Correcting the Record about Dr. Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci has worked 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 continually criticized 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 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 in an Oct. 20, 2021, statement. “Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.” 

Fauci announced 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" -- 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 to investigate Fauci and have him testify before Congress if Republicans retake control of the House or Senate next year.

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 higher for Black people than white people. The risk of hospitalization is 2.2 times higher. Earlier in the pandemic, these disparities were even greater. 

As for why, that’s not entirely worked out, but as we’ve written and as the CDC has said, “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 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

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Images Show IRS Educational Program, Not Training of Agents": 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": 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": 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": 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": 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.

• "Una guía sobre la vacuna contra el COVID-19 de Novavax": 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.