Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, boasted of being an embodiment of truth and integrity.
Fauci made his comments on Tuesday during an interview with Dr. Larry Corey, president of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, in front of a live audience in Seattle.
The two discussed Fauci’s work with NIAID in AIDS research and on COVID-19 vaccines, according to a news release from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
At one point, Corey asked Fauci for his thoughts on the “Fauci effect — the interest in medical and biological fields and research” since the coronavirus pandemic.
“Well, the so-called Fauci effect is when a lot of people want to go into public health and medicine particularly and science because of the visibility of public health and science when you have a historic outbreak, and since I happen to be a very visible person, it’s called the Fauci effect,” Fauci said.
“Trust me, I don’t get excited about that,” Fauci added.
He then clarified that some people are going to medical school because of what he symbolizes. “What I symbolize in an era of the normalization of untruths and lies and all the things you’re seeing going on in society from Jan. 6 to everything else that goes on, people are craving for consistency, for integrity, for truth and for people caring about people,” Fauci said.
Twitter users slammed Fauci for his comments.
“Fauci is the worst kind of idolator — a man who makes an idol of himself,” a Twitter user named James David Dickson wrote. “You don’t think it’s sad for a man to heap glory on himself like that?” Dickson wrote in a follow-up tweet.
“I’m sorry, the words coming out of his mouth juxtaposed with the masked people sitting in the room while he and the guy next to him sit unmasked is…too much,” one user wrote.
Fauci’s apparent self-praise was not the only matter of controversy from the event. He also joked about creating COVID-19 in his kitchen, according to Fox News.
“I developed the ancestral model strain,” Fauci said in jest. “I created it.”
“That’s right, you let it loose,” Corey added, laughing along.
“I was in my kitchen, and I –” Fauci said, pretending to drop an object on the ground.
Not everyone saw Fauci’s joke as funny.
“Despicable: He mocks and trolls while being the single person arguably most responsible for promoting policies that have damaged millions of lives and helped perhaps irrevocably cripple our republican system,” journalist Benjamin Weingarten tweeted in response to the joke.
“Fauci makes a joke about creating SARS-CoV-2,” said Tyler Cardon, CEO of Blaze Media.
“See, it’s funny because we all know that’s impossible. He’s not that smart. But he’s arrogant & naive enough to approve & fund the research & scientists that likely did & slimy enough to try to cover it all up.”
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