Fauci

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…

Did Pope Francis appear walking on the street wearing a high-fashion white puffer coat? No, that's not true: This image is one of a series of four AI-generated images which were posted on the subreddit forum r/midjourney, "an official subreddit for Midjourney related content." Midjourney is an artificial intelligence program that creates images from natural language prompts. The images were…

Do images circulating on social media show press photos of Anthony Fauci under arrest and in police custody? No, that's not true: Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has not been arrested. These are not photos of a real incident but are images generated by an artificial intelligence program. Jack Posobiec posted the…

Is Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, facing imminent arrest for lying to Congress? No, that's not true: The allegation is part of a followbait or clickbait scheme. In a typical bait-and-switch move, the poster of this claim promises social media users a…

Did Mother Teresa sell children from her shelters in India? No, that's not true: There's no evidence to support that claim, but a nun and another worker at a shelter for unwed mothers run by Mother Teresa's charity were arrested in 2018 and accused of selling babies, The Associated Press and other news organizations reported. The claim appeared in a…

Did police in Washington, D.C., arrest top virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci after Twitter CEO Elon Musk released information that Fauci lied about COVID-19 research and imposed unnecessary restrictions on Americans? No, that's not true: The claim appears in a story on a site that publishes satirical takes on the news. The claim appeared in a December 27, 2022 article by…

Did the Food and Drug Administration report that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine "causes" blood clots? No, that's not true: In remarks to Lead Stories, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that the vaccine meets its safety standards and denied that the agency had found that the vaccine causes health problems. The authors of a recent study, conducted in part…

Did a 20-year-old woman from Kansas die shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: Although Regan Lewis did experience cardiac arrest and die shortly after receiving a vaccine, Regan's mother Connie Lewis clarified that the vaccine was not for COVID after mistakenly saying so previously. There is also no confirmation that Regan's cardiac arrest and subsequent death…

Did President Joe Biden choose a "Satan worshipper" to oversee the health of Americans? No, that's not true: Biden picked Dr. Demetre Daskalakis to serve as the deputy coordinator of a national health response team for a single disease, monkeypox. Daskalakis does have a tattoo of a pentagram -- a symbol that some associate with Satan and the occult --…