Former NIH Director Francis Collins Says Anthony Fauci Saved 'Tens Of Millions Of Lives'

Francis Collins is at it again.

Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, completely mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic. As one of the nation's ostensible "experts," his role before and during COVID should have been to remain calm, follow pre-pandemic planning and guidance, and follow the actual science.

Instead, Collins, like so many other "experts," became a politician. He abandoned any pretense of rationality and common sense, going along with the herd, and demanding that the public and outside media follow what he believed, without hearing dissenting views.

There's no better example than how he treated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and several other highly qualified epidemiologists when they published the Great Barrington Declaration. 

Collins emailed his friend and ally Dr. Anthony Fauci, saying they should work to have a "quick and devastating published takedown" of Bhattacharya's suggestions. As was so often the case, he mixed science with politics. He made misguided assumptions, then refused to listen to new evidence. 

And now he's back, demonstrating once again that he's learned absolutely nothing.

Dr. Anthony Fauci. (Photo by Anna Rose Layden-Pool/Getty Images)

Francis Collins Praises Fauci, Ignores His Own Failures In New Interview

Speaking at The Atlantic Festival, Collins once again praised Dr. Fauci. Fauci, whose organization almost certainly helped fund the gain-of-function research that likely led to the release of the coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The same coronavirus that causes COVID-19, which led to the death of millions of people.

When asked "How many saved lives he attributes to Anthony Fauci," Collins was immediately effusive. 

"Yeah, it's certainly in the tens of millions," Collins said. "Tony Fauci was a big architect of PEPFAR, the George W. Bush effort to get anti-retrovirals to people in Africa. Last I heard, that saved 26 million lives, that program alone. But, I have to also say that program has now been terminated."

Collins, notice, did not mention the gain-of-function research Fauci advocated for. Nor did he mention how many lives were lost to the lockdowns Fauci pushed, the deaths of despair, increased suicides and the alcohol abuse that occurred thanks to Fauci's incompetence and malicious refusal to update his thinking.

Collins wasn't done with the delusional misinformation though. Far from it.

First, Collins complained about the fact that social media allowed people to discuss information and ideas about pandemic policies. 

"Social media began passing all kinds of information to people, that might have sounded credible. But was in complete discord with the actual facts. And bought a lot of people into crazy approaches that were not going to help them," Collins said.

"And Jeffrey, the saddest story of all this, and it is unbelievably sad, is when you add up how many people lost their lives because of misinformation, just from basically deciding that the vaccine was not going to be for them, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates between June of ‘21 and March of ’22, 234,000 Americans died unnecessarily, in graveyards today, like three jumbo jets crashing every day for nine months, unnecessarily. That is the most, unbelievably heartbreaking story. And that happened in the United States of America because politics and science got all tangled up. And when you mix politics and science, you just get politics."

Absolute gaslighting nonsense. 

Collins, as much as anyone, contributed to the politicization of science. He used a modeling estimate, based on inaccurate assumptions of vaccine efficacy, to lecture and patronize yet again. It's textbook NIH, government bureaucratic behavior. Blame everyone but himself. He spread information that was in "complete discord with the actual facts." Like masks and vaccines would stop transmission. School closures were justifiable. Churches should shut down. And that lockdowns were effective tools. 

This is the problem with "the experts." They are insular, they circle the wagons, and they will not ever update their findings in light of new evidence. Especially if that evidence comes from outsiders or those who don't share their credentials. 

Collins and Fauci could have prevented any number of lives being lost from extended lockdowns had they listened to the actual evidence. They could have ended mask mandates by publicly admitting that they don't work. 

They could have prevented an entire generation of learning loss had they demanded schools open immediately, with no restrictions. They did none of it. 

Instead, they lectured about "misinformation" while spreading it, and haven't stopped in the post-pandemic period. It'd be just as easy for the Kaiser Family Foundation to claim that mask mandates could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, because they could input that assumption into a model, then spit out pre-ordained results. Except mask mandates didn't save a single life, because masks don't work.

It's offensive that Collins puts on this paternalistic, "I'm so disappointed in you" tone. That he continues to blame social media for "misinformation" instead of taking responsibility for his horrific failures. Put simply, he's a dishonest person who thoroughly discredited himself and his profession during and after the pandemic. You can see why he and Fauci get along so well.