Former presidential medical adviser clashed with far-right congresswoman when he testified in front of the House Oversight Committee on Monday about the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic
Dr Anthony Fauci has accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of inspiring death threats against him.
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases clashed with the Republican firebrand lawmaker at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on Monday in which he gave testimony about the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the hearing, Greene told Fauci he was “not a doctor” and that he “belonged in prison” for “crimes against humanity” amid heated questioning. She also accused him of experimenting on beagles with disease-causing parasites.
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“Whenever somebody gets up, whether it’s the news media you know, Fox News does it a lot or it’s somebody in the Congress who gets up and makes a public statement that I’m responsible for the deaths of x number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus — immediately — you could like clockwork, the death threats, go way up,” Fauci said during an appearance with Kaitlan Collins on CNN.
Effortpost that’s going to get misinterpreted and downvoted to hell.
This is a case of accidentally telling the truth by lying twice. Fauci and the CDC massively mishandled the pandemic and lied to the public… by claiming that masks don’t work.
Masks absolutely do work, there has never been any serious scientific questions about this. It’s a respiratory illness. Countries like China, Vietnam, etc. always knew to use masks, right from the start. But for some reason, in Feb 2020, the surgeon general was tweeting this:
Masks absolutely do work, but Fauci is on record saying the exact same stuff on 60 Minutes. CNN even ran articles like, “Masks may actually increase your coronavirus risk if worn improperly, surgeon general warns,” and “Masks can’t stop the coronavirus in the US, but hysteria has led to bulk-buying, price-gouging and serious fear for the future,” containing many of the false narratives that would later become core parts of the anti-mask truthers.
Masks absolutely do work, so why did they do this? Two reasons. First, to cover for the fact that the Trump administration sold off the PPE necessary to be prepared for this eventuality. Second, because Fauci has a history of supporting libertarian policies prioritizing the safety of doctors over the general public. In fact, Fauci didn’t just mishandle one pandemic, he mishandled three.
During the Ebola outbreak in 2014, Fauci opposed quarantines for doctors returning from treating the illness abroad, calling them “draconian.” Several Democratic governors implemented measures anyway, but there was no federal policy. Ebola is much more deadly than COVID and it could’ve been devastating if we hadn’t gotten lucky or if those quarantines hadn’t been implemented on a local level.
The third one he mishandled (or rather, the first) was AIDS. I won’t get into details, but Fauci was the NIH director under Reagan, and prominent queer activists were saying things like that he was “a murderer” who “should be put before firing squad”
These truths have been buried under a mountain of bullshit spewed out by the right, to the point that making these legitimate criticisms of Fauci makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist. But unlike all the anti-mask bullshit, what I’ve said is true and supported by evidence. As someone who studied science in school, I’m ashamed that a scientist would break the public trust in such a way, and the fact that he was able to get away with it and brand himself as some sort of hero of science makes it so much worse. Science is still very reliable, but it can be compromised by politics, and it’s important to verify information from a variety of sources from different countries and international organizations - not just the CDC.
[Citation needed], but let’s assume this isn’t made up because I want to know:
Did you mean to say that people who can treat the sick shouldn’t be the most protected during an epidemic? If the doctors aren’t safe, we’re ALL kinda unsafe, right? But I get why on airplanes they tell you to put your own mask on last.~
What did you mean by this? Are you talking about the oxygen masks in the event of an emergency? Because on airplanes you are told to put your mask on first before helping others. This is to prevent you from passing out before helping a child or someone else who needs assistance.
The citation is in the next paragraph.
In the case of Ebola, it wasn’t the doctors’ safety but their convenience that he was concerned about. In the case of COVID, he prioritized doctors’ safety to the point of lying to the public, which contributed to the spread of misinformation and breakdown of public trust, resulting in countless unnecessary deaths.
When the CDC finally started telling the truth about masks, people were able to start making cloth masks at home and donating them to hospitals. Had he been honest from the start, that could’ve happened much earlier.
The safety of doctors and healthcare workers is very important, but it doesn’t justify breaking public trust. Public trust in science is crucial, and when it breaks down you get people refusing to vaccinate their kids and drinking raw milk and other such nonsense. Honesty is a fundamental part of scientific ethics. What he did violated the Hippocratic Oath.
Ebola can only be transmitted by blood… Other body fluids may cause transmission for a person only if they are already showing symptoms… I’m pretty sure doctors who specifically flew abroad to help with this disease would know this … Quarantining them would likely do nothing
Arguing against a panicked Karen rule which would only hurt the few people actually helping fight this disease sounds like the right thing to do
Fauci is far from perfect but you are basically making the same hysterical claims MTG is doing, albeit without spitting as much, pretending the guy carrying a lighter in his pocket is as much at fault as the idiots in charge (Trump and co at the time) who completely fumbled the response to the worst pandemic in a century… Showing once again, Murica is a functionally a third would country with money
Even if the likelihood was low, the enormous harm that could have been caused by Ebola spreading to the US outweighs a mere inconvenience for a small number of people.
Trump obviously spread tons of misinformation and mishandled everything, and had he not sold the PPE in the first place, there’d have been no reason for Fauci to lie. But I hold scientists to a higher standard of conduct than politicians. When Fauci spoke, he was speaking to the public as a representative of scientists in general, and when he lied and damaged public trust, he did damage to uncountable scientific efforts that will take decades to repair, if it can be repaired at all. That sort of betrayal of trust is a serious offense.
I fully expect every word that comes out of any president’s mouth to be a lie, but I used to trust the CDC, and now I can’t.
By this logic and threshold, the only logical solution would be to isolate entirely… No more flights, no more imports. The current risk of all that traffic is way higher than the risk you are clutching pearls about now
Ok, good luck with that …
Thank you for that clearly good faith interpretation of what I said, but you actually misunderstood me.
The cost benefit analysis of making a handful of people have three weeks of quarantine to add a extra layer of security against a deadly pandemic ravaging the country makes it worth it. The cost benefit of “shutting down all trade” is obviously no longer worth the tradeoff.
By your logic, you should be an anti-masker, since accepting any level of inconvenience to mitigate risk of spreading disease is totally unacceptable and it’s apparently all-or-nothing with no room for middle ground with you.
In fact, fuck lab goggles. Scientists and doctors are super smart and never make mistakes or have accidents so who needs 'em? If you’re going to wear lab goggles, why not shut down the whole global economy while you’re at it, that’s basically the same thing. Right?