> Or have you forgotten about a worldwide pandemic that happened just a few short years back which revealed that the top priority of many authority figures in public health organizations was to make themselves look good and their opposition bad?

I don't remember this because it did not happen.

However, I do recall our own (Trump-run) CDC putting out ineffective testing materials, while the (admittedly Trump-supported) WHO made the testing resources the whole world, including the US, relied on in the first months of the pandemic.

> I don't remember this because it did not happen.

There was a whole-of-government approach to silencing factually true statements about the pandemic because it either made officials look bad or Trump look good. There was a whole Supreme Court case around this that was sidestepped on grounds of standing, not on the facts of the case.

Anthony Fauci, a prominent NIH official who was the initial public face of the government's response to the pandemic, was revealed to have exhibited a significant lack of candor around the origins of Covid and his involvement in funding gain-of-function research. This was discovered by a House subcommittee formed by a Democratic majority and continued by a subsequent Republican majority.