I watched the Senate Homeland Security Hearing yesterday, and the absolute rage I felt watching Anthony Fauci plead the Fifth over and over again—111 times in total—actually brought tears to my eyes. I sat there and thought of my dad, who was hospitalized in March of 2020 with cellulitis and sepsis. 

The only reason anyone visited him was that he was in the hospital where I happened to work at the time; I broke protocol and went up to see him every time I had a shift. The treatment for the sepsis ended up causing Dad more complications, and his kidneys began to fail. Sick, tired, and having seen what my grandmother went through with dialysis, Dad opted to not pursue further treatment. He came home with home hospice services on April 2, and for the next week I took care of him around the clock, giving him comfort meds, bed baths, and doing oral care. He died on April 9, 2020. We had exactly two visits from hospice nurses: the nurse who admitted him and the nurse who came to pronounce his death. An aide came once. Because of COVID protocols.

There were eight of us at Dad's funeral, and we had to stand 10 feet apart while someone yelled at us not to break COVID protocol. I had to stand, alone and sobbing, next to Dad's casket while his pastor gave a blessing. There were no military honors. There was no luncheon. There were no hugs. I couldn't even have my own children—who were 13, 10, and six at the time—by my side.

That summer, George Floyd had a gold casket and three funerals, packed to the gills with mourners. He was a drug addict and a criminal. My father was a Vietnam veteran who maybe had a speeding ticket at some point in his life.

I wasn't alone, and I'm one of the lucky ones. I was able to bring Dad home, where he died with Mom, his wife of almost 40 years, holding his hand. I can't tell you how many people I had in my Twitter mentions telling me how their loved ones died alone, barred from seeing family in their final moments.

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Work was also a disaster. The cardiac unit on which I worked was emptied out and made ready for ICU overflow. The staff, myself included, spent months floating from floor to floor. Some weekends, I'd work three different units. But they always managed to give us the high-demand patients, because we had cardiac experience. That meant I had shifts where I didn't get to go to the bathroom. I once lost it at a manager who, having spent that shift in his office, chided me and other nurses for not putting on PPE and doing bedside shift report.

I asked him if he was insane, then I told him I was finally going to use the bathroom after having to hold it for 12-plus hours. When administration came around and asked how we were doing, I was blunt and honest: I'd tell them these restrictions are ridiculous. The nurses aren't overwhelmed. When are we going back to normal? They'd stutter and mutter something about "flattening the curve" before retreating to their offices, too.

By the spring of 2021, my boys were also fed up with remote learning. They cried, literally cried, begging me to send them back to school. I ended up enrolling them in Catholic school that year and never looked back.

All of this suffering was caused by one man: Anthony Fauci.

And when he pleaded the Fifth yesterday, and when Democrats like Richard Blumenthal, Gary Peters, Margaret Hassan, and Andy Kim all used the hearing to sing Fauci's praises, defend him as a selfless public servant, and ignore the fact that Fauci lied and misled all of us—including them—on COVID.

Why? For the same reason these people were touting Michael Avenatti for President: Fauci opposed President Trump, and the Democrats will never, ever admit President Trump, or Republicans like Ron DeSantis, was right about anything related to COVID. It was one of Trump's biggest mistakes not to kick Fauci to the curb six years ago.

When anyone questioned Fauci's narrative—and it was a narrative, his diary proves that beyond all doubt—they were attacked. Actual doctors working with actual patients were threatened with a loss of their medical licenses if they contradicted god Fauci and the CDC.

We all know now that COVID came from the lab in Wuhan, probably because of gain-of-function research that Fauci loved and financed with our tax dollars. But if you said this in 2020, you were attacked as a peddler of "right-wing conspiracies" that were "baseless."

Jake Tapper had dinner with Fauci, texted him, and failed to ask Fauci any tough questions. They didn't dig into the lab-leak theory. They didn't question the vaccines. They didn't look at data out of Sweden, which didn't lock down and managed to control the spread. They blindly complied and made sure to silence anyone who didn't.

Even the vaccine, which was touted as a way to stop the illness, was a lie. Fauci admitted in his diary he had developed a pulmonary embolism in June 2021, after being vaccinated.

Those who questioned the vaccine or refused to take it were threatened with job loss, home imprisonment, a denial of medical care, and 30 percent of Democrats wanted unvaccinated parents to lose custody of their children.

Anyone who didn't toe the Left's COVID line was smeared, attacked, and censored. YouTube accounts were suspended, only to be restored years later with a, "Whoops! Our bad!" The Biden administration worked with social media companies to undermine Americans' First Amendment rights. Unless you were BLM, that is. Then you could riot. You could gather in large groups. You could burn cities to the ground, and COVID was somehow smart enough not to spread among your leftist-approved righteous cause. 

The suffering caused by Anthony Fauci and his Democrat allies is immeasurable. Businesses were destroyed, lives were ruined, and children—especially special needs kids and minorities—were irreversibly harmed after months of being denied in-person schooling. Seniors suffered from the isolation, and Fauci planted seeds of paranoia that led to people still wearing masks in 2026. I didn't get to have a memorial service for Dad until June 2022, 26 months after he died.

He deserved better. Millions more deserved better.

One of the refrains the Democrats kept repeating was that there will be another pandemic, and that attacking Fauci and "attacking science" are grave threats to our future public health responses. No, actually. Science was supposed to be about questioning, gathering data, and applying that data logically and dispassionately. 

We weren't allowed to do that. Now we know why: Fauci's ego, his need to be a celebrity, and his hatred of Trump wouldn't let him be questioned or tell the truth. Democrats went all-in on this guy, and the media tripped over themselves to protect him.

Now I have to ask the Democrats: Was it all worth it? Because Democrats are right. We probably will have another pandemic. But thanks to Anthony Fauci and their slavish worship of him, trust in public health is gone. And it's not coming back. So if a serious pandemic comes to our shores, they can expect me and millions of others to simply refuse to comply because we've seen what they did behind the curtain on COVID. We all remember the needless suffering we went through.

We will not forget, and we will not believe them ever again.