Fauci: US Still in Middle of COVID Pandemic After Musk Called to Prosecute Him

By Staff, Agencies

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said that we are still “in the middle of a pandemic” while discussing how COVID-19 is still affecting those in the US. 

Fauci, appearing on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” stated he believes COVID-19 is still a major issue even as most lockdowns and mask mandates have been dropped across the country. 

“Here we are, going into the third year of it and we are still in the middle of a pandemic with the numbers you just showed,” the doctor said Tuesday. 

Fauci said that the US is still not doing well in terms of getting people vaccinated – which is worrying considering the uptick in COVID cases and the upcoming holiday season.

He warned that people should wear face masks in crowded indoor settings, especially as families congregate for Christmas celebrations.   

Fauci explained that he has had a tough time making decisions and recommendations in real-time for the public – as COVID and the way we respond to it has been like a “moving target”. 

The statement comes as Fauci has doubled-down on the claims he will not feed into the “cesspool of misinformation” on Twitter and the attacks launched at him by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, including claiming his “pronouns are prosecute/Fauci”.

In recent days, Musk has posted a series of tweets calling out Fauci over the COVID-19 lockdowns adopted by the US and making fun of the infectious disease expert. 

One picture posted by Musk showed the doctor's face photoshopped into a meme, whispering “just one more lockdown, my king,” to US President Joe Biden.

Musk said, “Fauci lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome. imo.”

Fauci, when asked about the attacks from the Tesla and Twitter leader, said he simply tries to avoid and ignore Musk and others on the social media app. 

“I don't respond to him. I don't pay any attention to him because that's merely a distraction,” he said. 

“And if you get drawn into that, and I have to be honest, that cesspool of interaction, it's – there's no value added to that,” Fauci told CNN's David Axelrod during a recent episode of “The Axe Files” podcast. 

Despite him saying he tries to ignore Musk and his supporters, the health expert has recently expressed concern over his personal safety after the online attacks. 

In another interview, America's top infectious disease doctor said comments like Musk's “stirs a lot of hate in people” and were the reason he has “armed federal agents with me all the time”. 

Asked about the tweets in an interview with Nature this morning, Fauci said, “I don't pay attention to that... and I don't even feel I need to respond”.

“I don't waste a minute worrying about it,” the doctor told scientific journal Nature.

It's nothing new for the chief medical examiner to President Biden, however. 

At one point during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, Fauci had to have his security team with “round-the-clock” to monitor threats. 

The 81-year-old told one outlet he plans to keep the security measures up after he leaves his post.

Fauci, who has been in public service for the last five decades, and has been the director of the NIAID since 1984, will be stepping down from his role later this month.

Fauci, however, has found himself embroiled in criticism over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the allocation of fund to the Wuhan lab that studied bat coronavirus before the pandemic broke out. 

In May 2021, Fauci and Senator Rand Paul [R-KY] argued over the money how it was used, with the doctor at one point calling Paul 'entirely and completely incorrect.' 

Paul insisted that the money was being used for gain of function research – while Fauci insisted it was not.

He added, “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute.”

Exactly what constitutes gain-of-function has been debated during the pandemic, but the experiments involve manipulating viruses to make them more severe or transmissible, with the hope of getting ahead of future mutations and outbreaks.

Fauci appeared before a Congressional budget committee in May 2021 and defended allocating $600,000 to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the risk that bat coronaviruses could infect humans.

He said, “I would have been almost a dereliction of our duty if we didn't study this, and the only way you can study these things is you've got to go where the action is.”

“You don't want to study bats in Fairfax County, Virginia, to find out what the animal-human interface is that might lead to a jumping of species,” Fauci added.

He was also largely ridiculed for initially denying the “lab leak theory” that the virus had been leaked from the Chinese science center.