I have Fauci fatigue.

The recent release of more than 1,000 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s pandemic-era diary has put the man who became the face of America’s COVID response back in the news.

I wish I could ignore it.

I can’t.

For me, COVID isn’t a political argument. It isn’t something I watched on television or debated on Facebook.

In August 2021, during the Delta wave, I became critically ill with COVID. I went on a ventilator and didn’t come off until the middle of November.

August.

September.

October.

Half of November.

Machines were breathing for me.

I survived.

A lot of people didn’t.

So when I question decisions made during COVID, don’t mistake that for believing the disease wasn’t real or wasn’t dangerous.

I know exactly how dangerous it was.

My wife knows too.

While I was unconscious and unable to fight for myself, she fought for me. She questioned. She researched. She pushed. As part of that effort, I was treated with ivermectin and peptides. I subsequently improved enough to come off the ventilator and, later, the tracheostomy.

Can I scientifically prove which treatment caused my improvement?

No.

Neither can I pretend that experience didn’t happen.

It happened to me.

That experience is one reason I remain troubled by how quickly questions about COVID treatments sometimes became political questions rather than medical ones.

I don’t need anyone to tell me that ivermectin saved my life. I don’t know that it did.

But I also don’t need anyone telling me that my family didn’t experience what we experienced.

Medicine should be able to investigate those questions honestly. Doctors should be allowed to question doctors. Scientists should be allowed to question scientists. And patients should be allowed to ask whether another treatment might help them without politics deciding the answer before medicine does.

That brings me back to Dr. Fauci.

The release of his diaries has reopened many of the questions Americans have argued about for years. The entries document his enormous media presence during the pandemic and his encounters with celebrities, politicians and journalists while he simultaneously helped direct America’s response to a historic health emergency.

Reading some of it bothers me.

But his enjoying attention isn’t a crime.

And his being wrong isn’t a crime.

Scientists are going to be wrong. Doctors are going to be wrong. During the early days of a new disease, recommendations are going to change as evidence changes.

My concern is something much larger.

Were Americans always given the whole truth?

Remember how much authority government officials exercised during COVID.

We were told how far apart to stand.

Whether to wear a mask.

Whether our children could sit in classrooms.

Whether businesses could remain open.

Whether families could visit dying relatives.

Whether Americans should receive a vaccine.

And eventually, we weren’t simply disagreeing about medicine.

We were disagreeing about each other.

Vaccinated Americans blamed unvaccinated Americans. Unvaccinated Americans stopped trusting public-health officials. Neighbors judged neighbors. Families argued. Friendships ended.

America became divided over a disease that should have united us.

And that loss of trust may be one of COVID’s longest-lasting symptoms.

There is another question that matters deeply to me.

Where did this virus come from?

The origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains disputed. Questions continue about coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and U.S. funding that reached research in Wuhan through EcoHealth Alliance.

Dr. Fauci has repeatedly denied that the National Institutes of Health funded research that created SARS-CoV-2 or that he concealed the origins of the pandemic.

Those denials matter.

So do the questions.

After millions of deaths around the world, we should be capable of investigating both without deciding beforehand what the answer is allowed to be.

Maybe Fauci’s defenders are right.

Maybe his critics are right about some things.

Maybe the truth is more complicated than either side wants it to be.

But “maybe” isn’t good enough anymore.

We deserve to know.

I am particularly careful saying that because I know what it means to lie in a hospital bed with COVID.

I remember what that disease did to my body.

I remember what my wife went through while I couldn’t speak for myself.

I remember coming off the ventilator.

I remember eventually getting rid of the trach.

And I live with consequences from that illness today.

That doesn’t give me special scientific knowledge.

It gives me a reason to demand answers from the people who did have that knowledge.

It also gives me a different perspective on the medical debates of that period.

Ventilators were debated.

Remdesivir was debated.

Ivermectin was debated.

Hydroxychloroquine was debated.

Vaccines were debated.

Some treatments ultimately accumulated stronger scientific evidence than others. Some early theories didn’t survive rigorous testing. That’s how science is supposed to work.

What should never happen is for scientific disagreement to become political heresy.

Science isn’t supposed to require obedience.

It is supposed to require evidence.

Ask the question.

Test the theory.

Publish the results.

Let somebody challenge them.

Test it again.

That’s science.

And when government officials are simultaneously making scientific recommendations and exercising enormous influence over public policy, questioning those recommendations becomes more important, not less.

I don’t spend my days angry about COVID.

I’m grateful to be alive.

My faith also gives me a perspective that politics never could. God wasn’t surprised when I went on the ventilator in August 2021. He wasn’t surprised when I was still there in September or October. And He wasn’t surprised when I finally came off it in November.

Good has already come from an experience I would never have chosen.

But forgiveness and accountability aren’t opposites.

We need to know what happened.

We need to continue investigating the origins of COVID.

We need an honest assessment of which pandemic policies worked and which caused unnecessary harm.

We need to understand whether government officials were candid about what they knew and when they knew it.

And if evidence establishes that anyone misled Congress, concealed records, improperly funded dangerous research or intentionally misled the American people, there should be consequences.

Not because we need revenge.

Because the people entrusted with enormous authority need to understand something.

Extraordinary authority requires extraordinary accountability.

COVID killed people we loved.

It destroyed businesses people spent lifetimes building.

It disrupted childhoods.

It isolated elderly people.

It left sons and daughters unable to sit beside dying parents.

And for people like me, it left scars that didn’t disappear when the pandemic ended.

So I’m not interested in making Anthony Fauci a hero.

I’m not interested in declaring him guilty of something that hasn’t been proved either.

I’m interested in the truth.

My wife and I lived through COVID in a way I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

She fought for me when I couldn’t fight for myself.

I survived.

Others didn’t.

We owe those who died, those who survived and the families who lived through those terrible months something more substantial than another political argument.

We owe them the truth.

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Sources

CBS News, Fauci diaries, released by Sen. Rand Paul, touch on COVID origins and tense relationship with Trump, July 2026. More than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s journal entries were released as part of continuing congressional scrutiny of the government’s COVID response and the origins of the pandemic.

Reuters, Fauci’s lawyers set up legal defense fund as U.S. probes multiply, August 2026. Reuters reports on continuing investigations involving Fauci, NIH-funded coronavirus research and allegations surrounding the pandemic’s origins, while noting that Fauci denies wrongdoing and that allegations against him have not been established as fact.

Jay Knight is a Georgia residential developer and the author of Zoned Out: How Cities and Counties Make Homes Unaffordable. In 2021, he spent approximately three months on a ventilator after becoming critically ill with COVID-19 during the Delta wave.