The race for ratings at Fox News has officially entered the derangement zone, with Fox fixtures competing with one another over who can get more attention by hurling unhinged invective at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since the Reagan administration. For decades, Fauci has been widely admired by everyone playing with a full deck for his efforts to combat pandemics. "Playing with a full deck," however, has been the limiting factor. While You-Know-Who was attempting to con Americans with his fraudulent flimflam that COVID-19 was a "hoax" that would quickly "disappear," Fauci had the nerve to say publicly that it wasn't and it wouldn't. Ever since, he has been a bogeyman for the crazies, rewarded for his work to save lives with a flood of death threats by the mob that has seized hold of America's right wing. The coronavirus isn't the only virus that plagues America, evidently.

Fox superstar Tucker Carlson has accused Fauci of having "created COVID" and of "deciding to unilaterally end Christmas." This is demagogic claptrap, of course, but it causes cash registers in Fox's corporate boardroom to chime, which makes Carlson a hot corporate commodity. It is this kind of hooey that has fueled Carlson's career. Never mind the rock-solid scientific and medical evidence confirmed by data drawn from hundreds of millions of vaccinations around the world; the guy with the Bachelor of Arts degree knows better. "Maybe (the push for COVID-19 vaccination) is about social control," offers Carlson. "Maybe it doesn't work and they're just not telling you that."

Other Fox personalities have fallen over themselves to mock vaccination as a Leninist plot, all the while doubtless getting themselves vaccinated as quickly as possible. After all, it's the increase-the-click shtick that counts, not peoples' lives. "They're going to knock on your door," says Fox host Brian Kilmeade about the Biden administration's exhortation to Americans to protect themselves and their loved ones. "They're going to demand that you take it. The focus of this administration on vaccination is mind-boggling." Fox's Laura Ingraham chirps, "The Biden administration is about to take their pressure campaign to your doorstep," deriding the public education campaign as "vaccine evangelization." Fox contributor Charlie Kirk likens the Biden White House to "the Taliban."

With some 815,000 Americans now dead from COVID-19, over 150,000 new cases daily and the overwhelming percentage of those who are dying individuals who are unvaccinated, Fox's Jesse Watters has decided to amp up the venom, using pointedly violent language to urge right-wing die-hards to forcefully confront Fauci. In terms designed to win him raves from Nut Land and corresponding huzzahs from Fox management, Watters egged on a gathering of conservatives last week to "ambush" Fauci with questions that Watters chose to call "the kill shot." Illustrating how this might work, Watters cried, "Boom! He is dead! He is dead! He is done!"

Predictably enough, Fox pronounced Watters innocent even of bad taste, let alone incitement. Watters, Fox said, was only using "a metaphor."

Sarah Palin, as good an exemplar of determined dimwittedness as America has to offer, picked up the paramilitary theme, bestowing her own battle cry on the anti-vaccination activists. She proclaimed that she would get vaccinated "over my dead body." Given our death toll, Palin's line would be funny if it wasn't so unfunny. In a less painful time we would have placed it right up there with Yogi Berra's complaint to the restaurant that told him it could not seat him for another hour. "No wonder nobody comes here," he groused "It's too crowded."

There's good news amidst the grim. There is a vaccine for all Americans who choose to get it that is virtually certain to keep them from getting very sick. The bad news: there's a cult that rages against public health mandates that aim to protect the public's health. And they're doing our nation a whole lot of damage.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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