SCOTUS Asked To Inject Dose Of Clarity Into Vaccine Mandate Jurisprudence

'Everybody should want to control their own medical decisions when it doesn't affect anyone else. The court should clarify that is the law as it now stands.'

COVID-era FDA chief sounded internal alarm over calling mRNA shots 'safe and effective'



The claim that the synthetic mRNA-based COVID-19 genetic therapies were "safe and effective" was repeated ad nauseam not only by former President Joe Biden during the pandemic but by health officials in his administration — including former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.

It may then come as a surprise that not all high-ranking federal health officials were keen on this particular characterization.

'Science doesn't tell you what your actions should be.'

When reached for comment about a new tranche of recently released emails of Anthony Fauci, former Biden administration acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock told Blaze News that she protested the "safe and effective" description.

But first let's rewind. On Sunday, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) published a May 27, 2021, email sent by Dr. Woodcock to Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins regarding the perceived need to set aside scientific research funds to later investigate COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

"I have been contacted by a number of people who have experienced adverse events post COVID-19 vaccination (from all three of the current vaccines)," wrote Woodcock. "Many are healthcare professionals, some of whom I know. The symptoms do not fit together into a distinctive syndrome and most are not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing."

Woodcock, who became acting FDA commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were being pushed on the nation, was sympathetic to the concerns of some apparent vaccine casualties that "no one takes them seriously, no one knows how to treat them" and that there had been "no effort to study this."

RELATED: First domino to fall? Fauci's 'consigliere' pleads GUILTY to role in COVID cover-up

Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

"I think it would be worthwhile to do a study and evaluate a cohort of these individuals," said Woodcock. "But of course $ need to be made available, and you would need an investigator who is interested in 'medical mysteries.' I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons."

Woodcock provided Blaze News with insights into her proposal.

"I was thinking, 'Could we find some kind of treatment to offer these folks?' But first, you have to understand what's going on, right? You can't just sort of go out and treat people," Woodcock told Blaze News. "So that was my objective in this. ... I don't think it's probably different than any other immune challenge, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that I felt the vaccine was dangerous or should not be used or anything. By no means. It was simply that if people were having this reaction, we could find a way to study it."

When pressed — in light of her concerns at the time — about the "safe and effective" description, Woodcock responded, "Well, look. I always told our press office, 'Don't call it safe and effective, because no medical intervention is 100% safe.' Even water. You could kill yourself by drinking too much water, literally."

The FDA noted in recent years that it was "confident in the safety and effectiveness" of the COVID-19 vaccines. While apparently hesitant herself to use that phrasing, Woodcock stated in 2021 that "the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product."

Woodcock offered Blaze News what she regards as a better pitch for the vaccine: "What it is is the benefits far outweigh the risks, and that's the standard for all drugs that are approved, all medicines that are approved, because none of them are free of side effects, which is the kind of ordinary, you know, meaning of the term 'safe.'"

While the former acting commissioner noted that many health experts suggested during the pandemic that the "benefits way outweigh the potential harms" of the vaccines, people nevertheless "do use the term 'safe and effective' a lot, which is a statutory term."

Woodcock emphasized that any intervention "that you do has to be pretty safe, right? But that doesn't mean it's totally without adverse events."

Adverse events were in some cases deadly.

The FDA admitted in an internal letter last year that FDA Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance career staff had "found that at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination."

Dr. Vinay Prasad, the former chief medical officer at the FDA and director at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the letter that the OBPV performed an analysis of 96 deaths between 2021 and 2024 and concluded "that no fewer than 10 are related. If anything, this represents conservative coding, where vaccines are exculpated rather than indicated in cases of ambiguity. The real number is higher."

On the matter of takeaways from the handling of the pandemic, Woodcock told Blaze News that while the "development of the vaccines was a scientific triumph," "science doesn't tell you what to do. Scientists often forget that."

"Science just tells you the facts," she continued. "What do to do — especially about society, right — is a value judgement that should take into account the facts, but science doesn't tell you what your actions should be."

HHS and the FDA did not immediately respond to Blaze News' requests for comment.

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Covid Shots In Pregnancy Are Safe, And Also Fauci Lied When He Said They Were, CNN Says In Same Breath

Fauci never accurately and honestly communicated that at the time of his public statements on the vaccines' safety there were not studies to support his public declarations about safety. In fact, he privately had concerns about their safety. But he never voiced those.

EXPOSED: Bill Maher calls out Fauci for trying to rewrite COVID history



Fauci thought we would forget; now he’s desperately trying to rewrite history.

The infectious disease “expert” has shifted his story on gain-of-function research and the lab leak theory — but longtime Democrat Bill Maher isn’t letting him off the hook.

“He was caught in actual lies,” Maher said. “He was telling people — and the big issue to me is the origin of this, which is very important. How did it start? And he was telling people up front when it first began, ‘It was from the wet markets. That’s a conspiracy theory if you say it escaped from the lab.’”

Maher pointed out that the release of Fauci’s diary by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has proven that he “knew better,” and he blames not only Fauci but the extremely partisan split on how to handle the pandemic.


“If we weren’t so partisan, we could just say gain-of-function research,” he said. “Obama told him not to do it. I would always have said don’t do it. But it’s a viable debate. It’s a reasonable debate. Should we soup up something that’s bad, this bacteria, to study it?”

“We could have had that debate in a rational way,” he continued. “We didn’t want to do that because why? Because we make everything about race.”

Maher recalled that during the pandemic, no one was allowed to say it “escaped from the lab because that was the racist point of view” and would mean “the entire Asian continent would have been somehow complicit in this because it escaped.”

“It was ridiculous, but that is where they went,” he added.

“Welcome to reality. Seriously, welcome to some common sense,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“He’s starting to see the Democrat Party for what it is,” he adds.

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Dana Bash’s Fauci fan-girl texts exposed after RFK Jr. torches her on CNN: ‘It was just beautiful’



In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned the tables on his interviewer when she spoke over him and repeated empty COVID-era platitudes.

“It was just beautiful,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says.

“She brought on RFK to try and lecture him about measles and blame him for the measles outbreak in America. But the conversation quickly turned to the handling of the COVID pandemic and how much she helped contribute to the misinformation during that time,” she adds.

In the interview, Bash began by asking how RFK Jr. would prepare for the next pandemic, claiming that experts think it will happen in the next 10 years.

“Yeah, I mean, I think we did virtually everything wrong the last time,” RFK Jr. responded, pointing out that there were doctors who saw no COVID deaths by prescribing therapeutics. Instead, the country locked down and pushed a vaccine on the population.


RFK Jr. went on to say it's also important that we protect our constitutional rights, which were “completely dismantled” during COVID.

“We began censoring people in violation,” he said.

After interrupting him several times, Bash said, “I really want to move on.”

“You were part of the problem,” RFK Jr. said.

Bash then claimed that there is “data upon data upon data” that the “COVID vaccine prevented deaths,” but she could not produce a study that proved that the vaccine did more good than harm to children.

“I can tell you that when it comes to the vaccine, there have been studies that show that because of vaccine disinformation, there could have been 100 to 200,000 lives in the U.S. saved but because people didn’t get the vaccine,” Bash said, before RFK Jr. interrupted.

“You are saying nonsense,” RFK Jr. responded.

When Bash claimed that it was a “scary time” and mistakes were made, RFK Jr. fired back that she was scaring people.

“That was the job of CNN,” he said.

“Recall that she was trying to suck up to Anthony Fauci during the pandemic. Now, how do we know this? Well, his homosexual diary entries, of course,” Gonzales explains.

And sure enough, one diary entry from April 17, 2021, reads: “Dana Bash sent me a text: ‘I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I. As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday — no one would have blamed you if you said simply, ‘Mr. Jordan, go f**k yourself.’”

Another from April 18, 2021, reads: “I received a text from Dana Bash pointing out that Vanity Fair recently had a headline that said: 'Jim Jordan trips over his own asshole trying to debate Anthony Fauci.'”

“Like, oh, OK. Yeah. No, you didn’t have any bias, Dana,” Gonzales mocks, repeating, “You didn’t have any bias.”

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Two Americas, under Fauci, with liberty and justice for none



“Two Americas” may be the most exhausted phrase in American political discourse. We have had two Americas divided by race, class, geography, religion, education, television network, and presidential preference.

Now we have two Americas divided by Anthony Fauci.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require.

In one, Fauci is a criminal who helped finance dangerous research, concealed what he knew about the origins of COVID-19, misled Congress, and used the authority of science to protect himself and the institutions he led from public scrutiny. That’s my America. I suspect it’s yours, too.

In the other, Fauci is a secular saint: a brave physician who guided the nation through catastrophe while enduring abuse from Donald Trump, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), vaccine skeptics, and assorted right-wing maniacs like us.

Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday did nothing to bridge the divide. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times rather than answer questions about the pandemic and its origins. Paul responded by announcing plans to seek a contempt resolution.

One America heard a confession. The other witnessed a show trial.

Nobody changed his mind. I doubt anyone could.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require. Some people would rather forget about the whole thing and move on. A proper reckoning would demand some agreement about which questions may be asked, what evidence would count, and what findings might alter anyone’s judgment.

We don’t even have that much.

Was the pandemic a natural disaster, a laboratory accident, a bioweapon test, or the product of scientific ambition compounded by bureaucratic negligence and ineptitude? Were school closures ever justified? How much did masks help? Which restrictions saved lives? Which merely demonstrated official power? When did caution become coercion? When did uncertainty become dogma?

RELATED: Saint Anthony Fauci’s index of forbidden questions

Nyia Sissac/Washington Post/Getty Images

Even asking some of those questions still sounds incriminating to one America and deranged to the other.

I know something about the private cost of that division.

An old friend from college — my first real editor, in fact — essentially ended our friendship during the first year of the pandemic. The dispute was not over anything I had written. It was over work I had published at another publication.

One of our senior contributors was among the first writers I knew to challenge the official COVID narrative in a smart, sustained way. She questioned social distancing, masking, and the categorical dismissal of treatments such as ivermectin. My friend believed I was terribly irresponsible for continuing to publish her.

I have no regrets about doing so.

Publishing an argument is not the same as certifying every claim in it, much less demanding that readers accept it. Editors are supposed to permit serious challenges to official consensus, especially during an emergency when government claims carry extraordinary consequences.

I have spent most of my adult life in the commentary business. I make an argument. The reader judges it. If it persuades, fine. If it doesn’t, so it goes. I do not lose sleep because somebody disagrees with me. A great many people do.

That arrangement collapsed during COVID. Disagreement became evidence of moral defect. Publishing skepticism was treated not as an editorial judgment but as complicity in harm.

My friend also insisted that Trump was “100% responsible” for the disease spreading to the United States because he had failed to quarantine airline passengers arriving from China in early 2020.

His certainty struck me more than the accusation itself. One hundred percent left no room for the Chinese government, international travel, public health agencies, state officials, ordinary human behavior, or plain bad luck, let alone malice aforethought.

I tried to extend an olive branch. I suggested that we discuss it over a meal, as we had talked politics, books, ideas, and life many times during a friendship spanning more than 30 years.

He said that wouldn’t be possible because of the prevailing restrictions on social gatherings.

The policy dispute had cracked the friendship. The rule supplied the reason we could not repair the rift.

Several months later, I wrote in an email:

I have been thinking a lot about the stressors of this year and of the past few years and of the past several months especially. What I wanted to tell you is how much I value our friendship of more than 30 years. My hope is that when everything settles down, whenever that may be, you and I can sit down and have a proper conversation. I hope that history matters and I hope that goodwill prevails. And I hope you know how grateful I am to you.

He never replied.

We’ve exchanged perfunctory birthday wishes since then. That’s about all. I don’t dwell on it. But I thought of him this week now that Fauci is once again a hot topic.

I miss my friend as I miss my father, who died in 2017.

The losses are not identical, obviously. Dad can’t return. My friend could. But both men belonged to the architecture of my life. My friend knew earlier versions of me that few living people remember. He helped form the writer and editor I became.

RELATED: Reactions pour in after Fauci pleads the 5th over 100 times

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

COVID reportedly killed more than a million Americans (though I’m well aware that number is disputed). It also damaged and destroyed things nobody considered at the time: friendships, marriages, churches, businesses, childhoods, trust in physicians, trust in institutions, and what was left of the habit of regarding political opponents as fellow citizens capable of error rather than enemies guilty of unspeakable crimes.

No Senate committee could possibly tally those losses.

A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with a prominent historian at the University of California. I lamented how difficult it will be for anyone to write a proper history of COVID.

“We won’t write it,” he told me. “Our kids will.”

Thirty years from now, the central figures won’t be around to defend themselves, polish their reputations, withhold documents, or dominate television. The pandemic may finally cease to function as a referendum on Trump, Biden, Fauci, vaccines, masks, and the moral worth of one’s neighbors.

The historians of 2056 may possess evidence we do not have and distance we cannot manufacture. They may uncover crimes. They may vindicate some officials now despised and condemn others now celebrated.

More likely, I suspect, they will describe institutions operating under fear and uncertainty, staffed by fallible people who confused authority with knowledge, consensus with truth, and self-protection with the public good.

A proper history will resist the comforting simplicity of saints and criminals. It will distinguish honest mistakes from deception, emergency measures from deliberate bureaucratic overreach, useful medicine from extravagant promises, and legitimate skepticism from opportunistic horse hockey.

It will also have to account for us.

Why did so many Americans become so certain? Why did we turn temporary policies into permanent judgments of character? Why did we allow disagreements over a virus to decide whom we would trust, whom we would shun, and which friendships we were willing to sacrifice?

Our children may answer those questions better than we can.

By then, maybe the two Americas will have become one country again — or at least two Americas capable of sitting down together for a meal. I’m not optimistic, but I’m hopeful.

‘Outbreak to anarchy in 6 days’: National security journalist warns Glenn Beck nightmare pathogens are sitting in labs



If COVID-19 nearly broke civilization with a 1% fatality rate, can you imagine the pandemonium a more lethal pathogen would cause? According to national security journalist Annie Jacobsen — author of “Biological War: A Scenario” — society should be reckoning with that very question because genetically modified pathogens with a 100% kill rate are sitting in laboratories right now.

In an interview with Glenn Beck, Jacobsen explained that these pathogens aren’t theoretical — and that a real-world release would move far faster and more destructively than most people grasp.

The prospect of a pandemic that makes COVID-19 look like child’s play terrifies Glenn — not just because of the lethal implications of such an event but also because society has never been so skeptical of the government and institutionalized science.

If something truly deadly escaped, how many would even believe it?

“The trust is gone. It’s just gone,” Glenn says. “If an outbreak happened today, half of the country would not believe Donald Trump. If it was ... Kamala Harris, half of the country would not believe her.”

And then there’s the people who are so jaded, it doesn’t matter who’s in office — “they don’t trust the science,” Glenn says, because COVID-19 mistakes still have never been owned by the scientific authorities.

These skeptics, justified as their mistrust may be, would be in peril, however, if an invariably fatal pathogen were to escape.

“There are genetically modified pathogens out there that have a 100% case fatality rate. Everybody dies. And [in the book] I show readers what the government has planned for that kind of event,” Jacobsen says.

“I take the readers from outbreak to anarchy in six days ... and then you learn what happens after anarchy,” she adds.

“How convinced are you that we are near ... an accident in one of these labs?” Glenn asks.

“[Biological] accidents are listed in Defense Department nomenclature as having the same plan go into effect as an attack. ... So, a lab leak 100% is as deadly as an attack because the pathogen, if it’s airborne, the weapon system is the human lung set,” Jacobsen explains.

Glenn then pivots to gain-of-function research.

“I understand if we’re looking for, you know, cures for these weapons, but I just don’t know — it feels as though we have crossed a point to where we’re almost insane and will appear to be suicidal at some point down the road,” he says.

“You can’t use any of these biological weapons. It’s all against the law since Nixon, but how many countries are still doing this stuff?” he asks.

To understand just how prevalent gain-of-function research is, all you have to do, Jacobsen says, is “look at the labs.”

“There are 110 BSL-4 labs around the world. That’s the maximum containment lab. And BSL-3, by the way, is just right below that. You can work with plague, hantavirus, anthrax, rabies in a BSL-3 lab, and there are 3,500 of those labs around the world,” she explains.

“And so, the idea of an accident is, you know, we’re just right at that precipice.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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Even mobsters answer questions: Why Fauci's hearing showed blatant 'disrespect' for the American people



Anthony Fauci spent years commanding Americans to “trust the science.” But when faced with real questions about his approach to the pandemic, the longtime public health bureaucrat had almost nothing to say.

The health “expert” accused Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) of having an “obsession” with calling for his prosecution, before going on to invoke the Fifth Amendment a whopping 111 times.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Fauci said.

But BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere believes Paul’s obsession is actually the right kind of obsession to have.


“That’s not an obsession that’s unhealthy,” Stu says. “Being obsessed with fitness is not unhealthy. Being obsessed with eating right is not unhealthy. Being obsessed with making sure we hold people accountable for horrible things that occurred to the people of this country is not an unhealthy obsession.”

Stu also calls Fauci’s refusal to answer questions “unbelievable” and disrespectful.

“You have no respect for the legislative branch of government. The whole point — your entire career — is a long series of decisions made as essentially a technocrat without responsibility to the legislative branch,” he says.

Even when Fauci was asked simply whether or not there was a folder in front of him, he pleaded the Fifth.

“Even in mob hearings, they’ll answer some stuff,” co-host Dave Landau adds. “Yeah, he’s so guilty he’s not going to answer anything,”

Senator Josh Hawley also had a chance to go after Fauci — and he did not waste it.

“Let’s just get one thing straight. You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more,” Hawley said, as Fauci looked on in silence.

Hawley pointed out that Fauci’s lawyers were sitting behind him “shifting nervously in their chairs” after he brought up his pardon.

“This isn’t about the Constitution. This isn’t about the law. This is about contempt. Contempt for this body and contempt for the American people. But I think I know why you’re doing it,” he said.

“It’s because you don’t want to answer questions. It’s because you did all kinds of terrible things. It’s because during the pandemic, you got rich, didn’t you? You got rich while people were dying — hundreds of thousands of Americans, over a million in the end. And you were getting rich,” he continued.

“And not only were you doing that,” he added, “you were using federal employees with taxpayer money to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally. Cash prizes totaling over a million dollars. You did all of that during the pandemic, didn’t you?”

Fauci then, unsurprisingly, invoked the Fifth Amendment again.

“I mean, look,” Stu says, “if he answers them, he’s going to lie anyway. But he knows that he’s going to lie. He’s not going to tell the truth. And if he does that, then he opens himself up for even more.”

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Don’t Ever Forget The Lies The Media Told To Protect Fauci And Biden

Nobody wants to think about Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci anymore, lest he risk being retraumatized and suffer neck-breaking convulsions. But if we never want to experience anything like them again, it’s worth looking at the reasons both of them are relevant again this week. Nearly three hours of audio recordings of former President Biden […]

Saint Anthony Fauci’s index of forbidden questions



Anthony Fauci’s newly released diary contains a perfect little monument to bureaucratic vanity.

On April 24, 2021, Fauci noted that BlazeTV host Steve Deace and Todd Erzen had published “Faucian Bargain,” which dubbed him “the most powerful and dangerous bureaucrat in American history.”

This is how institutions manufacture ignorance. They don’t always bury the evidence. More often than not, they simply declare the people seeking it disreputable.

Fauci had a devastating rebuttal. He did not read it.

“It is a cheap paperback of 179 pages which I will not even read,” Fauci wrote, before announcing that it contained “the same sort of nonsense that the other conspiracy theorists have been saying about me.”

Splendid! “Science” had spoken!

No evidence needed review. No argument required an answer. Fauci glanced at the title, identified the authors, and reached a conclusion with the serene confidence of a man accustomed to having cable news anchors treat his opinions as tablets from Sinai.

Two months later, Fauci explained the theology to NBC’s Chuck Todd.

“Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” he said.

The arrogance of this guy!

Louis XIV supposedly declared, “I am the state.” Fauci updated the formula for the administrative age: I am science. Question my judgment and you have attacked knowledge itself. Ask about my agency’s grants and you have declared war on reason itself. Publish a critical paperback and the scientific method goes into cardiac arrest.

My friend Lloyd Billingsley has a term for this: “white-coat supremacy.

It describes the belief that credentials confer not merely expertise but authority — political, moral, and sometimes almost priestly authority. The white coat becomes a vestment. The bureaucrat wearing it may issue commands, avoid scrutiny, and treat dissent as heresy. Citizens are not expected to weigh his arguments. They are expected to comply.

Sadly, millions did.

Fauci’s diary reads like the private scripture of white-coat supremacy.

Presidents praise him. Governors seek his counsel. Famous people call at all hours. Diners applaud when he picks up hamburgers. Fauci records each ovation with the dutiful embarrassment of a man cursed to remember every compliment.

Critics receive less delicate treatment. They are “crazy,” “far-right,” “preposterous,” “dishonest,” or simply beneath his notice. Deace and Erzen wrote a book criticizing the scope and consequences of Fauci’s power. Fauci refused to read it and then waved it off as irrational. Their standing settled the argument before the argument began.

RELATED: ‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’

Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The same method governed Fauci’s use of “conspiracy theory.” Some claims aimed at him were a bit out there: that he was Hillary Clinton’s “mole,” that he and Bill Gates put microchips in vaccines, or that he personally created the coronavirus and carried it into the United States.

But Fauci placed fantasies alongside legitimate questions about a Wuhan lab leak, NIH money reaching the Wuhan Institute of Virology, gain-of-function research, deficient oversight, his testimony before Congress, and government pressure on social media companies.

Those claims do not belong in the same category.

A microchip in a syringe might be a fantasy, but NIH funding reaching Wuhan is a fact. A deliberate bioweapon release remains unsupported. A laboratory accident remains unresolved but perfectly plausible. Even the FBI favored a laboratory origin. Federal investigators found serious lapses in monitoring the EcoHealth Alliance grant.

Fauci knew — or should have known — the distinctions.

His diary records that on January 31, 2020, serious scientists discussed unusual features of SARS-CoV-2, possible deliberate insertion, and accidental laboratory release. He distinguished that conversation from a flimsy paper claiming HIV sequences had been inserted into the virus.

At first, the categories remained intact. One claim was crazy but the other warranted investigation.

But once the political stakes became obvious, the categories fell to pieces.

Soon, congressional oversight became evidence-free conspiracy theorizing. FOIA requests came from cranks and conspiracy theorists. Scientists who challenged the approved account became ideologues, attention-seekers, or villains subject to censorship. The FBI, which favored the lab-leak hypothesis, supposedly had “no idea” what it was talking about.

RELATED: Fauci diaries reveal shocking behind-the-scenes relationship with Jake Tapper

Skip Bolen/Getty Images

And Steve Deace wrote a book Fauci refused to read.

That little detail gives away the game. “Conspiracy theory” did not describe the evidence. It determined whose evidence could be considered. Once Fauci assigned you to the crank file, documents became “disinformation,” questions became “harassment,” and investigation became an “attack” on “science” — meaning an attack on St. Anthony Fauci himself.

This is how institutions manufacture ignorance. They don’t always bury the evidence. More often than not, they simply declare the people seeking it disreputable, then point to the lack of approved inquiry as proof that no evidence exists. Neat trick. It worked, too.

Deace and Erzen argued that Fauci had become dangerously powerful and utterly unaccountable. Fauci answered by dismissing them unread, classifying them as irrational, and announcing that criticism of the man was criticism of science.

I hate to spoil a 179-page paperback, but that sounds an awful lot like confirmation.