As Dr. Anthony Fauci prepares give up As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the end of the year, the leading immunologist faced taunts on social media over the weekend from the tech billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk tweeted Sunday. The mockery, shared largely without context, drew support from prominent conservatives like the right-wing representative. marjorie taylor greene — whose account was refunded with Musk’s decision to end the platform COVID-19 misinformation policy last month, and that she has been criticized in the past for her own comments mocking the use of gender pronouns, as well as backlash.
While Musk’s tweet garnered roughly half a million likes in its first few hours online, health experts like Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and professor of virology, defended Fauci’s work at the forefront of pandemic mitigation efforts. from the US and urged Musk to remove the post.
“For the record: Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong except serve our nation. In the meantime, Mr. Musk needs to know that 200,000 Americans lost their lives needlessly to Covid because of this kind of anti-scientific rhetoric and misinformation. Elon, I’m asking you to delete this Tweet,” Hotez wrote. Musk has not publicly responded.
For the record: Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong except serve our nation. In the meantime, Mr. Musk needs to know that 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives to covid because of this kind of anti-scientific rhetoric and misinformation. Elon, I ask you to delete this Tweet https://t.co/t3ffWQsXnb
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) December 11, 2022
Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, also criticized Musk for targeting Fauci.
“It’s the United States. You can select any pronoun you want,” the congressman tweeted. “But Anthony Fauci has probably saved more human lives than any person alive in the world. Shame on you.”
es america You can select any pronoun you like. But Anthony Fauci has likely saved more human lives than any person alive in the world. What a shame. pic.twitter.com/NbQks9Tohn
— Representative Dean Phillips 🇺🇸 (@RepDeanPhillips) December 11, 2022
About an hour before posting the tweet about Fauci, Musk shared a meme with a caption that read in part: “Just one more block,” which could be interpreted as an allusion to Fauci’s defense of security mandates that security specialists Public health, including those from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed that they were helpful in slowing the spread of COVID-19 before vaccines became widely available.
Since becoming a leading figure in the fight against the pandemic in early 2020, Fauci has been hailed as a hero by some but condemned by others for his recommendations in support of social distancing, wearing masks and vaccinating to protect yourself. against COVID-19. . In particular, he clashed with former President Donald Trump, and Fauci spoke out against the growing misinformation and misinformation about mitigation policies and the virus itself. Recalling Trump’s false statements about COVID-19 while in office, Fauci said in a new interview with CNN that he felt he “had” to publicly disagree with the then-president despite his discomfort.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“I have such respect for the office of the presidency that it made me very uncomfortable, but I had to do it … because I couldn’t stand there and be complicit in saying that hydroxychloroquine works when it doesn’t.” you, you know ‘Bleach works’. It is not like this. ‘The virus is going to disappear as if by magic’. It’s not,” she said.
in a interview with CBS News’ Michelle Miller last month, Fauci said he never expected science to become so politicized, making him “the bogeyman of the far right.” he even received threats of death For his job
“We are now living in an era, I think, where there is so much distortion of reality, conspiracy theory and falsehoods,” he said.
Twitter has undergone a series of changes since Musk bought the company this fall and vowed to restore “free speech” on the platform. His changes included mass layoffs that cut Twitter staff previously in charge of content moderation, reinstating accounts that were previously banned for violating Twitter’s rules of conduct, posting purported data claiming to reveal the “lists blacks” on the site, which it calls the Twitter Archives. , and the removal of its COVID misinformation policy.
Musk’s inauguration has prompted the departure of some celebrities and other big Twitter accounts, amid accusations that he is empowering far-right actors and as investigations point to a significant rise in hate speech on the platform. , specifically targeting marginalized groups, according to The New York. Times.
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