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Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that the attacks on him were “attacks on science”. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn accused Fauci on Tuesday of working with Mark Zukerberg and “choosing” facts. Fauci said he could “debunk” any criticisms of his decisions, which were “fundamentally based on science.” See more stories on the Insider business page.
Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that all of his COVID-19 recommendations were “fundamentally based on science”, following criticism from a Republican senator.
Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, told NBC News that “the attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”
“If you try, you know, to attack me as a public health official and scientist, you are really not only attacking Anthony Fauci, you are attacking science,” Fauci said. “And anyone looking at what’s going on sees it clearly.”
Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn released a video Tuesday accusing Fauci of working with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and “gathering facts” so the public would only know what Zuckerberg and Fauci wanted them to know.
Fauci said Wednesday he didn’t want to criticize a US senator, but had “no idea what she was talking about.”
Fauci has received criticism from GOP leaders throughout the pandemic. Some GOP leaders have asked Fauci to step down over his handling of COVID-19 and his view that it is “highly unlikely” that the virus originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. They also criticized Fauci for asking Americans to wear masks to protect against the virus.
Former President Donald Trump said at the North Carolina Republican Party convention on Saturday that Fauci was “wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong about Wuhan and the lab as well.”
Fauci told NBC News he could go over all the criticisms he had faced and “immediately debunk them.”
He used his mask guidance as an example.
Initially, there was a shortage of masks, along with no evidence that wearing masks outside of a hospital worked and no awareness of the asymptomatic spread, he said. Fauci said that over time it became clear that there was no shortage of masks, that data showed that wearing masks outside hospitals worked and that 50% of people with COVID-19 showed no symptoms.
“That’s when we said we had to get people to wear masks,” he said.
Fauci said it illustrates the scientific process. “You set a guideline based on what you know at the time. As a scientist, as a health official, when that data changes, when you get more information, it is essential that you change. position because you have to be guided by current science and data, ”he said.
Instead, “people want to fire me or put me in jail for what I’ve done,” Fauci said. “Lately everything I’m saying has taken out of context,” he said.
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