Anthony Fauci is discussed across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in two distinct contexts: his public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic and his alleged role in concealing the origins of the virus. The excerpts contain no defense of Fauci and no guest who speaks in his favor.
Mask guidance as an economic error
In the November 14, 2021 episode, economist Ryan Bourne cited Fauci’s early pandemic mask guidance as an example of a policy mistake an economist would not have made. Bourne recalled that Fauci and the Surgeon General at the time were “explicitly telling people not to go out and buy face masks,” at a moment when many people were buying them because they thought they might provide additional protection. Bourne said the official line was that the virus did not spread from asymptomatic people, but that if pinned down, officials were worried that people buying masks would use up a fixed supply, leaving fewer for hospital and nursing home settings Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021).
Bourne argued that an economist would have recognized the market as dynamic rather than zero-sum: if demand took off and politicians did not interfere, the price of masks would rise and incentivize businesses to expand production, run overtime, invest in new machines, and switch to mask production. He said the supply response did eventually materialize, but that because public health officials saw the market as zero-sum, there were weeks when people were told not to demand masks that would have worked better than walking around with no protection. Bourne characterized this as one of two evident mistakes showing that public health officials do not think like economists Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021).
Bob Zadek extended the point, arguing that if government artificially suppresses demand by telling people not to buy masks, the market has nothing to respond to, prices do not rise, and manufacturers are not incentivized to devote capacity to mask production. He described the episode as a classic case of government interfering with the marketplace instead of allowing it to respond, and added his own observation that he considers the concept of a shortage of any product to be nonexistent, since a higher price will always clear the market Ryan Bourne on the Economic Fallacies of the Pandemic Policymakers (2021).
Fauci in the jawboning episodes
Fauci appears twice in the two 2023 episodes on government jawboning against speech, both times as the subject of a statement by someone else rather than as a participant. In the January 31, 2023 episode with Will Duffield, Duffield described a form of jawboning he called pernicious: outright allegations of illegality even when the underlying speech would be protected by any court. As an example, he cited Steve Bannon’s hyperbolic statements about Fauci the previous year, in which Bannon said that if he were a Tudor-style king he would put Fauci’s head on a pike. Duffield said Senator Richard Blumenthal claimed this was a death threat and that Bannon should be banned from YouTube for threatening Fauci’s life in an illegal way. Duffield argued the speech was clearly hyperbolic and protected as opinion, and that no one anticipated Bannon actually trying to lop Fauci’s head off, but that Blumenthal claimed the speech was unlawful when it was not, in an attempt to jawbone or bully YouTube into silencing Bannon ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023).
The same example appears in the February 1, 2023 episode, where Duffield’s account of the Bannon–Blumenthal exchange is repeated in nearly identical terms: Bannon’s Tudor-king remark, Blumenthal’s characterization of it as a death threat, and Duffield’s conclusion that the speech was protected as opinion and that Blumenthal claimed it was unlawful when it was not The New Face of Government Censorship (2023). In both episodes the Fauci reference serves as an illustration of how government actors can cast protected speech as worthy of removal; neither episode discusses Fauci’s own conduct.
Rand Paul’s allegations
The November 20, 2023 episode with Senator Rand Paul is the most extensive treatment of Fauci in the excerpts. Paul said that in the beginning he trusted Fauci, whom he had never heard of, and thought he was a disinterested scientist telling the truth when he said the virus likely came from animals. Paul said he did not think much about it for almost a year until he read an article by Nicholas Wade about how what officials were saying in private differed from what they said in public. In private, Paul said, they were alarmed and saying the virus looked like it had been manipulated in the lab, and in Fauci’s own words he said they were concerned because they knew gain-of-function research was done in that lab. Paul said that about a year later, when he directly asked Fauci in committee whether the NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, Fauci responded, “We’ve never, ever funded gain of function research in Wuhan.” Paul called this an outright lie and said it was what got him intrigued Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
Paul said the coverup began at a specific time, and that as one reads the emails a federal judge ordered released beginning January 31, 2020, the tension and hysteria are palpable. He described emails beginning at 10:30 at night and going until 3:00 in the morning, with Fauci unable to sleep, and assistants sending him emails saying the project was funded but could not be gain of function because it did not go before the safety committee. At 3:00 in the morning, Paul said, Fauci sent an email to someone Paul had never heard of, whom he later discovered was head of the safety committee, saying nothing to see here, it came from animals and could not have come from the lab. Paul said this was the beginning of the coverup, which he said extends to eight different agencies and hundreds of people over a decade, all of whom had the same self-interest in covering up the fact that the US funded the research Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
Paul also described the initial exchanges as being between Fauci and leading virologists and grant disposers, naming Jeremy Farrar in England as a key person, whom he described as essentially the Anthony Fauci of England. Paul said Farrar wrote that he bought a burner phone for the first time, which Paul said does not sound like a public servant but like someone conspiring to conceal things. Paul said the four or five other virologists on the call looked at the genetic sequence and said it was suspicious and did not happen in nature, noting a special cleavage site that does not exist in that family of coronaviruses in nature. But he said this lasted only about four or five days, from February 1st to February 4th, after which they all publicly said that believing the lab-origin theory made you a nut, a kook, or a conspiracy theorist. Paul said they signed letters to Lancet and put an article in Nature edited by Fauci, and that at the same time Fauci went to the White House lectern and quoted a paper to prove the virus could only come from animals—a paper Fauci himself wrote, edited, oversaw, and organized. Paul said the person who wrote the letter saying nothing to see here was the head of EcoHealth Alliance, which funded the research in China, and that they were all interconnected, self-interested, and conflicted Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
Bob Zadek offered a summary: that the original sin was the first time someone in the group said he might have contributed to this, and that the fear was the public would discover the government had funded in part the research that set it in motion, with Fauci and others determined in the first instance to sever any possible connection between themselves and the occurrence. Paul agreed, saying it was initially fear of culpability, fear and guilt that they funded something that killed millions of people, though they did not yet know it would. Paul added that they were also worried about the millions and billions of dollars changing hands funding this type of research, about damaging relations with China, and about the money moving back and forth. He said Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, sent an email to Fauci saying this would not be good for science, implying support for what Paul called the Platonic lie or noble lie—that the common people cannot be told the truth about where the virus came from because it would damage their support for gain-of-function research Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
Paul said gain-of-function research has been going on for a decade, with a real debate in the scientific community, including significantly credentialed and tenured professors at prestigious schools who think it is a bad idea, and then there is Fauci, who thinks it is a good idea. Paul said that over time the idea that they could share guilt or culpability for millions of deaths was a big incentive to cover up, but that initially the bigger incentive was that they philosophically believed good relations with China were needed and that disclosure would damage a decade of developing scientific interaction with China. He said these are people not averse to telling the noble lie, and gave as an example Fauci’s shifting opinions on masks: when Fauci finally said masks do not work in public, or do work in public, Paul said he was really telling people he did not want them to buy masks that would be in shortage for healthcare. Paul said that if you want the truth from most of these people, it is what they say in private, and that when Fauci was asked in private by a colleague traveling in February 2020, he said not to use masks, that it had been known for decades that masks do not work in public and do not prevent the passage of viruses Senator Rand Paul Exposes the Great COVID Coverup (2023).
Across episodes
The mask question is the one thread that appears in more than one episode: Ryan Bourne in 2021 treated Fauci’s early guidance not to buy masks as an economic error about static versus dynamic markets, while Rand Paul in 2023 treated Fauci’s shifting mask positions as an instance of the noble lie. The excerpts show no development or exchange between the two treatments, and the jawboning episodes touch Fauci only through the Bannon–Blumenthal example.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no defense of Fauci, no statement from Fauci himself, and no discussion of his official title, his tenure, or his broader career. They do not cover the specific legal or legislative proceedings against him beyond Paul’s account of a committee exchange, nor any response by Fauci or his representatives to the allegations. The episodes also do not address the merits of gain-of-function research as a scientific practice beyond the disagreement Paul describes.