Fauci And The Pandemic Playbook That Wasn’t

COVID may have been novel, but what wasn’t was the fact that, at bottom, a pandemic is a pandemic, and Fauci proved to be completely unprepared.

Allan J. Feifer | August 12, 2026

An unanswered first-order question from the COVID-19 pandemic is this: Why was America’s pandemic doctrine in 2020 apparently so lacking after nearly forty years under Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leadership and after spending more than $60 billion preparing for the next inevitable outbreak?

Dr. Fauci served as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the nation’s premier public health institutions. His responsibilities extended far beyond supervising laboratory research.

He oversaw billions of taxpayer dollars in infectious disease research as far away as Wuhan, China; advised presidents of both parties; helped shape America’s response to emerging diseases; and was, for all practical purposes, the country’s chief guardian against the next inevitable pandemic.

When COVID-19 arrived, that system should have been primed and ready.

Instead, America discovered that after decades of investment and preparation, the world’s leading public health institutions appeared to be improvising in real time. The virus may have been novel, but the government’s decision-making process should not have been.

That raises a question that has received almost no attention compared to debates over masks, lockdowns, vaccines, mandates, or even the virus’s origins.

Where was our pandemic playbook?

Military commanders hope never to fight a war, yet spend years developing doctrine, conducting exercises, and contingency planning. When conflict begins, commanders don’t start with a blank sheet of paper. They execute established plans, adapting as required.

Pandemics are no different.

COVID-19 was not the first infectious disease to threaten the United States. America had already confronted the influenza pandemics of 1918, 1957, and 1968, along with SARS, MERS, H1N1, Ebola, and Zika. Every outbreak presents unique challenges, but the organizational response remains remarkably consistent: How quickly can the pathogen be identified? How should........

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