Coronavirus

Of Course the Anthony Fauci Attackers Are Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracy Theorists

One of them thinks vitamins can prevent and treat the coronavirus.
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By MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images.

At a time when the nation is facing an unprecedented, terrifying health crisis, it’s not entirely surprising that a majority of Americans would put more stock in the job being done by actual medical expert Dr. Anthony Fauci over, say, reality-TV-show host Donald Trump. Still, there will always be people who are downright offended that someone like Fauci, with his fancy degrees and years of experience, has the audacity to tell them how to avoid dying from a virus ravaging the globe. While typically easy to ignore, that group of people had their voice amplified over the weekend when the president retweeted a call to fire Fauci. And you’ll never believe it, but it turns out their leaders are a couple of anti-vaxxer cranks whose grasp of epidemiology—and public health in general—seems somewhat suspect.

Politico reports that DeAnna Lorraine, who got the #FireFauci hashtag rolling, is a regular retweeter of conspiracies by the group QAnon, which has famously alleged that former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired a Salvadoran gang to murder staffer Seth Rich; that Angela Merkel is Adolf Hitler’s granddaughter; and that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among others, are members of an international child sex trafficking ring. One reason Lorraine doesn’t trust Fauci is because of the dramatic change in deaths predicted by coronavirus models that he had nothing to do with. “His projections have changed constantly,“ she told Politico reporter Tina Nguyen. “I think he first started predicting 2 million-plus deaths,” she said, confusing Fauci with London’s Imperial College, according to Politico. Apparently not understanding the point of all the social distancing Fauci and other experts have been advocating for, she added: “And now it’s down to 60,000. And you know, why such a sudden change? That’s a pretty drastic change.” Lorraine, who views Fauci as part of the establishment that has historically tried to get the unwitting public to take (life-saving!) vaccines, told Nguyen, “What I’m suggesting is [Trump] just brings in other additional experts who aren’t just pro-vaccine, who don’t have anything to gain, financially or otherwise, from pushing vaccines on us.” And, naturally, the #FireFauci gang has a candidate in mind: Shiva Ayyadurai.

Ayyadurai, or “Dr. Shiva” as his fans call him, is a controversial scientist and long-shot Massachusetts Senate candidate who is pushing a variety of claims that range from dubious to medically disputed to outright false. He has argued that a strict vitamin regimen can prevent and treat the coronavirus—an unsubstantiated view at odds with the medical community and existing research. And he claims Fauci is a deep-state plant hellbent on “forced and mandatory vaccines” to support “Big Pharma”—a claim for which there is no evidence.

Ayyadurai, [who is not a medical doctor], told Politico that he is deeply suspicious of Fauci, accusing him of having connections to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds various health care initiatives, including some to develop and distribute vaccines globally. It’s a common yet vague charge among Fauci’s detractors that appears to be based, in part, on a global vaccine project the Gates Foundation launched in 2010 in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency Fauci has run since 1984.

Ayyadurai, who first came to prominence over a disputed claim that he invented email, argued that the push for a coronavirus vaccine essentially creates a product that can be sold to every person on the planet, benefiting pharmaceutical companies.

”They’re gonna go help all the people in Africa with vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, right?” Ayyadurai said. “Vaccines are highly profitable. So when I connect the dots, it is essentially about moving this entire [world], using sometimes fear mongering to move it, to mandated vaccines for everyone.” As Politico points out, another thing vaccines do is save lives, with the World Health Organization estimating that at least 10 million deaths were prevented by vaccines between 2010 and 2015.

Beyond vaccines, though, Ayyadurai has a bigger ax to grind against the academic establishment, a system he said Fauci represents every time he makes a recommendation that counters Trump. “We have bureaucrats who run science, and bureaucrats who run medicine and you can talk to pretty much anyone in academia, they’ll tell you behind closed doors that Fauci epitomizes that,” he said. “And that’s what has gotten us to this position where the health policy is driving economic policy.” While Fauci has had a decadeslong career in government, he has a medical degree and his research is credited with advancing the medical community’s understanding of infectious diseases, including HIV.

On Monday, both the White House and Trump himself insisted that Fauci is in no danger of being fired, a pledge that is hopefully good for the duration of the crisis. “Today, I walk in and I hear I’m going to fire him,” Trump said at Monday night’s briefing. “I’m not firing him. I think he is a wonderful guy.”

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