Dr. Fauci’s Refusal to Face New York Nursing Home Deaths Is Revealing

Thousands more nursing home residents may have died from COVID-19 than New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has publicly acknowledged, according to a January 30 report by New York Attorney General Letitia James. As investigators learned, nursing home deaths had been undercounted, even in facilities the state health department had made public. As ProPublica noted, “the true death toll among nursing home residents was not mentioned in Cuomo’s much-publicized memoir on his leadership successes handling the pandemic.”

On February 15, Gov. Cuomo defended his pandemic response and the next day, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on CNN with Jim Scietto. Gov. Cuomo, Scietto recalled, had “argued that his state was following federal guidelines when he ordered those long-term care facilities to accept patients returning from hospitals. I wonder, can you clarify that. Was he really following federal guidelines to do this?”

“You know, Jim, I can’t,” Fauci responded. “I mean, excuse me. I really am – I’m honestly not trying to erase your question, but I’m not really sure of all the details of that, and I think if I, if you make a statement, it might be wrong or taken out of context. So, I prefer not to comment on that.”

As Fox News recalled, last July Dr. Fauci told PBS that, unlike other parts of the country, New York responded “properly” and “correctly” to the pandemic. Dr. Fauci, who had appeared at a Cuomo press conference in December, declined to comment on the attorney general report on nursing home deaths in New York.

Dr. Fauci is the highest paid official in the federal government, and his $417,608 salary tops even the president of the United States. Dr. Fauci has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, but his career in government goes back 53 years. In 1968, two years after he earned his medical degree, Dr. Fauci hired on with the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Fauci has changed his mind on the threat of the Wuhan coronavirus, the utility of masks, the damaging effects of lockdowns, and the date when herd immunity might be achieved. His refusal to comment on nursing home deaths, in a state whose pandemic response he praised, reveals Fauci as a political partisan.