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An update from FactCheck.org
Official White House Photo by Chandler West


** Correcting the Record about Dr. Fauci
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Dr. Anthony Fauci has worked ([link removed]) for the National Institutes of Health since 1968 and has been the director of NIAID since 1984. In that time, he has advised seven U.S. presidents -- three Democrats and four Republicans -- on infectious disease threats such as HIV and AIDS; the West Nile, Ebola and Zika viruses; and more.

He is one of the most distinguished living scientists.

That's why it has been so perplexing to watch the savage and relentless attacks directed at him during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Staff Writer D'Angelo Gore writes, Republican politicians and conservative media outlets have ([link removed]) continually ([link removed]) criticized ([link removed]) Fauci's efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, questioned his motivations for promoting vaccination against it, and speculated on what he knows about the origin of the virus.

In one particularly unhinged moment, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro -- yes, trade adviser -- falsely claimed ([link removed]) that Fauci “killed a lot of people” by funding some bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Never mind that seven months earlier, then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said that wasn't possible.

“Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic,” Collins said ([link removed]) in an Oct. 20, 2021, statement. “Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.”

Fauci announced ([link removed]) earlier this week that in December he will step down from his positions as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and its laboratory of immunoregulation.

To mark Fauci's announcement, D'Angelo wrote "Correcting Misinformation About Dr. Fauci ([link removed]) " -- a summary of the many false and distorted claims that we have debunked.

This probably won't be the end, though.

GOP members of Congress have promised ([link removed]) to investigate Fauci and have him testify before Congress if Republicans retake control of the House or Senate next year.
HOW WE KNOW
A website run by Naomi Wolf, who traffics in conspiracy theories, implausibly claimed that 44% of vaccinated pregnant women in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial miscarried. Science Editor Jessica McDonald went through the Pfizer document cited by Wolf's website Daily Clout and found the website miscounted. As Jessie writes, each miscarriage was counted twice because they appear in two tables: one for all adverse events for all subjects and one for just the serious adverse events for all subjects. Furthermore, as the table names suggest, those are the miscarriages reported for all subjects — vaccine and placebo recipients combined. Read more ([link removed]) .
FEATURED FACT
Eight states have laws that mandate life in prison without parole for second-degree murder, or felony murder, according to a report ([link removed]) by the Sentencing Project, which advocates for criminal justice reform. "These laws impose sentences associated with murder on people who neither intended to kill nor anticipated a death, and even on those who did not participate in the killing," the report said. Such mandatory life sentences have become an issue ([link removed]) in the Pennsylvania Senate race. About a quarter of inmates serving life without parole in that state were convicted of felony murder, the Sentencing Project says. Read more ([link removed]) .
WORTHY OF NOTE
In a recent radio appearance, Managing Editor Lori Robertson, a regular guest on the public radio show “Conversations on Health Care,” discussed a video that rehashes an old claim that casts doubt on tetanus vaccines.

Children’s Health Defense — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s organization with a history of spreading vaccine disinformation -- made a video suggesting that some tetanus vaccines are actually part of a covert plot to control population growth by rendering women of childbearing age infertile.

But the evidence presented in the video is just a reprise of debunked rumors that have been around since the 1990s.

You can listen to Lori's segment for “Conversations on Health Care" on SoundCloud ([link removed]) , beginning at about 22:30.
REPLY ALL

Reader: I have been hearing that more African Americans died of Covid-19 than white Americans. Is this correct? If so, what is thought to be the reasons?

FactCheck.org Science Editor Jessica McDonald: Great question. It’s true that Black people have died from COVID-19 at a higher rate than white people in the U.S. (In terms of an absolute number, more white people have died of COVID-19 because there are so many more white people.)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of July 2022, the age-adjusted risk of death from COVID-19 is 1.7 times ([link removed]) higher for Black people than white people. The risk of hospitalization is 2.2 times higher. Earlier in the pandemic, these disparities were even ([link removed]) greater ([link removed]) .

As for why, that’s not entirely worked out, but as we’ve written ([link removed]) and as the CDC has said ([link removed]) , “Race and ethnicity are risk markers for other underlying conditions that affect health, including socioeconomic status, access to health care, and exposure to the virus related to occupation, e.g., frontline, essential, and critical infrastructure workers.”

Some research suggests that disparities still exist ([link removed]) even when considering differences in access to health care, underlying health conditions and COVID-19 exposures -- indicating that other features of structural racism may also be to blame.


** Wrapping Up
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Here's what else we've got for you this week:
* "Images Show IRS Educational Program, Not Training of Agents ([link removed]) ": The IRS Criminal Investigation division’s “Adrian Project” educates the public about the IRS through community outreach sessions with high school and college students. Posts on social media are sharing a video from one of the sessions to falsely claim it shows agents in training. The images were posted by a New Jersey university in 2017 and earlier this year.
* "Social Media Posts Falsely Claim Magic Johnson Donated Blood for People with COVID-19 ([link removed]) ": In a 2012 documentary, Magic Johnson discussed his HIV diagnosis and how it has affected his career. Social media posts are sharing an image from the documentary to falsely claim it shows Johnson donating blood for people with COVID-19. Johnson hasn’t donated HIV-infected blood for any medical reason.
* "COVID-19 Vaccination Doesn’t Increase Miscarriage Risk, Contrary to Naomi Wolf’s Spurious Stat ([link removed]) ": Studies have repeatedly found that COVID-19 vaccination does not increase the risk of miscarriage. Bogus claims that 44% of pregnant women in the ​​Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trial miscarried rely on a faulty tally of miscarriages that counted each miscarriage twice and included miscarriages from people in the placebo group.
* "Posts Fabricate Claim that Congress Voted to Exempt Members from IRS Audits ([link removed]) ": After Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes funding to increase staff at the IRS, social media posts falsely claimed members of Congress “voted to exempt themselves from IRS auditing of their personal finances.” An IRS spokesperson told us “there is no such special exemption,” and we found no such vote had been taken.
* "FactChecking Republican Attacks on Fetterman’s Crime Stance ([link removed]) ": Political ads and social media attacks by opponents of Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman have sought to portray Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor as dangerously soft on crime, but some of the claims stretch the facts.

Y lo que publicamos en español ([link removed]) (English versions are accessible in each story):
* "Una guía sobre la vacuna contra el COVID-19 de Novavax ([link removed]) ": Después de un largo retraso debido a problemas de fabricación, una vacuna contra el COVID-19 de la pequeña empresa biotecnológica Novavax, con sede en Maryland, se convirtió en la cuarta vacuna autorizada en EE. UU. Aquí revisamos cómo funciona y en qué se diferencia de sus competidores.

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