Tag: Dr. Fauci

Fauci: Paul doesn’t know what he’s talking about

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday escalated his ongoing feud with the nation’s top infectious diseases doctor Anthony Fauci about the role the National Institutes of Health (NIH) played in funding controversial research in Wuhan, China.

The two traded barbs during a tense exchange, triggering a shouting match in which Fauci accused Paul of lying in order to further his agenda. 

During a Senate Health Committee hearing about the federal COVID-19 response, Paul said the NIH funded illegal gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which created a highly dangerous and transmissible virus able to infect humans. Gain-of-function is a controversial method where researchers make a pathogen more infectious, often to develop more effective treatments and vaccines. Continue reading.

Fauci: US Might ‘Still Have Polio’ If Misinformation Had Hindered Vaccination

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Washington (AFP) – Top US scientist Anthony Fauci on Saturday blasted commentators who sound an anti-vaccination theme, saying America might still be battling smallpox and polio if today’s kind of misinformation existed back then.

The comments from the country’s leading infectious disease expert reflected mounting frustration over the sharp slowdown in the Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, even as the disease has been surging in states with low rates.

It also came days after President Joe Biden expressed his own visible frustration, saying social media that carry widely heard misinformation about vaccines are “killing people.” Continue reading.

Only in our anti-truth hellscape could Anthony Fauci become a supervillain

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Right-wing commentators are pretending that thousands of newly released emails from Anthony S. Fauci represent some kind of smoking gun against the government’s top infectious-disease expert, whom they have recently decided to try to destroy.

I haven’t been nearly as excited by the emails, which are mostly full of mundane correspondence. But there’s at least one line in them that stands out.

“I genuflect to no one but science and always, always speak my mind when it comes to public health,” the normally even-tempered scientist wrote in March of last year, to an epidemiologist who had accused a number of public health officials of appeasing the science-challenged President Donald Trump. Continue reading.

GOP’s attacks on Fauci at center of pandemic message

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Former President Trump and his GOP allies have stepped up attacks on Anthony Fauci, seizing on portions of his emails and a renewed interest in the origins of the coronavirus pandemic to demonize the nation’s top infectious disease doctor.

The attacks, which are largely based on out-of-context comments and draw on unsubstantiated conclusions, gloss over the Trump administration’s role in the nation’s early failures to respond to the pandemic.

Instead, conservative lawmakers and media personalities are lionizing the former president as someone betrayed by his advisers. Fauci is painted as a liar who misled both Trump and the American people, and is now facing calls for his resignation, prosecution, or both. Continue reading.

Chris Wallace tears into Corey Lewandowski: ‘You’re going to blame the president’s inaction on Dr. Fauci?’

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Fox News host Chris Wallace grilled Corey Lewandowski on former President Donald Trump’s “inaction” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During an interview on Fox News, Lewandowski floated the idea of a special congressional commission to investigate China and the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

But Wallace pointed out that Trump had avoided investigating China during his time as president. Continue reading.

Trump and his allies try to rewrite, distort history of pandemic while casting Fauci as public enemy No. 1

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Donald Trump and his Republican allies have spent the past few weeks trying to rewrite or distort the history of the pandemic, attempting with renewed vigor to villainize Anthony S. Fauci while lionizing the former president for what they portray as heroic foresight and underappreciated efforts to combat the deadly virus.

They have focused on the early moments of the coronavirus response and the origins of the virus, downplaying any role they may have played and casting others in the wrong, at times taking comments out of context and at others drawing conclusions that are unproved.

And at a time when the number of vaccinated people continues to rise and deaths are at one of their lowest levels, it has placed the coronavirus back at the center of the political debate. Trump is planning to make it a chief argument in a reputation rehabilitation effort. And Republicans are also making it a centerpiece of their midterm election campaigns, pledging to hold congressional investigations if they win back the House majority. Continue reading.

‘Completely incorrect’: Rand Paul gets obliterated after accusing Fauci of helping to ‘juice up’ viruses

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Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) once again attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, with another grandstanding performance during a Senate hearing on the COVID-19 health crisis.

Taking up conspiracy theories spread by former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, the Kentucky Republican spoke over Fauci after accusing him of helping to fund Chinese research into viruses that led to COVID-19.

Paul claimed that Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with scientists at a Wuhan virus laboratory, and that the research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Continue reading.

Opinion: Why tearing down Fauci is essential to the MAGA myth

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MAGA political philosophy is not systematic, but it is comprehensive. Right-wing populism offers a distorted lens to view nearly all of life.

Through this warped lens, progress toward equal rights is actually the oppression of White people. Free and fair elections, when lost, are actually conspiratorial plots by the ruthless left. But perhaps the most remarkable distortion concerns the MAGA view of covid-19.

We have all seen the basic outlines of pandemic reality. Experts in epidemiology warned that the disease would spread through contact or droplets at short distances, which is how it spread. The experts recommended early lockdowns to keep health systems from being overwhelmed, and the lockdowns generally worked. The experts said Americans could influence the spread of the disease by taking basic measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing. The disease was controlled when people did these things. The disease ran rampant when they did not, killing a lot of old and vulnerable people in the process. Continue reading.

Rand Paul gets schooled by scientists — including one he cited — after lashing out at Anthony Fauci again

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“Sorry Dr Fauci and other fearmongers, new study shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants. Good news for everyone but bureaucrats and petty tyrants!”

— Sen. Rand Paul in a tweet, March 21, 2021

That Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky often disagrees with infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is well known.

Recently, the pair clashed at a Senate hearing when Paul, a Republican, argued against mask recommendations for people who have had covid-19 or have been vaccinated against it.

At the hearing, Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, pushed back against Paul’s characterization of wearing masks as “theater.” Continued caution is advised, Fauci said, as scientists study the new variants now circulating in the U.S. and other countries. Continue reading.

Trump targets Fauci, Birx in lengthy diatribe

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Former President Trump on Monday went on a tirade against Anthony Fauciand Deborah Birx, two of his former top medical advisers on the COVID-19 pandemic, excoriating their decisionmaking during his administration on the day after CNN aired previews of comments by the top government health experts.

Trump issued a lengthy statement in which he argued that he ignored both Fauci and Birx while in office as a benefit to the country and boasted that he was responsible for getting vaccines rapidly developed and approved.

“Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,” Trump said in a statement Monday. “They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine—putting millions of lives at risk.” Continue reading.