OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing top medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is under fire by social media users for being obsessed with himself.
Fauci sat down for an interview with the New York Times on his last day in office, which was December 30. The opening sentence of the article read, “The walls in Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s home office are adorned with portraits of him, drawn and painted by some of his many fans.” The author of the Times article observed that “Dr. Fauci seemed a little uncomfortable with people knowing about the pictures.”
“He said that previously, when they were captured on camera, the ‘far right’ attacked him as an ‘egomaniac,’” Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote. “If someone goes to the trouble of sending him a portrait of himself, he said, he would ‘feel like I’m disrespecting them’ if he discarded it.”
I don’t even believe he ‘works’ on anything. I believe he’s just handed a script daily.
— Shane. (@okayshane_) October 10, 2021
Twitter CEO Elon Musk responded to the report, tweeting, “creepy.”
creepy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2022
Many other social media users sounded off on Fauci:
Fauci and wife’s wealth ‘skyrocketed’ by $5 million during pandemic
“He is the top-paid federal employee, his 1st-year golden parachute retirement pension is the largest in federal history, & he’s accepting $1 million prizes from foreign non-profits”https://t.co/5DrVgBPK4w
— Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 📣🌎 (@Lagartija_Nix) December 30, 2022
Stop putting this man on a pedestal.
— Tim Ryan (@AManInRecovery) December 30, 2022
It’s a cult.
— Michael Quinn Sullivan 🇺🇸 (@MQSullivan) December 30, 2022
That first sentence is certainly a strange way of writing: "Dr. Fauci was a megalomaniac"
— Nick Flor 🥋+🇺🇸 (@ProfessorF) December 30, 2022
Humble public servant
— Matt Izzo (@mattizzo) December 30, 2022
Last week, Musk responded to a post on Twitter that appeared to push back on claims that Fauci, in his post as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has never been untruthful or dishonest.
Entrepreneur and moderate Republican backer Marc Andreessen posted a tweet that contained a screengrab supportive of Fauci which said it is neither “accurate or fair” to claim that Fauci “has ever lied,” to which Musk posted a link to a congressional .pdf file of a Newsweek story headlined, “Fauci Was ‘Untruthful’ To Congress About Wuhan Lab Research, New Documents Appear to Show.”
The September 2021 report noted: “The National Institute of Health (NIH) has denied funding studies that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans after it was accused of doing so following the release of research proposals. The documents were obtained and released by The Intercept on Tuesday after it launched a FOIA lawsuit. Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, told Newsweek these documents show “unequivocally” that NIH grants were used to fund controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Wuhan Insitute of Virology in China—something U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has denied.”
“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement in Wuhan are untruthful,” Ebright said.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
Following his response with the .pdf file, Musk wrote: “Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife.”
His second tweet also contained a link to a Wikipedia page describing the life and career of Christine Grady, who is married to Fauci. The page states that Grady “is an American nurse and bioethicist who serves as the head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.”
Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife 🧐 https://t.co/CpWHNCqc8y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
Meanwhile, Musk said this week that former Twitter employees had managed a channel in Slack titled “Fauci Fan Club” in which they fawned over the outgoing NIAID director during the recent COVID pandemic.
The New York Post reported:
Musk tweeted the claim in a thread that was highly critical of Fauci, who was accused by the mogul of lying about so-called “gain-of-function” research that some suggest may have played a role in the spread of the coronavirus.
“Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called ‘Fauci Fan Club,’” Musk tweeted late Tuesday. He did not elaborate as to how many employees participated in the Slack channel.
Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called “Fauci Fan Club” 🤯
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
Perhaps with an eye towards those incidents, Musk sparked a strong reaction this week after he announced the social media platform would promote “reasoned” skepticism of scientific data.
“New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk tweeted.
