This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Americans' confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci as a source of trustworthy public health information declined over the four months from April to August 2026 in a survey conducted after he appeared before the U.S.
Senate Homeland Security Committee but declined to answer its questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Fauci, a former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), served as the public face of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Homeland Security Committee Chair Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has repeatedly said Fauci belongs in jail and has accused him of covering up the possibility that the pandemic originated with a lab leak in Wuhan, China. Paul has blamed Fauci for millions of pandemic-related deaths. A nationally representative survey was conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania Aug. 4–17, 2026, following Fauci's July 29 testimony before the congressional committee.
The survey period included the day of and days after the committee's Aug. 6 vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer its questions. In the August survey of 1,904 empaneled U.S. adults, half (50%) say they are somewhat or very confident that Fauci provided the public with trustworthy information about matters concerning public health, a statistically significant decline of 5 percentage points from 55% in April 2026. Before April 2026, there had been no significant change in confidence in Fauci for more than a year, with confidence fluctuating between 54% and 58% from February 2025 to April 2026.
By comparison, 38% of Americans in August 2026 say they are confident that Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, is providing trustworthy information about public health, statistically unchanged from both April 2026 (37%) and February 2025 (38%). This leaves confidence in Fauci currently 12 percentage points higher than confidence in Kennedy, although the gap between them has narrowed since April 2026, when it was 18 points. Data on confidence in Fauci dating to 2021—when APPC first asked the question, but specifically about his guidance regarding COVID-19—showed higher confidence levels, ranging from 71% to 63%.
Fauci, head of NIAID since 1984, left government office at the end of 2022. By October 2023, 60% of Americans said they were confident that he was providing trustworthy information about matters concerning public health. APPC survey data released last month show that Americans' confidence in their individual health care providers remains high, compared with declining confidence in the major U.S. health care agencies: the U.S.
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