On the left, Tesla CEO Elon Musk smiles as he addresses guests at the Offshore Northern Seas 2022 (ONS) meeting in Stavanger, Norway on August 29, 2022. On the right, Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks about the coronavirus during the White House press briefing on Tuesday, November 22, 2022. (Getty Images)
In an action movie, they would be fighting each other.
They would be the good guy and the villain, the yin and yang.
The real question is, who is who. For their supporters, the other one is the problem. Elon Musk and Dr. Anthony Fauci are, in a way, the two faces of the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States.
Musk has never made a secret of his opposition to the restrictions put in place at the federal and state levels to limit the spread of the virus. He was particularly critical of lockdowns, which he said were taking away basic freedoms.
He had made clear his disdain for the Covid-19 mandates. The Techno King, as he’s known at Tesla, has not hesitated to tweet about his often contentious viewpoints. Some of his tweets against mandates for protecting people from the disease were proven false, like stating that the virus does not affect children.
“Kids are essentially immune, but elderly with existing conditions are vulnerable. Family gatherings with close contact between kids & grandparents probably most risky,” he wrote in March 2020, when the pandemic was just starting in the United States.
Musk, Champion of anti-Covid Mandates
“Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April,” the billionaire also wrote the same day. “With or without closures, social distancing, widespread testing, travel restrictions, and people carrying masks, my liege?”
Many tweets about the pandemic were not well received, such as when, in March 2020, he said that the Covid-19 “panic is dumb.”
On April 30, 2020, Musk launched a scathing criticism of anti-Covid-19 measures, during Tesla’s first-quarter-earnings call.
“I should say we are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay Area, and that should be identified as a serious risk,” Musk began.
“We only have two car factories right now, one in Shanghai and one in the Bay Area, and the Bay Area produces the vast majority of our cars, all of S and X, and most of the 3 and all of the Y.”
“So, the extension of the shelter-in-place or, frankly, I would call it, forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional alliance, that’s my opinion, and breaking people’s freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not why people came to America or built this country.”
On May 11, 2020, a defiant Musk said in a tweet that “Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules, I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”
‘Prosecute Fauci’
This fierce opposition to the government efforts has made Musk the anti-covid champion. Opposite to him, Dr. Anthony Fauci has become the respectable face for the people worried about this disease and its deadly consequences.
Fauci was an adviser to former President Donald Trump and later to Joe Biden on Covid-19. He will retire from government service this month. He will leave his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), a position he has held since the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
In 2020, Fauci, already famous in the world of infectious diseases and the fight against AIDS, but still little known to the general public, was thrust into the limelight by joining the White House Coronavirus Task Force. His simple, tirelessly repeated messages made him the reassuring figure that America needed at the time.
But he gradually became the favorite target of conservatives and the anti-vaccine movement, due to the intense politicization of the health crisis in America.
There was no doubt that Musk and Fauci were going to face each other eventually, as the billionaire, who loves provocation, would find a way to orchestrate a clash between them. He just did it in the form of what appears to be a joke at Fauci’s expense. The bad joke or dark humor mixes Fauci with wokeism, one of Musk’s great enemies.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk posted on December 11.
His use of the word “pronouns” points to the gender identity debate. In this context, wokeism wants people to stop assuming that gender is binary and to accept that everyone has the right to decide how they want to be referred to: he/his/him, she/hers/her or they/theirs/them. Interestingly, Musk also used the word “prosecute” in his joke, suggesting that the billionaire wants to hold Fauci responsible for the Covid-19 mandates.
The billionaire clarified a little later, in response to an exchange between two Twitter users, that his initial message was meant seriously.
‘Correct’
“Elon Musk wants to criminalize Anthony Fauci because he disagrees with him,” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY.) commented on Musk’s first message. “Elon is no champion of free speech.”
“Pretty sure @elonmusk wants to ‘criminalize’ Fauci because Fauci lied under oath, engaged in gain of function research in a Chinese lab, jeopardized the entire planet, and arguably contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But nice strawman, @RitchieTorres,” conservative content creator Viva Frei tweeted at Congressman Torres, without providing any evidence.
That’s when Musk stepped in to say he was all for Viva Frei.
“Correct,” the tech mogul opined.
Viva Frei’s accusations, shared by Musk, are based on the debate about the origin of the coronavirus. They are linked to the theory that the virus was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first cases were detected in 2019.
A report released in 2021 by Republican lawmakers had concluded that there was “ample evidence” that this lab was modifying coronaviruses to study the infection on humans. Dr. Fauci had rejected these conclusions.
The problem is that the laboratory in question collaborated with the organization EcoHealth Alliance based in the United States. EcoHealth received $3.7 million from the NIH, of which $600,000 went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Musk’s tweet had already been liked by more than 834,000 users at the time of writing. Comments were divided. Many Twitter users were digging out Musk’s tweets, full of Covid-19 misinformation, to remind him that it was Fauci who was correct about the disease.
“This you?” commented one Twitter user.
“Still of this advice?” added another user.
Other Twitter users like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) were backing Musk’s request.
“I affirm your pronouns Elon,” the Congresswoman, an icon of the alt-right, tweeted.
Musk’s demand comes at a time when health authorities are again reporting a resurgence of the virus. There is, however, a kind of Covid fatigue as Fauci himself recognizes.
“We’re doing much, much lower from a percentage point that we shouldn’t be doing you know, in some respects, that may be understandable, because people want to be done with Covid,” Fauci told Fox 5 New York on December 10.
Elon Musk Calls for Dr. Fauci to Be Prosecuted Weeks After Twitter Halts COVID-19 Misinformation Policy
Elon Musk, who recently halted Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy, claimed Sunday that leading immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci should be prosecuted.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” the Twitter boss wrote early Sunday in a statement that both attacked Fauci and appeared to mock the clarification of pronouns used by the transgender community and beyond.
Following his suggestion, Twitter users revisited the Tesla CEO’s prediction that the COVID-19 pandemic would see “close to zero new cases in [the] US too by end of April” — 2020.
While it is largely unclear why Musk is targeting Fauci, Musk seems to be suspicious that Fauci might advise President Joe Biden to institute another COVID-19 lockdown — a prediction that does not align with the falling COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations in recent months — after posting a photoshopped image of Fauci and Biden.
Just weeks ago, Twitter quietly stopped enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policy, doing so without a formal announcement of the new policy. Instead, users noticed a change to the company’s COVID-19 misinformation page, which now reads, “effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.”
After committing to preventing “harming misinformation” about COVID-19 through content moderation during early moments of the pandemic, the company challenged 11.72 million accounts, suspended 11,230 and removed more than 97,674 pieces of content worldwide as of Sept. 2022.
Though Fauci has not responded directly to Musk’s comments, he recently called out the “cowardly” internet trolls who have harassed himself and his family during the pandemic in an interview with the BBC.
“These people who troll about, they harass my wife and my children because they can figure out where they live and what their phone number is,” Fauci said on BBC’s “Americast” podcast.
And on this week’s “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” Fauci said he is ready to face investigations that incoming Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer and others have promised when they take control of the House.
“If I become a punching bag, I’m a punching bag. But I am very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee, I have nothing to hide, I have I can explain and validate everything that I’ve done,” the doctor said. “So you know, it’s going to be inconvenient if they actually are out there, essentially threatening to make my life miserable. But it’s, I mean, I’m going to do what I need to do, and that is cooperate fully, because we have nothing to hide at all.”
On Aug. 22, Dr. Fauci announced that in December he will step down as director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” the new owner of Twitter wrote.
As he prepares to step down from five decades in public health, Fauci is facing further investigations by Republican leadership over the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)’s connection to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in funding over a decade of gain-of-function research.
Fauci recently detailed in a new interview with CNN set to air Sunday that he created an “enmity” with former President Donald Trump. The outgoing NIAID director said he could not be “complicit” in Trump spreading misinformation about the coronavirus – pointing to the former president’s comments on hydroxychloroquine and bleach. Fauci frequently butted heads with Republicans over mask and vaccine mandates.
Regarding pronouns, Musk has made headlines in the past over what some consider controversial statements on gender identity. Earlier this year, his 18-year-old transgender child legally transitioned to being considered a woman and severed ties with the billionaire – a move that Musk credited to “neo-Marxists” at educational institutions pushing “full-on communism and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil.”
Musk’s comments come after the release of the fourth installment of the “Twitter Files” Saturday. They reportedly show how Twitter, before Musk’s acquisition, violated its own policies in preventing the spread of accurate information regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
The documents also support how on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol riot, Twitter executives – with pressure from former First Lady Michelle Obama — created justifications to ban former President Donald Trump.
Journalist Bari Weiss reported how the documents show senior Twitter executives created secret blacklists to “de-amplify” disfavored Twitter users, not just specific tweets.
The Twitter account of Elon Musk is displayed on a smartphone on November 21, 2022. (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
According to a thread by Michael Shellenberg retweeted by Musk, journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the files document how senior Twitter execs censored tweets by Trump in the run-up to the Nov 2020 election while regularly engaging with representatives of U.S. government law enforcement agencies.
The social media company also said Saturday it would let users buy subscriptions to Twitter Blue to get a blue checkmark and access special features starting Monday.
Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during the daily press briefing in the James Brady Room at the White House on November 22, 2022. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The blue checkmark was originally given to companies, celebrities, government entities and journalists verified by the platform. After Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, he launched a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month.
But it was inundated by imposter accounts, including those impersonating Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter suspended the service days after its launch.
The blue checkmark was originally given to companies, celebrities, government entities and journalists verified by the platform. After Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, he launched a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month.
But it was inundated by imposter accounts, including those impersonating Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter suspended the service days after its launch.
The relaunched service will cost $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for iPhone users. Twitter says subscribers will see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos and have their tweets featured more prominently.
