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Dr. Anthony Fauci鈥檚 newly released diaries have reignited the fight over whether he bears any responsibility for the disastrous pandemic-era school closures.

Fauci鈥檚 critics, like Sen. Rand Paul, have seized on diary entries detailing his conversations with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio just prior to that city’s 2020 shutdown. But that criticism errs by collapsing two different things. Fauci plainly supported the initial school closures, as did most Republican and Democratic officials. The more relevant question is whether he advised keeping schools closed on a broad scale the following year.

Fauci has long maintained that he did not. 

In August 2020, as districts wrestled with whether to reopen, he National Geographic, 鈥渢here are areas and regions of the country 鈥� where the level of infection is low enough that you really should try very hard to get the children back to school.鈥� Four years later, Fauci the same account. 鈥淚 kept on saying, 鈥楥lose the bars, open the schools,鈥� 鈥� he told CBS News: 鈥淚nitially to close it down was correct. Keeping [schools closed] for a year was not a good idea.鈥� 

Unfortunately, if that was Fauci鈥檚 intended message, it largely failed to reach the public.

Several surveys I conducted for a book on the politics of pandemic school closures show that Americans understood Fauci鈥檚 position very differently. My evidence comes from three sources. The is a November 2022 YouGov panel of 1,000 U.S. adults, with samples weighted to represent the national adult population. The is a December 2023 of 5,000 elected school board members, with responses weighted to reflect the demographic characteristics of school districts nationwide. The was a 2025 YouGov survey with the same parameters as the one I conducted in 2022. 

Together, this assortment of data reveals how Americans and local school officials understood the case for prolonged school closures, and which public authorities they believed stood behind them. Three findings from these surveys are especially relevant to the renewed debate over Fauci鈥檚 role. 

First: Whether, fairly or not, Fauci became the public face of keeping schools closed.

In the 2022 and 2023 surveys, I asked respondents whether they thought various political leaders and organizations believed that keeping schools closed throughout the 2020-21 school year was strongly justified, somewhat justified, somewhat unjustified or strongly unjustified. The list included Fauci, Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican parties, and teachers unions.

Overall, 57% of the 2022 respondents said they believed Fauci thought keeping schools closed during that time was strongly justified, a higher number than for any other leader or group. School board members were even more likely to reach that conclusion: Over 7 in 10 believed Fauci viewed prolonged closures as strongly justified.

What’s more, the idea that Fauci supported prolonged school closures cannot simply be dismissed as a partisan talking point: 63% of Democratic and 57% of Republican respondents held that view.

Second: Compared with those who thought Fauci opposed prolonged school closures, respondents who said they believed Fauci viewed lengthy shutdowns as necessary were far more likely to conclude 鈥� even after vaccines had become available 鈥� that it was too risky for both students and educators to return to their classrooms. 

Specifically, in the 2022 survey, I asked respondents how risky it was for either a 10-year-old child or a 50-year-old teacher to return to elementary school. Those who believed Fauci supported school closures were about twice as likely as those who thought he opposed them to say school remained too risky for students and about 40% more likely to say the vaccinated teacher still faced substantial risk. To be clear, this does not prove that Fauci caused those perceptions. Americans who already feared reopening may instead have assumed he agreed with them about various risks. But it does show how closely Fauci鈥檚 public image had become tied to continued fears about returning to school.

Taken together, these findings suggest that Fauci had become more than a public health official. For many Americans, his perceived position on school closures served as a cue for judging the risks of reopening, even after vaccines had become widely available.

Third: I wanted to know what mattered more when Americans were asked to look back and reflect on the wisdom of prolonged school closures: evidence about what happened to children or the positions of public figures like Fauci.

To get at this, I ran an experiment in the 2025 survey. First, all participants were reminded that many public schools had remained closed even after vaccines became available, while bars and restaurants had reopened. Then, the respondents were then randomly divided into four groups. One group received no additional information. The other three were told that research showed school closures caused lasting academic harm; that Trump had opposed keeping schools closed; or that Fauci had publicly rejected lengthy shutdowns. I then asked everyone whether keeping schools closed for more than a year had been the right or wrong decision.

Regardless of the information they received, about two-thirds of Republican respondents said they believed it was the wrong decision. Among Democrats, however, the information mattered. Just one-third of those who received only the basic facts said prolonged closures had been wrong. Reminding them of the evidence on learning loss barely changed that judgment. But when they learned that Fauci himself had rejected year-long closures, nearly half concluded the policy had been wrong.

Faced with a choice between evidence about the consequences for children and cues from trusted leaders, many Americans appeared to place greater weight on the messenger than the evidence. Fauci, not research on learning loss or Trump’s position, proved to be the persuasive cue. call this follow-the-leader politics. People often rely on trusted elites to interpret complex issues rather than evaluating the underlying evidence themselves.

In sum, Fauci may be correct about what he intended to communicate. But my surveys suggest that most Americans, including the school board members responsible for reopening classes, heard something very different. Fauci鈥檚 public standing became closely associated with support for keeping schools closed, shaping how many Americans understood the risks of reopening and, ultimately, judged one of the most consequential policy decisions of the pandemic.

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