On Fauci... a personal note - 04 August 2026

Fauci is well deserving of the opprobrium directed his way. He deliberately obscured information about the virus’s origin, stifled legitimate debate on public health strategy, and shut down the use of repurposed drugs, thereby enabling the widespread, mandated use of an untested vaccine. He pushed the now-discredited drug Remdesivir as a COVID palliative, supported protocols such as masks and distancing that lacked scientific backing, and backed school shutdowns even after it became clear early on that children were largely unaffected by the virus. Fauci’s hubris, evident in his diary entries, would disqualify anyone tasked with national pandemic management strategy.

Still, it should be remembered that Trump handed COVID policy off to the state governors. This “federalism” approach produced drastically different responses from state to state. In Utah, county health departments were even allowed to set their own policies, which could differ from county to county.

My county, Summit County, encouraged residents from March 2020 onward to spend considerable time outdoors. Summit County’s state parks—Rockport and Echo—remained open, and citizens were urged to visit them. Interestingly, despite this encouragement, many Park City-based transplants from California and New York took their behavioral cues from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and stayed holed up in their homes. Margaret and I were regular visitors at Echo and Rockport state parks and despite county health department encouragement to get outdoors, rarely encountered more than a handful of other people at the state parks.

To assess our own personal risk during this period, I superimposed Italy’s COVID numbers onto Summit County’s population of roughly 40,000, of whom about 5,000 were over 70. Using the Italian data, I calculated that an incremental five residents over 70 in Summit County would die.

Accordingly, considering the projected low risk of death due to Covid, staying active outdoors—including eating out—seemed a risk worth taking. Although the ski season was truncated, we did not miss much dining out. Summit County and Park City restaurants reopened after a month’s closure in April 2020. There was the absurd requirement to mask while walking into the restaurant and then remove the mask once seated, but it was a small price to pay in order to resume eating out.

Having assessed my own risk levels, I was not going to let the COVID scare slow me down. I rode 8,000 motorcycle miles in 2020—trips to the Northwest, several rides to southern Utah and Arizona, and regular runs between Park City and Echo on the nearly traffic-free I-80. During that period, I was also a regular at the shooting range in Echo. We sought out outdoor events. I attended the Duchesne County Fair, Bonneville Speed Week, and several outdoor concerts in 2020.Notwithstanding Summit County’s encouragement of outdoor activity and the low case-fatality rates in my age group,

I was amazed by what struck me as overreactions to what seemed to me to be the real risk of the virus. I was troubled when I saw a Facebook note from a prominent LDS leader and his wife urging older Latter-day Saints to avoid Thanksgiving with their grandchildren. Many church members took this advice seriously. Children were not at significant risk from the virus, and the case-fatality rate for older adults remained low. Accordingly, we held Thanksgiving dinner with our grandchildren; none of those present had any symptoms. We don't have many years left. Spending time with grandchildren was important to us.

Trump’s decision to leave COVID policy largely to the states produced widely varying local approaches. In Utah’s Summit County, outdoor activity was actively encouraged; we continued hiking, dining out, motorcycling, attending outdoor events, and gathering with family, guided by a personal risk assessment that suggested the danger to our demographic was modest.