American Council for Science and Health has been examining science claims in media since 1978, striving for a middle-of-the-road stance. So it is naturally interesting to hear what contributors have to say about the Fauci revelations.

Readers will recall that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul questioned Covid czar Anthony Fauci in the U.S. Senate last month about his thousands of pages of documents covering the Covid years (his “diary”) that appear to tell a different story from the one covered in media.

In the hearing, Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment (against self-incrimination) to avoid answering questions. That puzzled many because he was preemptively pardoned by former President Joe Biden.

Note: In the meantime, in addition to the original, approximately 1100-page document trove, a 3200-page one has been found. Here it is, but it may take a looong time to download.

So what do ACSH spokespeople make of all this?

Pain and addiction medicine specialist Lynn Webster offers,

On July 29, Americans did not witness a serious examination of how the COVID-19 pandemic began. They witnessed the culmination of a story years in the making…

Fauci’s answer may have been technically defensible, but it was rhetorically disastrous. His categorical denial sounded absolute, so when later records revealed altered viral properties, many felt deceived. Fauci and public-health officials bear responsibility—not for unproven, sweeping crimes—but for communicating uncertainty as authority. Institutional defensiveness made legitimate questions sound disreputable to even discuss and created fertile ground for a counter-narrative.

That dynamic intensified because the Fifth Amendment carries both legal and narrative weight. Legally, invoking it protected Fauci from potential false-statement charges given Paul’s repeated demands for prosecution. Narratively, silence looks like concealment—converting a constitutional safeguard into visual shorthand for guilt.

“Fauci Senate hearing: The fifth, the feud, and the facts,” July 31, 2026

Well yes, but…

As many of us remember, the Covid years were a little hotter and heavier than that. They were a time of denigration and censorship of evidence-based opinions that did not fall into line with one or another shift in government policy.

Worse, a time of encouragement of social behaviors like snitching, that are better suited to an authoritarian state than a free society. A time of savage institutional bullying inflicted on children and seniors in care. Worst of all, people who suffered aftereffects from the Covid shots — like myocarditis — were often ignored or treated as social problems.

During the lockdown, those of us who reflected on our common experience knew that healthy children rarely suffered much or long from Covid. Even seniors were unlikely to die unless their health was already compromised. In short, Covid behaved like a particularly nasty flu, not like the viral Armageddon we were encouraged to believe in.

But we did not learn this from the science establishment or media; some of us slowly began to put it together from what we could see around us. Canada’s Convoy protests and the excessive government crackdown on them should be understood in precisely that context.

Another view at ACSH

In apparent response, ACSH’s executive vice-president Cameron English offers,

The reality is that these records reveal clear instances of political maneuvering, double talk and attempts to obscure evidence on the part of Dr. Fauci and some of his colleagues. This is the very behavior that crippled public trust in science during the pandemic, and most experts have been reluctant to confront it, broadly dismissing the criticism as a conspiracy theory proffered by the uninformed.

“The Fauci diaries: COVID questions that deserve answers,” August 3, 2026

About the question of whether the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab in upcountry China, as widely suspected:

The problem is not that scientists privately harbored doubts, but that the same circle of experts helped enforce a public consensus that treated identical skepticism as anti-science conspiracy theorizing. This conclusion appears repeatedly in Fauci’s diary. “Things continue to heat up regarding the innuendoes about our being responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic because of our grant to EcoHealth,” he wrote in May 2021. “Amazing!!! All the right wing conspiracy theorists are piling on with no data at all” (p. 736).

It’s hard to overstate how damaging this dynamic was. High-profile academics and public health officials privately registered doubts about the natural-spillover hypothesis while collaborating to protect that explanation from public scrutiny. “Deserve answers”

He worries, “There is  some evidence that scientists are slowly regaining public trust. That recovery is encouraging—but fragile, and easily reversed by continued ideological defensiveness. I fear that may be the path we’re on.”

If so, …

The problem we risk is this. At one time, it was the less well-informed people who trusted science less. But if there are repeated episodes like the Covid Crazy, we will see a reverse: The better informed people will trust science — or anyway “official” science — much less. That won’t end well.

With any luck, the Senate hearings will help clear the air because anyone can now read a great deal of documentation that was formerly known to only a few people — or only to one. And some of it is at least entertaining.

Getting through all 3200 pages would, of course, be a feat.