When The Drift took on Dr. Fauci…
Revisit Sam Adler-Bell's 2021 essay
Longtime readers of The Drift already know that we came into the world swinging. In our very first issue, quarantine diaries, interventionist foreign policy, and Tiger King all earned our wrath. But the first Drift takedown that reached escape velocity was “Doctor Do-Little,” Sam Adler-Bell’s incisive analysis of someone who was a sacred cow to about half of pandemic-era America: Anthony Fauci. In early 2021, Sam dared to give voice to the nagging reservations that many had about the man who technically directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but had become to public health what Marianne is to the French Republic.
Sam left no stone unturned in his examination, indicting Fauci’s flip-flopping on masks, his reluctance to confront Trump, and his moving goalposts on asymptomatic transmission and herd immunity. Upon publication, the piece ricocheted across social media, soon reaching establishment outlets like The Washington Post, which called it a “provocative, must-read” essay. Fauci, of course, had long been pilloried, for totally different reasons, by right-wingers, but this was — as far as we know — the first fair, thorough critique of him from the left.
Sam wasn’t always a Fauci skeptic. “I was personally quite fond of him,” he told me, when I asked him to reflect on the piece more than four years later. “He reminded me a lot of my grandfather (same South Brooklyn accent) who had died at the beginning of the pandemic, and while I was suspicious of this impulse in myself, I took comfort in Fauci’s outer borough grit and charm.” But when The Drift’s coeditor Rebecca Panovka realized, over Christmas 2020, that the Fauci mythos was ripe for interrogation, Sam came to mind thanks to his masterful takedown of the work of political scientist Yascha Mounk. Sam didn’t think that Fauci deserved exactly the same treatment — but, he said, he was intrigued. After some thought, he landed on the core question of his piece: “If America’s response to the pandemic was so bad — an opinion shared by most liberals at the time — why, then, was the bureaucrat in charge of it so beloved?”
He quickly got to work speaking with immunologists and public health experts (“especially those who weren’t Twitter celebrities”) and found that many had frustrations that they rarely voiced, “mostly out of respect for Fauci’s record and experience, and somewhat because they feared any criticism would give ammunition to Trump and the right.” Once their substantive grievances were on the record, it was easy to make the case that “Fauci protocol failed during this crisis.”
While many readers came out of the woodwork to express gratitude for the piece, so did a few vociferous critics, like Peter Staley — a former ACT UP activist who knew, and had come to admire, Fauci from his work during the AIDS crisis. Staley’s angry tweets turned into angry emails, and Sam eventually invited Staley onto his podcast, “Know Your Enemy,” to continue the debate. “Peter and I didn’t end up agreeing on all the particulars, but it was exactly the sort of spirited discourse I hoped the piece would inspire,” said Sam. Without putting too fine a point on it, this is what we hope every Drift piece does: challenge conventional wisdom in order to start a more interesting conversation.
Five years after the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic, the official narratives that coalesced around the virus seem shakier than ever. It’s clear that there’s still a lot of work to be done to unravel the origins and effects of this singular crisis. It’s also been five years since The Drift launched, and our editorial team has been digging into our archive to reintroduce thought-provoking pieces like Sam’s. We hope you enjoy.
Sincerely,
Krithika Varagur
Associate Editor
Nice to see you drifted over to the Substack! I have been snooping in on your magazine from your early days. Stay bold and smart, looking forward to what you have to say.
I have always liked and respected Anthony Fauci from the time I knew him when I was a neurosurgery resident in D.C. in the early 80's and needed some advice from him. However, I do think the article made very valid points. One has to recognize, though, that Fauci was in a very tough position with a, to say the least, very challenging president and distressed and angry citizenry while trying to manage the best prevention and treatment plan for a new and virulent disease.