NIH Director Collins Announces His Retirement

I speculated last June that Dr Birx, who throughout 2020 had been a full co-spokesperson with Dr Fauci for the COVID establishment, announced her retirement when she no longer felt comfortable with the conflicts between her private behavior -- viz, her willingness to travel for holiday family gatherings in opposition to the policies she endorsed -- and the public example she was expected to set. Since she would soon turn 65, this was an easy out for her.

At the time, I noted that her boss, Dr Francis Collins, was 71 and seemed to show no such inclination to let go, any more than Dr Fauci has at 80. But now Dr Collins has changed his mind and intends to retire by the end of the year. His reasons are the usual bormides:

I love this agency and its people so deeply that the decision to step down was a difficult one, done in close counsel with my wife, Diane Baker, and my family. I am proud of all we’ve accomplished. I fundamentally believe, however, that no single person should serve in the position too long, and that it’s time to bring in a new scientist to lead the NIH into the future.

But, having served six years past normal retirement age already and, with the implicit example of Dr Fauci showing that such Deep State appointments are effectively for life, why has he chosen to retire now, rather than ten years from now? He's already held his position for a record time. How long is "too long"? Apparently for him, "too long" is after the end of this year, or something like that. (My uncle retired as a corporate CEO giving the private reason that a CEO's shelf life is six to eight years. Dr Collins gives no such criterion.)

The mainstream media doesn't investigate further. But from historical examples ranging from Spiro Agnew to Dr Birx, I've got to think there had to be some proximate cause. The link above suggests one:

Just weeks before this announcement, Richard Ebright of Rutgers University accused Collins of making false public statements about National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which have since been proven to fund the study of “chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses” which “could infect human cells.” Ebright said bluntly that Collins had not told the truth when asked about this research: “assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”

While this occurred in close proximity to Collins's announcement, it doesn't mean it was a cause, although Collins may well have felt, with Dr Birx, that it wouldn't be comfortable to be the focus of adverse public scrutiny at that stage in his career.

But looking further into Dr Collins's biographical details, it turns out that he identifies himself prominently as both a "serious Christian" and a "scientist". However, he has never, so far as I can determine, explained what he means by "serious Christian", though he is not a Roman Catholic. In fact, the first link above suggests he doesn't think much of his fellow Christians if they don't get the vax:

Speaking with Religion News Service in September, Collins advised religious Americans hesitant about the coronavirus vaccine to think of it as a miraculous answer to their prayers.

“For somebody who’s a believer, this is what you could call an answer to prayer,” he said. “If we’ve all been praying to God to somehow deliver us from this terrible pandemic, and what happens is these vaccines get developed that are safe and effective, well, why wouldn’t you want to say, ‘Thank you, God’ and roll up your sleeve?”

But isn't this basically at the Janis Joplin level of belief?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me
A Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches
I must make amends

There are reasons for Christians to be vaccinated. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has told Catholics the vaccine is moral, and they should get the shot. But clearly more thought has gone into this than just to tell them to say Thank you Jesus. I'm not sure if Collins even understands that side of religious belief very well; his tone above is clearly condescending to believers.

There's a second issue that goes to Collins's ties to the Deep State and the various corporate interests for which he inevitably fronts. Just where are his priorities? The allegations from Dr Ebright suggest that he is not being the sort of Christian who leads by an example of public integrity, yet there's ample scriptural authority throughout the New Testament that inegrity and consistency in living out one's faith are what's expected of serious Christians.

This is especially problematic in light of the view we've begun to hear from commentators that COVID has become a new state religion. Is not the Direcxtor of NIH essentially a theologian for this new religion? Seems like one day, Dr Collins has been this sort of "scientist", the next he's a "serious Christian". As a professed "serious Christian", isn't he living a double life?