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There are any number of people, professions or institutions to blame for the abuses of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The media should absolutely receive more than its fair share of blame, given its relentless promotion of masks, lockdowns, school closures and any other mandate to restrict individual liberty. Institutions, corporations, tech companies and social media platforms also must share the blame for blindly accepting government misinformation, and in some cases, censoring users for daring to tell the truth. Obviously, the politicians who devoted themselves to safetyism, objectively poor policies, and a refusal to update positions as new evidence emerged should definitely receive some well-deserved criticism.

However, the primary villain of the entire debacle is the public health profession as a whole.

Local public health officials took their marching orders from national public health “experts,” housed at institutions like NIAID and the National Institutes of Health. Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Deborah Birx and many others put their collective thumb on the scale to ensure that their preferred narratives were viewed as the only acceptable opinions allowed, the result of which caused immense harm and damage in the process.

There’s now a plan to finally reign in some of the excesses of the national public health industrial complex.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Republican Politicians Intend To Work On Stopping NIH Expansion

An article from Politico reported on what action the Republican political leadership intends to take if they gain more control of Congress and potentially the presidency in the rapidly approaching election.

Much of the focus of the reporting and upcoming planning focuses on the amount of misleading information and purposeful misdirection that originated from top public health leaders like Fauci and Collins. Those “experts,” say top right wing leaders downplayed the likelihood that the coronavirus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Why would they downplay it?

Because NIH had been indirectly involved in funding the lab, as well as researchers in China that were involved in gain-of-function experiments on viruses. Fauci, of course, was a strong proponent of gain-of-function research and working with China. And it was his and Collins’ responsibility, or the agency’s responsibility, to monitor the work being done on dangerous viruses.

Of course, they did nothing of the sort. When they realized that there would be questions asked of their involvement, what they knew and when, they turned to an internal FOIA source, Ms. Margaret Moore, a lead staffer in NIH’s FOIA office, who told them how to avoid public scrutiny, delete and hide emails, and ignore any level of accountability for their actions.

The days of the corrupt powers that be who would pull such dirty schemes are hopefully behind us.

Per Politico, Rep. Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican who chairs the House Appropriations panel, is focused on ensuring that the mistakes of the Fauci era are not repeated. Though denying that there was a “vendetta” from Republicans, he did state that the “missteps” were obvious to everyone.

“That’s not really anything that motivates me,” Aderholt said. “Obviously, there were some missteps during the pandemic with Dr. Fauci — we know all those.”

An outside advisor, Joel Zinberg, who worked on health policy on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump administration, said that NIH in particular is a focus for those who realized what the organization did during COVID.

“You have the NIH in the sights of people who think there were big failures during the pandemic and that we have to change the way things operate,” Zinberg said.

Another Republican politician, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who is the chair of the House panel with responsibility for health policy, has proposed a plan that would cut the NIH’s “disease centers” nearly in half. That plan was part of the 2025 fiscal funding bill proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives proving that it’s not exactly wishful thinking, but a concrete objective.

On the Senate side, Sen. Bill Cassidy from Louisiana has said Congress should reinstate an “oversight panel” to keep NIH in check.

Rodgers’ plan would limit the NIH divisions to 15 from 27, while eliminating the bizarre “Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health,” which was created by Congress just a few years ago. That agency is focused on funding “high-risk, high reward research,” per Politico.

These are all positive steps, necessary steps. For those of us on Team Reality, it’s become imperative that the public health agencies responsible for this disaster have some measure of accountability. Naturally, there’s been little interest in following through on this accountability on the part of the public and the national news media because much of the public and virtually all of the media openly supported and encouraged the mandates and overreach from NIH and NIAID.

Of course, it’s not nearly enough. Fauci repeatedly and admittedly lied about any number of pandemic questions. He conveniently couldn’t recall details about his past conversations and actions when under oath, but remembered plenty when it came time to put together a book with millions of dollars in revenue at stake.

Stripping back his agency is hopefully first in a long, long list of changes that must be made. COVID policies can never be allowed to return, in any form, and limiting the importance and influence of some of the country’s biggest failures is a start. Just don’t stop there.