You are mixing accountability and responsibility here - to give a less politically charged analogue: was Steve Ballmer responsible for the spread of the ILOVEYOU virus? No, but he held ultimate accountability for VBA being enabled by default.

I'm not disagreeing with the importance of US R&D spending, which is huge (25-30% of global spend), or that Fauci is an important public health official.

I'm simply telling you that the rest of the world is mostly indifferent to the persona Fauci, based on what I'm observing in the EU & UK and extrapolating to Asia.