Twenty-five democracies managed to examine their COVID pandemics without smashing their national crockery. The United States produced a partisan committee and a pre-emptive pardon that silenced the one man who could explain to millions of angry, confused Americans why they suffered so badly. But in his final martyrdom, Anthony Fauci may have done the rest of us an unintended service.

How do you extract vital signs from an inert subject? A challenge made more worrying when the afflicted person is a previously articulate personality who is, by self-admission, “the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable….in the world”. 

Film stars fawn over him and documentaries hail him as a revered scientist and chief medical advisor to the world’s most powerful leader. 

I refer, of course, to Dr Anthony Fauci playing dumb on 29 July at a US Senate Committee. Over three tedious hours, he repeatedly refused to answer multiple questions, including on the colour of his tie and, more seriously, about his role in shaping national and international responses to the Covid pandemic.

Blessings lacked by non-Americans 

Fauci’s defiant stonewalling of democratic oversight of public policymaking is hugely significant for accountability in global health. To understand why requires some background explanation for the 96 per cent of the world that does not enjoy the blessings of the American Constitution.

Its Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be compelled in criminal cases to bear witness against themselves. This fair practice has a long tradition. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees similar protection as does the European Court of Human Rights. 

But Americans do it differently. Their Fifth Amendment rights have long since crept out of courtrooms into civil, administrative, and legislative proceedings. Fauci availed this right in the Senate committee on the advice of his attorneys, arguing that its majority Republican chair and members were biased and hostile towards him.

Out of the fire, into the frying pan

There is a further twist. In American criminal trials, prosecutors may not impute guilt from silence, but in non-criminal proceedings, courts may draw adverse inferences when a person declines to answer. As a congressional hearing is neither a criminal trial nor a civil suit, observers can infer what they wish from Fauci’s non-answers, according to their own personal and political prejudices.

So, by “pleading the Fifth”, Fauci escaped from the fire of a hostile committee into the frying pan of public opinion. Whether Fauci made the right call is debatable.

 Legislators who were only partisan earlier (normal in competitive democracies) got enraged by the disrespect shown to the representatives of the people by an apparently arrogant Fauci. They promptly voted along party lines to hold him in contempt and took a legally contested shortcut to refer him to the Justice Department. That is a serious charge that a hostile US administration will use to redirect Fauci’s feet to the fire. 

Purgatory, in percentages

Meanwhile, the good doctor has already fallen into a form of purgatory as his distinguished reputation is thrashed. He once enjoyed public trust levels exceeding 70%, but that has now fallen to 54%, heading towards the 40% rating for President Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has made several policy decisions strongly criticised by health scientists.

How a once mighty oracle crashed will no doubt feature in elite business school courses. Future biographers will also debate whether Fauci was unfairly treated or whether he brought trouble upon himself by lacking transparency over possible acts of commission and omission around the contested origins of COVID-19, and his unpopular protection policies. 

 Meanwhile, the US Senate inquiry into COVID turned into a farce. Ordinary Americans are no further along the road to receiving an authoritative answer about why their mighty nation suffered over 60% higher mortality than comparable high-income countries. Unfortunately, they do not have a health equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the absence of an independent, impartial investigation process, scapegoating is the easy path to follow.

Sparing the turkey

Fauci was perfect for that. His case was not helped by having personally benefitted from another great American tradition. Their all-powerful presidents can not only spare turkeys destined for iconic Thanksgiving dinners but also forgive anyone for any offence, or indeed even before an offence has been determined to have occurred. 

So Fauci got pardoned by President Joe Biden in January 2025, not because of wrongdoing, but as protection against future prosecutions. That begs the obvious question, crystallised by Trump’s tweet in 2018: “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?”

In a symbolic sense, Fauci may be seen as the national turkey not-quite-spared in Thanksgiving for a confused nation coming through the pandemic.

Saving the national crockery

At this point, it is worth digressing to consider the rest of the world. Forget about China, which quashed investigations and still has not shared the genome sequence, market and laboratory data that WHO requested. 

But most democracies make provision for independent statutory enquiries for lesson learning and public accountability over egregious policy failures. Thus, if Fauci was examined in Australia, he would not have been allowed to remain silent. But would Fauci have told them the truth? 

To encourage him to do so, statutory enquiries have strong provisions to protect witnesses (without requiring head-of-state pardons) by making their testimony inadmissible against them in subsequent court cases. Britain’s statutory inquiries also compel the release of documents on pain of criminal penalty.

Therefore, if Fauci had appeared before a British inquiry, he would still be obliged to surrender his famous diary and text messages for professional judicial assessment. 

Instead, under the American system, he suffered the embarrassment of his deeply personal thoughts and feelings providing worldwide entertainment and being judged out of context, after Senator Rand Paul released his diaries even before Fauci had appeared before the Senate committee.

But Fauci’s diaries show a considerable gap between his private concerns and his public reassurances on how the coronavirus that caused COVID arose and proliferated. His explanation that the mismatch simply reflected the evolving scientific understanding of a new condition may not pass muster with jurisdictions seeking to emulate further UK parliamentary reforms to strengthen public accountability.

These seek to impose a general legal duty on officials to be candid rather than economise on truth. That means full disclosure under all circumstances and not elite health officials deciding on the analysis that can be shared with a worried public because they are considered too ill-educated to assess the nuances. No wonder they turn to unreliable information sources if their own authorities hide or shade the full truth. If mutual trust is to be regained, it will have to run in both directions.

Meanwhile, neither of the two COVID-era American presidents appeared in front of the Senate enquiry while Britain’s COVID-19 Inquiry took evidence on oath from two former prime ministers, several senior ministers and medical advisers. They could have lawfully declined to incriminate themselves, but none did. When the government tried to withhold ministers’ unredacted messages, the UK High Court dismissed its case.

Overall, 25 democracies have held 32 national COVID inquiries, among them Sweden’s much-debated different approach to pandemic management, several EU states, Japan and Peru. 

Most managed without smashing their national crockery. Perhaps it was the fear of that which stopped public health giants India and Canada from conducting their own investigations. In any case, all enquiries were important processes for community grieving and healing, state lesson learning, and building the movement for international co-operation in pandemic management. 

The clemency business

Coming next to the industry in ‘pardons’. Biden’s protection of Fauci was unconditional, granted in advance, and asked nothing in return. The effect was to silence Fauci, which hardly served the public interest.

The contrast with other nations could not be greater. Most sovereign states have executive clemency provisions used sparingly in the national interest, and not by personal whim. Notable examples are the correction of historical wrongs through pardoning supposed witches, de-criminalising gay people, and reversing the court-martialling of shell-shocked soldiers.

Deployment of the mercy prerogative is also strictly limited. India’s Constitution confines the offering to persons already convicted of an offence i.e. after justice has been seen to be done. Similarly, the French president’s pardon merely excuses the convicted from serving the sentence. The British Royal prerogative of mercy includes a tough test of moral and technical innocence.

However, one celebrated case of immunity granted in advance bears comparison with the American practice. Post-apartheid South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted amnesty to persons who made full disclosure of all relevant facts. 

Therefore, in contrast with the Fauci case, protection was the reward for speaking up, not for keeping quiet. The reasoning was that the truth victims desperately sought was far more likely to emerge if those responsible were incentivised to open up. Americans in the Covid era have been badly served in this regard.

The booster shot

What implications does this drama have on global public health? Fauci’s numerous fans have already concluded that his vilification causes grave disservice to science- based healthcare that is already under so much attack.

This columnist is not so pessimistic. On the contrary, in his involuntary martyrdom, Fauci may have performed his greatest final service.

His travails are the outcome of a peculiarly American dysfunction that is a warning to others. This acts like a booster shot for a world well on the way to immunising itself against damaging American approaches. 

Such as waging physical or economic wars and retarding progress on development and climate change. We are already seeing countries adapting to reduced American foreign aid for global health and questioning the terms on which they accept it. Fauci’s drama adds welcome momentum towards a self-reliant healthy world.

The wisdom of pressing pause

The Fauci affair also provides fitting closure to an overly prolonged mourning phase for US departure from the World Health Organization (WHO). We must respect the sovereign right of Americans to tread their own path to whatever glorious uplands or wretched swamps it leads them into. 

Meanwhile, this is a golden opportunity for the rest of the world to develop a new varied form of multilateralism that is neither hostage to domination by the powerful nor victim to the lowest level of capacity among the weak.  

In the spirit of scientific enquiry that is so precious to the health mission and vital for regaining public trust, the political experiment underway should be allowed sufficient time to run its course. 

It is only then – perhaps after a decade or so – that we will get a proper assessment of whether or not the America First Global Health Strategy was the much-needed correction that our lax multilateral healthism needed. 

Accordingly, WHO’s next Director General, who takes office in August 2027, should resist the temptation to rush to Washington to beg them to return. After all, considering what our American friends have endured, they deserve our sincere prayers for their well-being alongside enough time to savour the particular moment they have arrived at.

But when they decide to return to the international health fold, the world could learn from the tradition of American presidential pardons and extend our own grand clemency towards them. 

By forgiving all their offences – some real but mostly accidental or imagined. Perhaps also a pardon for those at the origins of the COVID pandemic – whoever and wherever they are, and whatever they did or did not do?

Fauci would then truly find peace, and the rest of us can move on.

 

Mukesh Kapila is professor emeritus of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester, and a board member of Health Policy Watch. Vital Signs in Global Health is a regular column, and the opinions expressed are solely those of the author. 

Image Credits: flickr/The White House. Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks, CGTN, Anonymous/HPW.