Of Course the Anthony Fauci Attackers Are Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracy Theorists
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.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/fire-fauci-anti-vaxxers?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=pol&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=thematic_ballot_041520&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9f8cb24c17c6adf0e5d24&cndid=25394153&utm_content=Final&utm_term=Thematic_Ballot_Subscribers
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