When You Attack ‘Dr. Anthony Fauci, You Are Attacking Science’
mediaite.com
mediaite.com
Headline is actually really badly quote parsing (as evidenced by the weird, ungrammatical fragment they extracted). The full quote is actually quite correct: all of this is coming from a place not of serious, thoughtful criticism, but from a generalized long-term attack on scientific principles that we've seen applied to many other areas.
It's not at all unusual for a scientist to respond exactly that way. What is unusual is for a public figure to do so. Fauci's job includes dealing with that bullcrap, because that job is more about communicating to the public than it is about actually choosing science policy. That's why he was on a chat show in the first place.
So as understandable as it is, he was kinda failing at that moment. Not as a scientist, but as the public face of science, which unfortunately is required to pretend that it's not aggravated by that kind of stupidity.
Labeling things as conspiracy just amounts to shutting people up at this point. At the very least there is a need to clarify and make sure people understand, not just dismiss things and appeal to authority. Anyone who thinks science can't go wrong is naive. Arguably science moves forward by being wrong (disproving theories based on more evidence), and at no point does an actual scientist claim to have found the "truth", only the best theory for the given evidence.
Personally, when you can't question something, it is a huge red flag. Not questioning is a property of religions. You can't question, you just follow. I'm sure the retort here is "but people are going to die", except we're seeing evidence to the contrary, but again, no questioning, just obedience, and that is a red flag for me.
You are allowed to question. You're also obligated to listen to the answer. If you you're not listening to the answer, then you're not really asking a question. Repeatedly asking the same not-a-question gets people frustrated, but that's not a red flag.
And where does this obligation come from? I suspect from some kind of shared danger... that someone else's beliefs will endanger you. Otherwise I don't see the obligation to "listen" (assuming that means to agree and go along with it). That would mean the retort is indeed "people will die".
Conspiracy theories have always been around, how come they haven't infected everyone? How come there hasn't been a big effort to censor flat-Earthers? You would think these ideas would infect everybody if one looks at how pandemic related questions get censored and labeled as dangerous. All of sudden corporations are the saviors of humanity... that is seriously suspicious to me, and there is plenty of evidence to challenge the main narrative, it's just taboo to even bring it up or challenge the status quo.