Why Did Big Doc Resign?

Let's examine some data points. Dr Fauci's sidekick, Dr Deborah Birx, was able to retire on generous terms after she was caught violating COVID protocols. (Her job in any case, of course, was simply to stand next to Big Doc and nod while he spoke):

A top public health official on the White House coronavirus task force has said she will retire after it emerged she hosted a holiday gathering.

Dr Deborah Birx, who is 64, cited the criticism she had faced for a family get-together over Thanksgiving in Delaware in her decision to step aside.

. . . Late on Tuesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted President Donald Trump's good wishes, saying he "has great respect for Dr Birx and likes her very much. We wish her well".

In an interview with US news network Newsy aired on Tuesday, a masked Dr Birx did not specify when she would stand down, but said she would help the incoming Biden administration and "and then I will retire".

So basically, she got to say whoops, my bad, I'll retire, but she was alllowed to do it on her own vague schedule, at age 65, with full benefits and with nice words from the president. A year later, Big Doc's boss, NIH Director Francis Collins, retired on the same terms:

After spending more than 12 years as director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins is retiring this weekend. But he's no less worried about the public health agency's latest pandemic curveball.

As the omicron variant threatens record-breaking rates of infections in the U.S., Collins departs with a warning. If Americans don't take COVID-19 seriously, the country could see 1 million daily infections, he said.

In fact, after his retirement, he was treated quite well, with a new sinecure:

That was quick. Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., after exiting the top perch at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the last weeks of 2021, is back in the upper echelons of U.S. scientific leadership as President Joe Biden's science adviser.

He had a unique ability to sidestep criticism while shutting down COVID dissent within the public health establishment:

In addition to leaving the top post at NIAID, he will also step down as chief of NIAID’s immunoregulation lab and leave his post as Biden’s adviser. This week, emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Institute for Economic Research revealed what I see as worrisome communication between Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, and others within the National Institutes of Health in the fall of 2020. At issue was the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter written in October 2020 and eventually signed by thousands of scientists. It argues that Covid-19 policy should focus on protecting the elderly and vulnerable, and largely re-open society and school for others.

At the time, Americans would have benefited from a broad debate among scientists about the available policy options for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, and perhaps a bit of compromise. The emails tell us why that isn’t what we got.

One partiicular e-mail from Collins to Fauci, which Collins acknowledged was authentic, effectively ordered Fauci to engineer a "quick and devastating published takedown" of the Great Barrington Declaration. Collins's announcement of his retirement, made in October 2021, predated release of that and other e-mails in December, but I suspect Collins, and more importantly the lizard people, fully understood the direction things were heading and engineered a quiet departure.

Indeed, the circumstances suggest a cozy arrangement; Collins, born in 1950, was 71 at the time he retired and may be assumed to have enjoyed, like Big Doc himself, a de facto lifetime appointment. Instead, he was allowed to retire without controversy before the smoking gun was released, while weeks later, he quietly stepped into a White House sinecure.

Contrast that with the end of Fauci's NIH career:

Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert who rocketed to unexpected fame during the pandemic, will step down at the end of the year.

Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, will wrap up a storied career in which he advised seven presidents. Instead of retiring, he’s leaving his government posts to “pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci, 81, said in a statement released Monday by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

. . . In addition to leaving the top post at NIAID, he will also step down as chief of NIAID’s immunoregulation lab and leave his post as Biden’s adviser.

But only a month ago, this was not the expected outcome:

Fauci, currently serving as Biden’s chief medical adviser, will retire before the end of January 2025, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because details around the retirement plans haven’t been disclosed.

. . . Earlier Monday, Politico reported in a wide-ranging interview that Fauci didn’t expect to remain in government past Biden’s first term in office.

What changed? Last month, he'd retire, maybe in a couple of years or so. A month later, he's resigned as of date certain and pointedly is not retiring. No White House sinecure awaits.

My money is he got a call from Ron Klain or some equivalent figure telling him not all that nicely that the president had decided he should resign, with the implication that otherwise he'd be fired. I think we can pretty safely assume this was a different deal from the ones Drs Birx and Collins were given.

I would also guess that at some point in the not too distant future, we'll be learning more. One motive would likely be the desire of Democrats to airbrush COVID and lockdowns, masks, asnd vaxxing from history as quicky as possible in the runup to November.