(Headline USA) COVID Czar Anthony Fauci, the highest paid public official in the federal government, despite his ineptitude at shepherding the country through a devastating pandemic, announced Monday he will depart the federal government in December after more than five decades of service.
“I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said in a statement, calling those roles “the honor of a lifetime.”
Like many of his previous proclamations about public health, Fauci has repeatedly moved the goalpost on his retirement plans, saying at one point that he planned to retire by 2024. However, this appears to be the most direct and specific statement to date.
It had widely been speculated that Fauci would make a fast break in anticipation of a GOP takeover of at least one chamber of Congress, which is likely to result in investigations. Some, such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have floated the possibility of criminal referrals for Fauci, although they would be unlikely to gain any traction under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s current two-tiered justice system.
Fauci, who serves as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation.
He was a leader in the federal response to HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases even before the coronavirus hit—although his role in risky gain-of-function research and unethical testing on animals are among the many practices that have come under scrutiny in the wake of his botched COVID response.
Recently, he even has begun to see his public appeal waning, with polls showing a growing level of unfavorability and loud boos as he threw the opening pitch at a Seattle Mariners baseball game.
He had vocally complained in recent weeks that people were beginning to ignore his decrees.
Fauci became the face of the government response to COVID-19 as it hit in early 2020, with frequent appearances on television news and at daily press conferences with White House officials, including then-President Donald Trump.
But as the pandemic deepened, Fauci fell out of favor with Trump and his officials when his urgings of continued public caution clashed with the former president’s desire to return to normalcy.
Fauci was also notourious for giving inconsistent advice that seemed impractical and designed to serve himself more than the public interest. And he came under suspicion for being complicit in the cover-up of the virus’s likely origin in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which received funding through NIAID for research testing coronaviruses in bats.
Fauci found himself marginalized by the Trump administration, increasingly kept out of major decisions about the federal response, but he continued to speak out publicly in media interviews, advocating social distancing and face coverings in public settings before the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines—and even long afterward, despite its having become clear that both the vaccines and the face coverings were largely ineffective.
Ultimately, the decline in COVID cases was attained through natural immunity after the far less deadly omicron variant spread to both the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
When Biden won the White House, he asked Fauci to stay on in his administration in an elevated capacity.
The president praised Fauci in a statement, saying, “Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.”
Fauci said despite retiring from federal service he planned to continue working. “I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats,” he said.
In addition to his government salary, Fauci also benefits considerably from vaccine patents, not to mention the profits from his various publicity ventures.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
