Fauci Deputy Who Refused COVID-19 Vaccine Feared Retaliation: Emails
by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A top government doctor who declined to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021 was wor
# THE TAKE This story exposes what FOIA finally dragged into daylight: the federal government's vaccine mandate wasn't applied uniformly, and officials who dissented faced institutional retaliation. The emails show a top NIAID deputy documenting his fear of consequences for a medical choice—a legitimate concern that got dismissed as "anti-vax" rhetoric at the time. Here's what matters: Fauci's office knew about this resistance and proceeded anyway. They didn't debate it. They didn't accommodate it. The documented fear of retaliation proves the mandate operated through coercion, not persuasion. That's not public health—that's bureaucratic enforcement. The media's initial framing buried this story because it contradicted the dominant narrative. We're only seeing it now because someone filed for those emails. This is precisely why FOIA exists: to catch government overreach after the fact. I'm not saying the vaccine itself was wrong. I'm saying forcing compliance through institutional fear is authoritarian, full stop. And federal health bureaucrats knew what they were doing.
What the Documents Show
Matthew Memoli, who led the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases clinical studies unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the COVID-19 pandemic, said in one missive to a NIAID spokesman. He added later that he was more concerned about losing his medical license because he was aware there were “protections for government employees.” “Washington, DC directly threatened to take away my medical license which would have threatened my job (I need a medical license) so I applied for a Virginia license and protected myself that way,” Memoli also wrote in the email, sent on Jan. 17, 2024, and obtained by The Epoch Times through a Freedom of Information Act request. After President Donald Trump took office in 2025, Memoli was made acting director of NIAID’s parent agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has been the NIH’s principal deputy director since March 31, 2025.
Follow the Money
Memoli did not respond to a request for comment. Memoli became publicly known in 2021 when he was one of the few government officials to speak out against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, which were being imposed on millions of people and promoted at the highest levels of the government. Emails obtained by The Epoch Times in 2024 showed that Memoli warned Dr. Anthony Fauci—a White House COVID-19 adviser, the longtime head of NIAID until his retirement, and a proponent of vaccine mandates—that mandating COVID-19 vaccination was a mistake, in part because the vaccines did not prevent transmission of the disease. “ At best what we are doing with mandated mass vaccination does nothing and the variants emerge evading immunity anyway as they would have without the vaccine, ” Memoli wrote to Fauci in one email. “At worst it drives evolution of the virus in a way that is different from nature and possibly detrimental, prolonging the pandemic or causing more morbidity and mortality than it should.” Dr.
What Else We Know
Anthony Fauci arrives to testify before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington on June 3, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times Memoli at the time agreed to answer questions via email from The Epoch Times, but officials blocked the interview. Memoli sent his answers to NIAID spokesman Ken Pekoc to review. In response, Pekoc said the interview request had been rejected by NIAID’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to one of the newly obtained emails. The reasoning for the rejection was not detailed. The Epoch Times had asked whether Memoli was in danger of being fired due to his opposition to the mandates and whether he wished he had gone public with his opposition to the mandates sooner, among other questions.
Primary Sources
- Source: ZeroHedge
- Category: Government Secrets
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
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