The coronavirus pandemic was the biggest story of the last decade. Millions of people around the world died because of a virus that came from a Chinese biolab. Ostensibly to fight the virus, governments that weren’t already communist quickly became tyrannical, throwing the world into a crisis of lost liberty and economic well-being that we’re still working to recover.

The man at the center of it all, at least in America, was Donald Trump’s biggest blunder: Anthony Fauci.

Fauci retired from his decades-long post atop the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the end of 2022 with a golden parachute after having cashed in on the pandemic.

Since then, he’s offered vaccine revisionism and tried to paint himself as the victim of misunderstanding.

But he made several confessions this week that undermine his credibility even further — a feat we didn’t think was possible.

Transcripts have yet to be released for his two days of closed-door testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, but we do know from Republican disclosures some of the things Fauci said, and there were some doozies.

For example, Fauci admitted that rules dictating social distancing at six feet “sort of just appeared.” Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who is also a physician, said Fauci conceded such rules were “likely not based on scientific data.”

Of course Fauci just made it up about social distancing, pretty much like all the rest of the response to COVID — lockdowns, masks, vaccines, etc. But that’s a funny thing to say for a guy who, in June 2021, said that “attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science.”

Social distancing was used to justify shutdowns. Schools and businesses had to close if they couldn’t abide by the six-feet rule, sometimes even if they could. Rather than focusing on protecting the vulnerable, shutdowns hurt everyone. Drug use, domestic abuse, and suicide all rose during lockdowns.

When it came to schools, Texas Republican Michael Cloud said Fauci is “still not convinced that there was learning loss.” Massive learning loss has been documented by measurable data. But one thing’s for sure — Fauci “suffers” from memory loss.

Cloud said that Fauci displayed an “amazing ability to either forget what happened or then to find ways to shirk any sort of responsibility for the influence that was had.”

He probably forgot how vigorously he denied shutting down schools, which was a tacit admission that it was damaging. “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down,” Fauci huffed last April. “Never. I never did. I gave a public health recommendation that echoed the CDC’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that.”

In other words, he shut down schools and factories.

It’s worth noting here, as voters in Iowa and New Hampshire soon consider their choice for the GOP presidential nominee, that Donald Trump advocated lockdowns. Sure, he initially pushed for 15 days to slow the spread and to reopen everything by Easter 2020. But when governors like Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Florida’s Ron DeSantis actually did start reopening things, Trump blasted them for it. “I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities,” Trump said of Kemp after Easter.

He maintained a “very good working relationship” with Fauci, appearing with him at daily briefings, saying, “I like him personally.” Fauci effectively set White House policy. After Trump lost in 2020, he insisted he’d never been a big fan of Fauci, who “was not a huge factor in my administration.”

Maybe Trump gets a pass on all that because he’s been indicted four times on 91 counts.

Anyway, back to Fauci. As for things just sort of happening, remember that he’s the guy who, in March 2020, said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Then he claimed he lied about that and flip-flopped to say it was “common sense” to wear not one mask but two. Mandates soon abounded because of his pronouncements. It’s 2024 and some people are still wearing masks while alone outside or in their car, which is mind-numbing and sad.

Fauci is the guy who shamed, cajoled, and supported mandates on vaccines. In 2021, Fauci said it was “proven that when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bulls***, and they get vaccinated.”

Last year, he acknowledged that the novel vaccines for a novel virus provided “decidedly suboptimal” protection. Yet millions of Americans were affected by various vax mandates — either they got the jab or they lost their job.

Now, according to Wenstrup, Fauci sees “that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come.” We hope Fauci received the Congressional Keen Sense of the Obvious Award for that one.

We asserted at the beginning that COVID came from a lab. Fauci’s NIH funded gain-of-function research at that lab, and he did more than his part to discredit the lab-leak theory in favor of a zoonotic origin.

Now we can add that to the reversal list, at least sort of. That COVID came from a lab is “not a conspiracy theory,” Wenstrup says Fauci told Congress. Indeed, the leak is almost certainly exactly what happened.

Fauci’s confessions come on the heels of similar admissions from Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health who helped discredit the lab-leak theory and establish all those unscientific guidelines.

Such confessions are better than stubborn refusals to admit reality, but they are too little too late. Far too much damage was done by bureaucrats and politicians wielding The Science™ like a cudgel.

Ultimately, that’s the point of Fauci’s two days in Congress. “Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority,” Wenstrup explained. “It is clear that dissenting opinions were often not considered or suppressed completely. Should a future pandemic arise, America’s response must be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data.”

It’s abundantly clear that the COVID pandemic response was not guided by facts and data but by a tyrannical political agenda. Those were deadly decisions.