In 2019, there were 2.8 million deaths in the United States. In 2020, there were nearly 3.4 million deaths. 

That’s an increase of roughly 16 percent. More than the percentage increase that occurred in World War II. More than in WWI. In fact, it was more than those two combined. 

Because that’s how deadly COVID-19 was. 

I was thinking of those numbers—and the fact that last year, America again recorded right at 3 million deaths now that the pandemic is behind us—as Republican lawmakers in the Senate grilled former chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci. 

Actually, “grilled” is probably too kind. They berated him. Tried to humiliate him. Blamed him for deaths. Told him he was garbage, basically, for the way he behaved during the pandemic. 

And what did Fauci do to receive such treatment? 

He tried to save people’s lives. 

That’s it. That’s the extent of it. 

He told people to wear masks because they could help prevent the spread of the virus (that’s true, no matter what you read on Facebook). He told people to social distance. He told people avoid large gatherings. He advised businesses to close or move to work-from-home setups. He advised closing schools for a period of time and moving to distance learning. He advised people to avoid visiting those family members who were at-risk. 

(To be absolutely clear, when I say “he” above, I mean guidance issued by the federal government based on Fauci’s recommendations.) 

During an unprecedented time in American history—when our friends, neighbors and family members were dying at rates so astonishing that we had refrigerator trucks parked outside of hospitals to handle the overflow—Fauci offered the best guidance he could for a situation in which there were no obvious answers. 

And for that, he has been turned into a villain by a group of braindead, childish Republicans who simply cannot accept the reality that a bad thing happened to them and there was no one to blame for it. That people, like Fauci, did the best they could in an absolutely hopeless situation. 

Were there mistakes? 

Of course there were. 

We shouldn’t have canceled so many outside activities. We probably didn’t need to wear masks at all the places we did. We shouldn’t have closed beaches and parks. We didn’t need to wipe down our groceries. And our children probably would have been fine at school, and without masks. 

But you know, what if none of that were true? 

What if we found out a couple of years later that children, while mostly asymptomatic after contracting the virus, suffered from catastrophic long-term effects? What if it left them with major health issues into adulthood? What if it affected their brains? 

This was the reality. 

Not even the smartest among us knew the absolute right things to do. So, they erred on the side of caution. As they watched millions of people die, they decided that hardly any measure was too extreme to ensure that lives were saved. 

Fauci probably thought he’d be praised for such careful decisionmaking. And in another time and place in this country, he probably would have. But not in the dumbest time ever. Not in a time where flat-earthers are on the rise and half the country voted for a guy who thought a reasonable treatment for COVID was injecting bleach. 

So, there Fauci sat, for the 24th time since the start of the COVID outbreak, listening to the moronic blatherings of Rand Paul and his band of conspiracy theorists as they tried desperately to lay their bad times at Fauci’s feet. For the first time, though, Fauci refused to answer questions, choosing instead to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. 

Not because he had something to hide (God knows there’s nothing new to talk about on the topic of COVID), but because he knew what the whole charade was about: It was a perjury trap set up by Paul, who still holds a grudge against Fauci for making him look like a fool so many times previously. That’s the only reason Fauci was in that chair. 

But pleading the Fifth provided Republicans with exactly what they wanted—an opportunity to blather on unimpeded about how terrible life was during COVID, because Fauci made them wear a mask. Or take a vaccine that was and is a remarkable feat of American ingenuity, which helped stop the deadliest pandemic in more than 100 years in its tracks. 

It was all Fauci’s fault that things were bad. It had nothing to do with the people who refused to follow medical advice from doctors and chose instead to listen to their idiotic high school friends on Facebook. Or the people who refused to take the vaccine because it had a government microchip in it—a ploy by the libs to track Americans, because tracking them by their constant social media updates was so hard. 

The truth is Anthony Fauci should be remembered as a public servant who did the best he could in a hopeless time—a man who saved lives and brought a level of calm and intelligence to a nation that needed both desperately. 

Instead, because we live in a time in which the entitled snowflakes on the right believe they are owed peace and comfort at all times and never have to answer for their own destructive actions, Fauci has been vilified and shamed. 

Because American decency apparently also died during the pandemic.