Has anyone done more damage to our nation than Anthony Fauci? Not only did his pronouncements lead to politicians wreaking economic havoc and federal budget calamity, he perhaps more than anyone undermined trust in government and thereby exacerbated the panic and division surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Did we mention he helped fund gain-of-function research at the lab where COVID likely originated? Now he’s changing his tune — again — this time on vaccines.

We’d expect no less from the guy who, like every other reputable doctor or scientist, rejected the efficacy of masks only to flip-flop and demand double masking after claiming he actually lied to prevent a run on masks. What a guy. We still know that there’s “little to no” evidence masks work, despite Fauci’s personal journey of opinion.

So, to vaccines. Naturally, in our current media atmosphere where anything even remotely questioning vaccine efficacy is immediately “fact-checked” or censored, Fauci’s about-face hasn’t gotten a lot of attention outside conservative media. But he recently co-wrote an article for Cell Host & Microbe titled “Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses.”

In the summary right up top, he and his fellow writers “examine challenges that have impeded development of effective mucosal respiratory vaccines.” The upshot of the article is that vaccines for respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2 provide “decidedly suboptimal” protection — both against infection and in terms of durable immunity. They exhibit the same “deficiencies” as the annual flu shot. The primary benefit is protecting against severe illness and death, which is still a worthwhile goal for many people but not at all how the vaccines were sold at the outset.

In fact, Fauci now effectively says we need to start over on vaccines. “We are excited and invigorated that many investigators and collaborative groups are rethinking, from the ground up, all of our past assumptions and approaches to preventing important respiratory viral diseases and working to find bold new paths forward” [emphasis added]. Not building upon the work. Rethinking from the ground up.

Meanwhile, “this just in” at NBC News: “Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds.” The CDC discovered natural immunity last August, so maybe as we approach three years of 15 days to slow the spread, the Leftmedia is finally coming around.

Okay great, let’s all chuckle at Fauci changing his mind on the science and then get back to work.

Except an awful lot of Americans can’t get back to work because they were fired from their jobs for not taking an experimental vaccine that Fauci wanted mandated and now admits doesn’t really work as well as he said it did. Americans like some of our best and brightest warriors and first responders, young and healthy people at little risk from COVID. Fauci even advocated mandating vaccines for children under 12 despite the very low risk of severe illness or death among kids.

Jobs were lost and livelihoods ruined because Fauci and the other tyrants in Joe Biden’s administration and elsewhere in corporate America decided that they knew better than you what to put in your body, and that natural immunity — which oh by the way works better — doesn’t count.

The distrust alone sown by this tyranny will take perhaps generations to reverse. This free people in our constitutional Republic ought to have confidence that our government is at least being honest. We no longer believe it is, and that can have deadly consequences.

Fauci was clearly Donald Trump’s biggest blunder. Giving a platform to Dr. Science Himself arguably cost Trump his reelection bid because Democrats grossly politicized COVID and used it to defeat the president.

We’ll close with this. The U.S. reportedly suffered 1.1 million COVID deaths, while the death toll for the entire world is reportedly 6.8 million. There are all sorts of reasons to flatly reject those numbers as absurd. For one thing, the U.S. likely overcounted deaths due to that whole debate over “with” vs. “from.” Meanwhile, China laughably undercounted deaths — hovering around 5,000 for nearly three years before suddenly reporting a surge to 87,000 to “prove” that finally loosening restrictions was bad.

Just for a moment, though, let’s take those numbers at face value. Fauci was a government bureaucrat for decades — to the point of becoming the highest-paid official in the U.S. He recently retired lucratively after having cashed in on the pandemic. What does it say about him that our nation “led” the world in COVID deaths, accounting for more than one out of every seven worldwide? That’s certainly not what anyone meant by America First.