Rand Paul should call Scott Atlas to the hearing on Fauci.

Grok...

The most critical and frequently highlighted account is Atlas’s description of Fauci explicitly advocating that the public needed to be made more afraid, which Atlas called immoral and a “Kafkaesque absurdity.”

In a late-August 2020 White House Coronavirus Task Force meeting, Atlas recounts listening “incredulously” as Fauci stated that Americans “were not yet afraid enough.” Atlas asked for clarification to confirm he had heard correctly. Fauci replied, “Yes, they need to be more afraid.”

Atlas wrote that using emotional distress as a tool to ensure greater adherence to government policy “is immoral in public health.” He viewed it as fundamentally counter to what a public-health leader should do (he kept the full moral judgment to himself in the meeting). Later accounts from Atlas reinforce the same exchange, framing it as an unethical attempt to manipulate people through fear so they would “listen” to restrictive measures.

This stands out as the sharpest personal critique of Fauci’s character, ethics, and approach because it attributes deliberate fear-mongering to him rather than mere disagreement over data or policy.

Other major criticisms in the book

Atlas portrays Fauci (along with Deborah Birx and Robert Redfield, whom he groups as a “troika”) as dominating the Task Force with near-unlimited influence, silencing dissent, ignoring scientific literature, and pursuing a radical zero-COVID focus that disregarded broader harms:

• Ignoring data on schools and children: Atlas presented roughly 15 studies and summaries showing schools should reopen, children were not significant spreaders, and closures caused serious harm. The response was silence—no contrary data, no discussion of studies, and “not a single mention” by Fauci or Birx of the harms. Atlas called this “bizarre,” questioned whether they had ever read the relevant literature (including work by Ioannidis, Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and others), and said he was “disgusted.”

• Lack of scientific rigor and competence: Atlas describes Fauci and the others as never bringing studies to meetings, never critically assessing methodology, and showing little familiarity with the literature. In one meeting Fauci presented a study on myocarditis/encephalomyelitis as evidence of how dangerous the virus was; Atlas (who knew the paper) noted Fauci appeared to have only skimmed a summary, could not properly pronounce “encephalomyelitis,” and used it for alarmism that was not warranted.

• No cost-benefit analysis or acknowledgment of harms: Atlas notes the complete absence of discussion of lockdown harms in Fauci’s emails and Task Force meetings, despite massive collateral damage (to education, mental health, medical care, the economy, and vulnerable groups). He calls the overall approach a “reckless abuse of public health and a moral failure.”

• Media and internal dynamics: Atlas suspected Fauci of leaking private conversations to damage him reputationally, notes Fauci publicly labeling him an “outlier,” and describes the troika presenting a united front that cowed others (including political staff who feared their high public approval).

Overall, Atlas depicts Fauci as a highly influential bureaucrat whose advice prioritized case suppression and fear over evidence-based, balanced public health, with policies that failed to stop spread or adequately protect the elderly while inflicting widespread damage. The fear comment is the single most pointed and ethically charged anecdote that reviewers and Atlas himself have repeatedly emphasized.