Although Dr. Anthony Fauci retired from his government post last month, he is still talking. On Sunday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he would release “Fauci Files,” which could shed light on any communication between the company and the former top government expert on infectious diseases or the department that he ran.
In an interview on CBS News’ “The Takeout,” Fauci said: “I have no idea what [Musk]’s talking about. I mean, there’s a lot of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and disinformation going on. I have nothing to say to him. I don’t understand what he’s doing. It’s just unfortunate.”
Last month, Musk also criticized Fauci, tweeting, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”
House Republicans, who are set to take over the leadership of committees, have indicated that they will call Fauci to testify in an effort to investigate the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic and online censorship demands.
“I would willingly do that without any problem,” Fauci said. “But I have nothing to hide. I could defend everything I’ve done.”
“Disinformation is the enemy of good public health practices,” Fauci said during the interview.
Dr. Fauci was asked about the conversation that took place online after Damar Hamlin (the safety for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League who, during a Monday Night Football game on January 2, 2023, suffered cardiac arrest) and the mentions Twitter that it could have been related to the Covid vaccine.
“It’s hard that misinformation and disinformation, when you have a platform like social media that exponentially spreads; in its best form proper and important and value-added information can spread which is good,” Dr. Fauci responded. “The thing as a public health person and as a physician and a scientist and my identity as a physician is the thing that gets pained the most by that because what that means is that yet again another conspiracy theory – complete nonsense – is going to have some people make a decision for themselves and their family not to get vaccinated which may cost them their lives, so that’s the thing that’s so horrible about it and if you want to go out spouting nonsense conspiracy theories and spreading it all around – fine – except if it results in a person suffering and perhaps dying, and that’s what happens when disinformation disincentivizes people to get proper interventions for a threat like a pandemic.”
