Fauci

Did Anthony Fauci state in August 2023 that "all unvaccinated citizens must be locked down this winter"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories watched the entire interview where this quote supposedly originated and found no such statement. Furthermore, no credible evidence or news reports exist that attribute the purported quote to the former director of the National Institute of Allergy…

Does a "secret CDC report" show hundreds of thousands of children "died suddenly" in the United States following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout? No, that's not true: The author or authors of the article making the claims did not find any such report; instead, they created their own document using publicly available Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data they found…

Do photos show that the craft store chain Hobby Lobby is selling demonic statues? No, that's not true: These images have been created by an AI artist. The images originated on Reddit and Facebook in groups for AI art. Hive Moderation, a program that detects whether content is AI-generated or not, concluded that there is a 99.9 percent chance that…

Does a "photo" show Donald Trump "in his 50's," then a businessman, "dancing with a 13 year old girl"? No, that's not true: That is not a photo -- it is an image artificially created by algorithms. The story appeared in a tweet (archived here) published on June 14, 2023. The caption said: .@RepMTG Hey Marge, here's a photo Of…

Does a video containing still images of then-President Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci capture them embracing each other? No, that's not true: Those pictures are computer-generated. The claim originated from a tweet (archived here) on June 5, 2023. It said: Donald Trump became a household name by FIRING countless people *on television* But when it came to Fauci... The entry…

Is Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the son of Mother Teresa, Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner? No, that's not true: Fauci was born to Italian-American parents in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940, when Mother Teresa lived in Calcutta, India, having moved there from her native Macedonia. The claim…

Did the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ban COVID-19 vaccines in April 2023? No, that's not true: On April 18, 2023, the agency amended its previous emergency use authorizations (EUAs) to remove authorization for monovalent vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, and, instead, authorized bivalent vaccines for all doses given to those 6 months old and older. In a…

Did a photo recently surface that shows Jeffrey Epstein posing with four children on a tropical beach? No, that's not true: This is not a real photo but an image created with the AI program Midjourney. This image, and another in the same vein showing a likeness of Epstein posing with five children, were posted on Instagram by an account…

Did Switzerland health officials declare in April 2023 that COVID-19 vaccines do "more harm than good" and order an "immediate halt" to immunizations? No, that's not true: In a statement, the Swiss government reported that 98 percent of the population had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, either from a previous vaccination or infection. Because predominant virus variants were anticipated to be in…

Did the world suddenly stop having new COVID-19 variants after Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), retired at the end of 2022? No, that's not true: More than a year before his retirement, the most recent variant of COVID, Omicron, was identified in Botswana and South Africa. Many Omicron subvariants have…