Fauci’s Diary Isn’t the Key to Why Covid Ravaged the U.S. — Our Broken Healthcare System Is ⁠66%

By Mychal Denzel Smith⁠83%

7/29/2026, 12:05:39 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Confirmation Bias, with Politically Left Leaning Bias as the most egregious example at 29.3% saturation with 306 hits. Analysis detected 2,059 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,046 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 51.6% and a BS Rank of ⁠66% (10,446 of 30,584 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 65.80% of the article peer group.

Dr. 
Anthony Fauci testifies during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 29, 2026. 
Photo: Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images 
Sen. 
Rand Paul, R-Ky., has made it his mission to put Dr. 
Anthony Fauci in prison. 
Last month, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenaed Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who led the nation’s response to the Covid pandemic, to answer still more questions related to the origins of the disease . 
Rand Paul’s Attack on Anthony Fauci Chills Scientific Debate Over Gain-of-Function Research 
Paul insists the novel coronavirus was the result of the National Institutes of Health having funded gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology — essentially that the virus was created in a lab in China and unleashed on an unsuspecting public. 
Fauci has maintained that while the mostly likely source of the Covid-19 virus was animal-to-human transmission but that we cannot know for certain. 
Paul thinks he deliberately misled the public about the coronavirus’s origins and called him to testify before the Homeland Security Committee based on supposed new evidence that comes from Fauci’s diaries. 
Over 7 million people worldwide have died from Covid, with about 1.2 million of those deaths occurring in the U.S. 
While the quick work to produce a vaccine undoubtedly saved many millions of lives, that level of loss is difficult to account for and has certainly taken an emotional and psychic toll on the world since. 
We, the public, deserve answers about what went wrong during that time and how our governments are preparing for similar outbreaks in the future such that they can prevent the loss of so much life. 
That is not what Paul and his Fauci subpoena are focused on. 
Instead, Paul sunk his libertarian teeth into a xenophobic conspiracy theory that reinforces his ideological priors: too many government agencies that spend too many public dollars. 
Read Our Complete Coverage 
The Coronavirus Crisis 
It’s the same reason Paul avoids the real, persistent public health crisis underlying huge spike in deaths in the U.S. from Covid — and a host of other diseases: the lack of universal healthcare. 
Did the virus come from a lab in Wuhan ? 
I certainly don’t trust Paul’s ideologically infused takes, but I’ll leave it for others to decide. 
To focus on it at the exclusion of all other public health policy, though, is clearly a mistake. 
It’s learning the wrong lesson from the Covid pandemic. 
The United States remains the only “developed” country without universal healthcare coverage. 
The insurance companies and for-profit medical system insist that this is the best system to provide people with the best healthcare, but during early days of the Covid pandemic, its limitations came into stark relief. 
The pandemic put so much stress on our system that resulted in shortages in staff , and a decreased quality of care for those infected with virus, and all others who needed care. 
Underlying medical issues exasperated Covid deaths. 
These are exactly the types of chronic illnesses that people suffer from because of a lack of preventative care or a failure to get treatment because of prohibitive costs — respiratory diseases, heart conditions, blood pressure issues. 
Network of Right-Wing Health Care Providers Is Making Millions Off Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, Hacked Data Reveals 
It’s notable that some of the greatest successes of Covid policy arose not from private health insurers acting on their mandates for profit , but rather by mandates and funding from local, state, and federal government. 
Acts of Congress forced healthcare insurers and providers into covering certain services. 
When testing became a feasible method of helping to prevent the spread of Covid, federal funding made it far more widely available — even for the uninsured, with the government providing reimbursement for healthcare providers who tested those without coverage. 
This is to say nothing of a federal program to speed along a Covid vaccine and rush its distribution — the key to creating enough immunity to weaken the virus and lower death rates. 
For those who got Covid, antiviral medication, which could drastically reduce symptoms and prevent hospitalizations and even death, was available for free thanks to federal funding. 
In the first two years of the pandemic, around 6 million people took the drug without paying a thing. 
In 2020, the American Public Health Association released a policy statement that began: “The COVID pandemic adds a new sense of urgency to establish a universal health care system in the United States. 
Our current system is inequitable, does not adequately cover vulnerable groups, is cost prohibitive, and lacks the flexibility to respond to periods of economic and health downturns.” 
This remains true, as the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress continue their assault of existing forms of federal healthcare spending. 
While Paul is focused on trying to place Fauci in prison for not confirming a conspiracy theory, more people are being crushed by the weight of medical debt due to our inadequate system, more people aren’t getting the care they need because of the costs, and more people are dying. 
CDC Didn’t Tell New York About Resident on Hantavirus-Plagued Cruise 
The fight for universal healthcare coverage remains a vital one, as the uncertainty of when we could face another pandemic looms over us all. 
The longer the delay, the more unprepared we become for what’s next. 
Whatever Fauci said from his perch at the National Institutes of Health about the virus’s origins, the fact of the matter remains that the government’s interventions during the Covid pandemic were overwhelmingly lifesaving. 
Its biggest failure — then as now — was the inability to provide healthcare coverage for all Americans. 
There should be accountability for whatever role the government played in the Covid pandemic, but let’s be clear that deaths spiked in large part because of the failures of our healthcare system to cover all Americans, not because of what Fauci said in his diaries. 
The post Fauci’s Diary Isn’t the Key to Why Covid Ravaged the U.S. — Our Broken Healthcare System Is appeared first on The Intercept . 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 14.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 12.1%The Intercept: 5.0%Confirmation Bias14.5%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.4%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 8.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 2.0%The Intercept: 2.8%Availability Heuristic8.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.9%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.7%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 2.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.4%The Intercept: 1.3%Overconfidence Bias2.5%This article: 4.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 4.3%The Intercept: 8.6%Framing Effect4.5%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.3%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 3.3%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.8%The Intercept: 0.4%Status Quo Bias3.3%This article: 3.3%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.8%The Intercept: 0.1%Sunk Cost Effect3.3%This article: 3.2%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.8%The Intercept: 0.9%Optimism Bias3.2%This article: 7.3%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.8%The Intercept: 2.0%Pessimism Bias7.3%This article: 18.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 7.1%The Intercept: 11.2%Negativity Bias18.5%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.9%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 3.4%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.7%The Intercept: 1.3%Fundamental Attribution Error3.4%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.2%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 2.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.6%The Intercept: 1.6%In-Group Bias2.5%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.6%The Intercept: 0.9%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.9%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.4%The Intercept: 0.3%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 4.8%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.2%The Intercept: 1.2%Recency Bias4.8%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.3%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.0%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 8.1%Mychal Denzel Smith: 5.5%The Intercept: 2.2%Ad Hominem8.1%This article: 2.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 2.5%The Intercept: 0.7%Straw Man2.5%This article: 5.7%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.4%The Intercept: 3.1%Appeal to Authority5.7%This article: 8.1%Mychal Denzel Smith: 7.9%The Intercept: 1.8%False Dilemma8.1%This article: 1.1%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.9%The Intercept: 1.6%Slippery Slope1.1%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.1%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 6.8%Mychal Denzel Smith: 3.4%The Intercept: 6.6%Hasty Generalization6.8%This article: 7.6%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.9%The Intercept: 0.2%Red Herring7.6%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.4%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 17.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 9.1%The Intercept: 5.8%Appeal to Emotion17.5%This article: 3.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 1.6%The Intercept: 1.2%Begging the Question3.0%This article: 14.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 6.0%The Intercept: 2.9%Post Hoc (False Cause)14.5%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.7%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.1%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 3.4%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.9%The Intercept: 0.4%Composition/Division3.4%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 2.2%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 1.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.2%The Intercept: 1.4%Ambiguity (Equivocation)1.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 1.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.4%The Intercept: 0.1%Personal Incredulity1.5%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.6%The Intercept: 0.4%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 3.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.7%The Intercept: 1.9%Unattributed Quote3.0%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 1.2%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 3.2%Mychal Denzel Smith: 5.0%The Intercept: 9.5%Biased Writer Voice3.2%This article: 3.3%Mychal Denzel Smith: 4.4%The Intercept: 1.8%Indoctrination3.3%This article: 29.3%Mychal Denzel Smith: 19.7%The Intercept: 5.8%Politically Left Leaning Bias29.3%This article: 0.0%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.0%The Intercept: 0.2%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 1.5%Mychal Denzel Smith: 0.5%The Intercept: 0.5%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…1.5%

1046 words analyzed.

Speakers

3speakers13%attributed speech906writer words
Selected voice

Rand Paul

74%flagged-word coverage
57 attributed words41% of attributed speech80% writer coverage
0%17.5%35.0%Politically Left Leaning B-33.8 ptsWriter: 33.8%Rand Paul: 0.0%0.0%Indoctrination-3.9 ptsWriter: 3.9%Rand Paul: 0.0%0.0%Biased Writer Voice-3.6 ptsWriter: 3.6%Rand Paul: 0.0%0.0%Unattributed Quote-3.4 ptsWriter: 3.4%Rand Paul: 0.0%0.0%Attempt to Sell a Product -1.8 ptsWriter: 1.8%Rand Paul: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.