{"id":852,"date":"2026-07-29T21:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=852"},"modified":"2026-07-29T21:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:10:10","slug":"the-covid-debate-that-never-ended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"The Covid debate that never ended"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump wants the Supreme Court to give him the unilateral power to rewrite election law<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Surely Anthony Fauci has earned the right to party with Robert De Niro in peace. But instead, America\u2019s embattled former Covid-19 czar was hauled before the Senate today to defend five-year-old diary entries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Senate Republicans subpoenaed Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as part of a broader effort to dispute the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fauci is the longtime face of American infectious disease research and has appeared in front of Congress more than 250 times. But this morning \u2014 in a tense, highly partisan spectacle \u2014 he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fauci accused Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who\u2019s leading this circus, of nursing an \u201cunhinged\u201d and \u201cobvious obsession\u201d with him. Paul recently released Fauci\u2019s unredacted diary, which includes lots of deeply cringe tidbits about the immunologist\u2019s celebrity hobnobbing\u2026but nothing that materially alters our understanding of the pandemic or Fauci\u2019s handling of it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, \u2018behind bars,\u2019\u201d Fauci said. \u201cAny reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Why we\u2019re still arguing about Covid-19<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Fauci occupies an uneasy spot in American politics. To some people, he\u2019s a hero who helped steer the country through a terrifying pandemic. To others, he\u2019s a villain who imposed damaging policies, concealed inconvenient facts, and never answered for his various missteps.<\/p>\n

Read more Costco\u2019s organic chicken isn\u2019t what it seems<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The evidence doesn\u2019t back that darker story. But Fauci\u2019s vilification points to one possibility that is<\/em> worth taking seriously: As a country, we never adequately reckoned with the mistakes and uncertainties of Covid-19.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Consider the narrative trajectory of the lab-leak theory, which is central to Paul\u2019s vendetta against Fauci. Early in the pandemic, Paul and other proponents argued that the novel coronavirus might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory. Some people went even further, claiming that Fauci had funded the lab\u2019s research and then covered it up. Both theories were treated as ridiculous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To be clear, the second theory is<\/em> ridiculous. (There\u2019s absolutely no evidence that Fauci was somehow, improbably involved in the making of Covid-19.) But the consensus around the lab-leak theory has <\/em>changed. While most researchers still believe the virus spread naturally from animals to humans, a laboratory accident has never been definitively ruled out \u2014 and many now allow for the possibility in a way that they didn\u2019t four or five years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The same is true of other pandemic controversies, too. Reasonable people can now debate whether lengthy school closures did more harm than good. Guidance on masks and other measures changed repeatedly, sometimes without a ton of explanation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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None of that means officials acted in bad faith. But we\u2019ve arguably never had the kind of serious, bipartisan examination of the pandemic\u2019s missteps that a once-in-a-century public health crisis deserved. And in the absence of that (naive? impossible?) shared reckoning\u2026we\u2019re getting Fauci\u2019s leaked journals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One link for later<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u27a8 Check for ticks.<\/strong> Ticks are responsible for a whopping 90 percent<\/em> of vector-borne disease in the US, but local and county health departments do very little to stop them. To protect yourself, use permethrin spray when you go outside and examine your body for the little buggers when you get home. Throw your clothes in the dryer after a hike, too \u2014 ticks hate heat! Who knew.<\/p>\n

Read more The primary pitting an 80-year-old progressive against an insurgent the left loathes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before you go\u2026<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
See More:<\/span><\/p>\n
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  • Today, Explained newsletter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It\u2019s been six years, and America is still litigating the perceived errors of the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Covid debate that never ended - American Living Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=852\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Covid debate that never ended - American Living Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s been six years, and America is still litigating the perceived errors of the pandemic.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=852\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Living Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-29T21:10:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/7b970e3bc484fe2e26860a4380d70de8\"},\"headline\":\"The Covid debate that never ended\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-29T21:10:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852\"},\"wordCount\":680,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/7d56ab346cb24e26014cdf7d40c964a6.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=852\",\"name\":\"The Covid debate that never ended - 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