Anthony Fauci claims his safety is at risk after Elon Musk called for him to be prosecuted over claims US doc funded research that started Covid pandemic
- Musk tweeted ‘My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci’ which was met by 1.1m likes
- Fauci has long been under intense criticism over his handling of the pandemic
- The 81-year-old stepped down last month after a mega 54-year stint at the NIH
Anthony Fauci claimed today that his safety is at increasing risk after Elon Musk called for him to be prosecuted and accused him of indirectly starting the Covid pandemic.
In an interview with the scientific journal Nature, America’s top infectious disease doctor, 81, 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’.
Musk — who was accused of defamation last year after calling a Thai cave hero diver a ‘pedo’ — initially targeted Dr Fauci in a tweet in the early hours of Sunday that said, ‘My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.’
He appeared to be mocking the left-wing embracement of gender identity while alluding to Fauci’s involvement in controversial Chinese research at the center of questions about Covid’s origin.
Asked about the tweets in an interview with Nature this morning, Dr Fauci said: ‘I don’t pay attention to that… and I don’t even feel I need to respond.
‘…A lot of that stuff is just a cesspool of misinformation, and I don’t waste a minute worrying about it.’
Asked whether his safety was at risk, Dr Fauci added: ‘Of course it’s at risk, that’s why I have armed federal agents with me all the time.
‘[Musk’s tweet] stirs a lot of hate in people who have no idea why they’re hating; they’re hating because somebody [famous] is tweeting about it.’
While initially a revered figure, Dr Fauci has come under intense criticism over his handling of the pandemic and his initial denial of the ‘lab leak theory’.
Dr Fauci publicly quashed discussion about Covid’s origin and virus-tinkering experiments at the Wuhan lab in the epicenter of the pandemic – even though privately he expressed concern the virus was unleashed in an experiment-gone-wrong.
It emerged in May 2021 that, under his watch, the Government’s infectious disease research body designated money to that lab and sponsored bat coronavirus research years before the pandemic happened.
On May 11 2021, Dr Fauci and Rand Paul, senator for Kentucky, sparred over how a US funding grant was spent.
Paul insisted that the money was being used for gain of function research – while Dr Fauci insisted it was not.
‘You are entirely and completely incorrect,’ Dr Fauci told Paul at the heated hearing.
He added: ‘The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute.’
Since Musk bought Twitter in October, he has raged a war on what he termed ‘the woke mind virus’, and sacked many former Twitter employees.
He has reinstated Trump on the website along with many others, who were originally banned for their extreme views.
He also exposed how the FBI leaned on the platform to remove key figures from the site.
