This is going to be a spicy one, so buckle up. Because like many of you, I'm still fuming.
Not the kind of anger that fades after a bad news cycle. The kind that settles in because the damage can't be undone.
COVID rocked our world, plain and simple. We have never seen anything like it, and in my honest opinion, it was a test. To see how we would handle an outbreak, but that is neither here nor there, and I’m not looking to get into conspiracy theories (right now).
One thing is undeniable: millions of Americans lost moments they'll never get back.
Grandparents missed the births of their grandchildren. Families watched funerals through computer screens. Children lost years of a normal childhood. People died alone.
And for what?
That's the question I keep asking myself as more of Dr. Anthony Fauci's private writings and communications become public.
This isn't about "the science changing." Science is supposed to ask questions. It's supposed to challenge assumptions, test hypotheses, and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
This is about whether the American people were given the full picture while their lives were being turned upside down (spoiler alert: we weren’t). Private records show that important discussions about natural immunity and other aspects of COVID differed from the certainty with which policies were presented to the public, and Americans deserve to know why. Meaningful gaps between internal discussions and public messaging are not simply a communications problem — it's a breach of trust.
And trust is the one thing our public health leaders can’t afford to lose.
Because once you convince millions of people to restructure their lives, separate from their families, close businesses, cancel weddings, miss funerals, and surrender freedoms in the name of "following the science," you'd better be certain you're giving them the complete picture.
Millions of Americans made deeply personal decisions based on what they believed were the full facts, and my family was one of them.
My grandma has a serious lung condition, and during COVID, my Papa was dying. Years earlier, he had beaten cancer back, and then it re-emerged — aggressively.
My grandma was terrified that bringing COVID into their home would take away what little time they had left together. I don't blame her for that. She was trying to protect the man she loved.
So she made a rule: if you weren't vaccinated, you couldn't come into their home.
I understand why she believed that, why she was scared with all the legacy media peddling what Fauci was selling. But understanding it didn't make it hurt any less. Because while claims of a “public health policy” were going around, I saw time slipping away with my Papa. Time I'll never get back.
One of my favorite memories happened years earlier in Monterey while my family was playing "Cards Against Humanity."
For whatever reason that night, Papa and I were totally on the same wavelength. Then he played a card without knowing what it meant, and I (obviously) picked it, which ended up meaning that I had to explain a word that is not appropriate for print to my parents and grandparents. Lord have mercy… I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole!
My Papa laughed so hard he just about fell out of his wheelchair. And that was him. Completely unfiltered. Completely joyful. The kind of laugh that fills an entire room.
Those are the moments that make a family. Those are the moments COVID stole from so many of us. And I never got the chance to spend the final season of his life with him.
We couldn't gather the way families have gathered for generations. We couldn't mourn the way families are supposed to mourn. We couldn't even attend his funeral. And I know my story isn't unique. I've spent hours reading comments from people whose experiences were even more heartbreaking than mine.
Children saying goodbye to parents through hospital windows. Spouses saying "I love you" over FaceTime. Closing a business you spent your entire life building. Families robbed of final conversations they'll spend the rest of their lives wishing they'd had.
Those stories break me every single time. Because they didn't happen in a vacuum. They happened under policies that demanded extraordinary trust from the American people.
That's why these newly released records matter. Not because they change what happened — nothing can do that. They matter because they force us to ask whether the people making those decisions were as candid with the public as they should have been. And now we know without a shadow of a doubt that they weren’t. No one can call us conspiracy theorists when we were right all along.
And look, no one is perfect, especially not public officials, but they SHOULD be honest. I know, I know — lofty goals here.
But the evidence was more nuanced than the public was led to believe, and we should have been told. We all forfeited so much for one man's ego — even narcissism.
If mistakes were made, own them.
Because trust isn't built through certainty, it's built through transparency.
No document can give me those last conversations with my Papa. No diary can restore birthdays, holidays, or final hugs that never happened. No interview can erase the loneliness that so many families endured. But maybe the truth, wherever it leads, can ensure we never repeat it.
The next public health crisis will come.
When it does, Americans deserve leaders who understand that data matters. Science matters. TRUTH matters. Whether those in power agree with it or not….
Human beings matter — those whose lives are forever changed by the decisions made in Washington and its subsidiaries. Because once trust is broken, it's almost impossible to rebuild. For an infection fatality rate (IFR) estimated around 0.5 percent to 0.6 percent overall, we literally lost our damn minds.
And millions of Americans are still living with the consequences of what they lost. Because a narrative was pushed, and we were told to “trust the science.”
Now, whenever someone tries to science or silence me, I’m automatically skeptical.
Stay strong, Patriots.