolving that trust. In Red State, the blogger Ban-Chi bemoaned the accountability that will never come for Fauci.

Fauci allegedly lied under oath about American funding going to the Wuhan lab. He also worked diligently to protect the Chinese government, doing everything he could to scuttle the so-called lab leak theory, which has now become the most credible explanation for the coronavirus's origin, Bonchi wrote. As to this science he was constantly touting, there was very little of it backing his recommendations that formed the backbone of lockdowns and mitigation measures across the country. That whole six-foot thing? Fauci admitted during the hearing that no clinical trials demonstrated such a decree's efficacy. When pressed on the ability of the various COVID-19 vaccines to stop the spread,

Fauci went back to an old standby, insisting that early on transmission was reduced. His evidence for that? There doesn't appear to be any, Banshee added. We appear doomed to repeat the current cycle of Fauci appearing in public and saying the same things he's already said, while the same Republicans say the same things they've already said. Fauci is now retired after being the highest paid official in the federal government. He's going to ride off into the sunset with both middle fingers in the air. In the Washington Examiner, John Miltimore wrote, Fauci concedes wrongdoing at NIAID, just not by him. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officials took active steps to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, including destroying

records and intentionally misspelling names to avoid searches. The fact that Fauci was running the department didn't seem to bother him. Indeed, Fauci's deflection of responsibility for anything was the primary theme of the hearings, Miltimore said. Meanwhile, a perusing of articles from 2020 and 2021 and comical video evidence make it clear that Fauci's claim that he was not leaning totally strongly one way or another in the origin debate is false. Though Democrats gushed at Fauci's pandemic response, the only thing we really learned at the hearing was that Fauci wasn't responsible for anything. Not the corruption at the NIAID, the agency he led. Not the unscientific policies he may or may not have supported,

depending on who's asking, Miltimore wrote. The hearing was a four-hour reminder of the problem with putting politicians and bureaucrats in charge of people's personal lives. It's important to understand that unaccountability is a feature of bureaucracy, not a bug. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So, first of all, the United States COVID response is such an infuriating topic to write about for me

because I struggle to find coalitions or even individual politicians whom I agree with. My overarching feeling after watching and reading transcripts of this hearing is that it was a colossal missed opportunity. Democrats spent too much time deifying Fauci and refusing to ask him questions that contained any curiosity or skepticism, while Republicans spent too much time trying to make him out to be Satan reincarnate. The hearing also had a number of threads that are challenging to write about in a unified and coherent way. So I'm just going to share a series of takeaways that I think are true. First, it is not a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 might have started in a laboratory.

There are strong mainstream arguments for the lab origins theory, and there are very good mainstream arguments for the zoonosis hypothesis. and there are very good mainstream arguments for the zoonosis hypothesis. I've read enough about this debate to affirmatively say that I don't know where COVID-19 originated, nor do any of these members of Congress, and I say that as someone who is very skeptical of the lab origins theory in the beginning. I can also say that I learn zero new information from Monday's hearing about this very important question, which is embarrassing for the committee. Here's another idea. Fauci insisted that he has kept an open mind about the origins of COVID-19, but his public comments have not reflected a sense of open consideration.

He has, from the beginning, clearly believed that COVID spread from animals to humans. At the same time, suggestions from Republicans like Representative Brad Wenstrup from Ohio that Fauci was escorted into the CIA to influence the agency's review of COVID's origins are conspiracies, and Wenstrup has provided nothing to back up that ridiculous claim. Third, on the question of COVID's origins, Fauci has an obvious conflict of interest. His agency helps award grants to study viruses in laboratories, and it's possible that kind of research helped lead to the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, Fauci would have an inherent bias to believe and hope that such research or poor adherence to standards about conducting that research did not cause a global pandemic.

That motive is not complicated, and anyone pretending otherwise is lying to you or to themselves. Four, Fauci distanced himself from his advisor David Morins, but I'm actually not buying it. To recap, Morins worked inside Fauci's agency for 24 years. Fauci's agency approved funding for EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated on studies in Wuhan. EcoHealth's funding was cut under the Trump administration, and Morins, whose role in government was to provide oversight for companies like EcoHealth, then communicated with EcoHealth's president on a personal email to avoid FOIA oversight about how Fauci was hoping to get

the funding restored. That funding was eventually restored, and now EcoHealth has once again had its funding cut under Biden because of its failures to comply with oversight rules. These incidents are all shady, but also examples of run-of-the-mill government corruption. The HHS was right to suspend the funding and should ban Morenz and Daszak from future grants, and it should also investigate whether Morenz's allegations about Fauci are true. If they are, Fauci should face a punishment as well. Fifth and finally, Fauci had an extremely difficult job, and constraining COVID-19 was a seemingly impossible challenge, as evidenced by the major secondary challenges incurred by most

countries that successfully contain the virus, like extreme economic disruption, social upheaval, or major outbreaks on a later timeline. The reverse is also true. In the United States, for instance, we had some of the highest rates of the virus and death toll, but we've arguably done the best economically through the pandemic. I'm sympathetic to how difficult the task before Fauci was. He was operating inside an administration that wanted to downplay the severity of the virus while trying to guide a country that, for better or for worse, values individualism and freedom over collective sacrifice. And he was doing it all while trying to make

predictions about a once-in-a-lifetime virus that we did not understand very well for its first six months spreading across the globe. At the same time, it's fair to criticize him and learn from his mistakes. For instance, Fauci now concedes that the six-foot social distancing guideline did not have strong scientific backing, but it did incur major costs. Simultaneously, though, a lot of the criticism is in his alone. Fauci made the very valid point that he was not the person deciding every public policy on COVID-19. Agencies he didn't head, like the Centers for Disease Control, had just as much influence on pandemic guidelines, if not more. And even in the agencies he did lead, he was being advised by

other experts in the field who helped him form recommendations as a group to the Trump administration, which ultimately set public health policy. In fact, debates over guidelines like the six-foot rule actually provide a great insight into the complexity of science as well as the missed opportunity for better questions. I interviewed columnist Faye Flam, featured under What the Left is Saying for today's Tangle podcast, and she made a good point in that interview. Republicans asked a series of loaded questions about the lack of scientific backing for the six-foot rule, implying that the guideline was totally unnecessary.

But the problem scientists actually learned with the rule was that COVID could spread at farther distances than six feet, meaning that distance wasn't the critical factor for transmissions, but time spent indoors. In other words, rules about being six feet apart were not nearly as important as rules about how much time you can spend inside with someone who was infected before being at risk. That revelation could change public policy in meaningful ways, and this hearing could have sussed out those nuances for the public, but it didn't. Perhaps what was most frustrating about the hearing is that in the brief moments smart, curious, open-minded questions were asked, we actually got insightful and seemingly honest answers. For instance, Mitch Benzine, the staff director for the COVID Select Committee, asked Fauci a series of inquisitive and tough questions about the government's response to

COVID. At one point, Fauci argued that lockdown measures initive and tough questions about the government's response to COVID. At one point, Fauci argued that lockdown measures in the early days of the pandemic were justified, but in a rare moment also conceded that school and business closures may have been too harsh and gone on too long. He added that it was very, very clear that public health officials responding to the next pandemic would need to consider more seriously the, quote, potential collateral negative effects, end quote, of policies mandating wearing masks or getting vaccines. These kinds of back and forths could and should have been the bulk of the hearing, but instead we were left with partisan grandstanding. I would have loved to hear

answers to questions like these. What do you think is the best argument that COVID-19 originated in a lab? Were the biosafety conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology sufficient to contain airborne viruses like SARS-CoV-2? If a virus like COVID-19 were to arrive in the United States today, what would you do again and what would you do differently? What is the government doing right now to prepare for the next pandemic? What should it be doing? In the end, it seemed like Republicans were trying to hold Fauci to account by diminishing his character and insisting he belonged in jail, but really, they were performing theater. Democrats thought they were allying themselves, quote-unquote,

with the science and the public good by praising Fauci, refusing to ask him any critical questions, and apologizing for their Republican colleagues. But really, they were missing an opportunity to glean meaningful insights for the public. The hearing ended up being another disappointing and predictable spectacle. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Thanks for watching. family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. All right, that is it for my take. We are skipping today's reader question because our newsletter and podcast

got a bit longer than usual. So I'm going to send it back to John for the under the radar and numbers and have a nice day. And I'll see you guys back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. Next up is our Under the Radar story. In 2020, an opaque organization called Impetus Fund received a $64 million donation from a single anonymous source. That money was

then routed through a series of accounts and was eventually used to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The donation, and the mystery around it, has become emblematic of the increasingly opaque campaign funding that is now going full tilt in the 2024 election. Circular laundering of dark money, as campaign finance expert Greg Holman put it, is already boosting both Biden's and Trump's campaigns this election cycle, and some watchdog groups believe historic levels of dark money will go to funding the 2024 race. CBS News has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The seven-day average of hospitalized patients with COVID in the U.S. on January 8, 2024, was 20,150, the highest of the past six months, according to COVID Act Now. The seven-day average of hospitalized patients with COVID in the U.S.

on April 27, 2024, the most recent day for which data is available is 6,125. The approximate percentage of the U.S. population that has received at least two doses of the mRNA COVID vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as of May 2023 is 68%. Americans' decrease in trust of Dr. Anthony Fauci between December 2020 and April 2022 is minus 15 percent, according to KFF. Americans' decrease in trust in the CDC between December 2020 and April 2022 is minus 9 percent. America's decrease in trust in the FDA between December 2020 and April 2022 is minus 8 percent. The percentage of Democrats who reported wearing a mask most of the time in the past 30 days in March 2022 was 75%. The percentage of Republicans who reported wearing a mask most of the time in the past 30 days in March 2022 was 30%. And the percentage of Americans who

said the pandemic had a negative effect on their mental health in March 2022 was 49%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. The last rat on Tromelan Island, a scrubby island in the West Indian Ocean near Madagascar, was killed in 2005. The rodents likely arrived in the late 1700s and, as they've done on hundreds of other islands around the world, ate their way through many bird eggs, eventually decimating the populations. By 2005, when French authorities began eradicating the rats, only two bird species were left, a few hundred pairs of masked and red footed boobies. Today, two decades later, Tromelin Island is once again a healthy seabird habitat, home to thousands of breeding pairs in seven

different species. Hakai Magazine has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership. And another thank you to all of you who went and subscribed to our YouTube page, pushing us over the 10,000 subscriber mark. It is quite an accomplishment. It was something I set out to do when I came on about a year ago. I'm so happy that we're at that point, ready to get to the next achievement and excited to be on this journey with all of you. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the team, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.