by Dan Proft

January 12, 2024

“We were not really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City or some other big city…If you’re a public health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is and that is something that will save a life. It doesn’t matter what else happens. So, you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recovered…This is a public health mindset. And I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset and that was really unfortunate.” – Francis Collins, former NIH Director

To paraphrase Aeschylus, in a pandemic, the first casualty is truth…especially if Francis Collins is one of your top public health officials.

A clip of Francis Collins was recently unearthed from a panel discussion he participated in last summer for an organization called Braver Angels, one of those organizations stood-up by a Leftist pretending to be post-partisan targeting our polarized politics without aiming in the impetuous hope of building consensus across the ideological spectrum on some mindless abstraction.

It’s the kind of forum where those in the policy arena fluent in the language of weasel words are invited on stage to pantomime self-reflection by offering synthetic Macbethian soliloquies describing their internal struggles inevitably culminating with the depersonification of their acts of barbarism.

Enter Francis Collins offering a sort of dissociative mea culpa on behalf of a generic “we” the COVIDian public health professionals of America who made mistakes but only because we are slaves to a life-saving mindset. It is a blanket acceptance designed to avoid the ugliness of ascribing specific culpability to himself or any other person or institution.

It is a bit unclear if Collins includes himself in this group as he curiously describes the policy response almost as would an anthropologist rather than as should a shot caller holding the purse strings on $40 billion available to purchase COVID unanimity among the “we” in public health.

Regardless, Collins’ gesture is an empty one.

If you couldn’t see a dying loved one, lost your job, suffered a vaccine injury, or dealt with the atrophied mental or physical health of a child, Collins is at the ready with a vague offer of vindication but, please, there is no need for a reckoning. Turn the other cheek for one last anal swab.

You may have been hurt, ridiculed, and ostracized–and that was wrong–but let us not compound those “really unfortunate” events by singling out anyone in the COVIDian “we” crowd.

There is another aspect to Collins’ COVID account that is especially conniving: his doublespeak on saving lives.

First, how can Collins claim his COVIDian “we” crowd was not considering the “consequences in communities that were not New York City or some other big city” but at the same time the same “we” crowd placed “infinite value” on “stopping the disease and saving a life”?

There were no lives to be saved from COVID outside of the big cities? Did they not impose the same lockdowns and mandates outside of the big cities?

Second, Collins repeated the canard fabricated by his COVIDian “we” crowd that they were focused on saving lives while their critics were focused on saving dollars or school days.

I, and many others, addressed this straight away the first time it was suggested in the spring of 2020. It was always a question of lives versus lives.

It was lockdown skeptics–many of whom were equally-credentialed experts to the lockdowners in the fields of virology, immunology and epidemiology–who repeatedly and in real-time asked questions about tradeoffs.

What are the anticipated impacts on kids and young adults in terms of mental health and drug & alcohol abuse? What are the similar impacts on adults who will lose their businesses or their jobs? A la COVID, can we model projected deaths of despair? Can we model expected days of life lost as we look at the aged who are more vulnerable compared to the young who are less so?

The lockdown skeptics were sidelined and silenced in some cases and slandered in all cases by Collins and his COVIDian “we” crowd.

Collins would have you believe the COVIDian “we” crowd made mistakes only as a result of their noble single-mindedness to save lives. Even if taken at face value, that claim is not credible. Public health officials and medical professionals in the business of making life and death decisions are unfamiliar with the concept of opportunity cost? Please.

The truth is Francis Collins and his COVIDian “we” crowd behaved like the imperious expert class idealogues they were trained to be. They considered themselves to be our betters and they acted in accordance with that belief.

Collins has been singing a different tune for some time now–literally. Unlike his officious NIH buddy, Fauci, Collins is a congenial sort who, I suspect, doesn’t want to be remembered as a bad guy.

As Collins might say, that is “really unfortunate” as he was a principal party to deception, unkindness and, ultimately, unnecessary injuries and deaths.

He cannot undo what he did. And he is unwilling to offer the sort of profound penitence required.

Until he is willing to do the latter, Francis Collins should be held accountable for his role in the former and properly recorded as the villain he was.

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Dan Proft is the co-host of the radio program, “Chicago’s Morning Answer” on AM 560 and the host of the “Counterculture” podcast at AmGreatness.com and the usual podcast platforms.