Well well well and I never had love for Cheney and Bush. Most mainstream politicians are the SAME. Few people in America today are as powerful and polarising as Anthony Fauci. For the Left, Fauci is a consummate cool-headed scientist, emblematic of the essential role of government. On the Right, he is a Deep State operative who destroyed the lives of countless people to serve a hidden agenda, all while mysteriously taking home a bigger paycheck than any other of the country's two million federal employees (including their collective boss, the President). The reality is that both narratives fundamentally misunderstand the position Fauci occupies in American government. Far from being a public health expert, Fauci sits at the very top of America's biodefence infrastructure. And contrary to the notion that he is a Deep State string-puller of the Democratic party, it was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who not only put Fauci there but created the very framework that the immunologist-physician commands. https://unherd.com/2022/08/how-dick-cheney-created-anthony-fauci/
Bush and Cheney were on pretty much the same side as the Democrats, though. They would lead us to the same destination, albeit by a slightly different route. When the choices are between a neoconservative and a liberal democrat, you're just deciding whether you want to take the scenic route or go through the swamp, since the destination is the same.
Fauci was in place long before the Bush/Cheney Administration. There was a great fear of bioterrorism around the turn of the millennium, and, especially after 9-11, it was believed that bioterror was a possibility. I had to attend a number of educational sessions regarding identifying and detecting bio- and chemo-weapons during that time. Little did we know that 20 years later it would be one of our own bioweapons that would be released on the world by a foreign power.