The next tranche of Twitter Files is likely to include further information about how US government agencies used social media companies to shape Americans’ attitudes to COVID and manipulate public opinion on their handling of the pandemic.
In response to a user who wrote that they were “waiting... for #FauciFiles,” Musk wrote Monday that audiences could expect to see the information “later this week.”
Waiting …… for #FauciFiles
— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) January 1, 2023
Having been heavily associated with the government’s vacillating and seemingly arbitrary handling of COVID throughout the course of the pandemic, Fauci has become a highly polarizing figure in the US.
Critics of the COVID policies pushed by Fauci point to a number of discrepancies, including his demand that Americans wear masks after initially insisting “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
Fauci later claimed that he didn’t actually believe what he was saying, and that he’d been deceiving the US public in an effort to prevent a shortage of masks, but his private correspondence suggested otherwise.
“The typical mask you buy at a drug store is not really effective at keeping out a virus,” Fauci acknowledged in February 2020 email.
Later, Fauci also admitted to manipulating the target percentage of the US population which he claimed would be required to achieve herd immunity.
“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” he told the New York Times in December 2020.
“Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85.
One topic likely to be encompassed in any newly-released Twitter files is an October 2020 email by Dr. Francis Collins – then Director of the National Institutes of Health – which ordered Fauci to produce a “quick and devastating published take down [sic]” of the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter published by epidemiologists who opposed the strategy of using widespread lockdowns to combat COVID outbreaks.
Musk turned to Twitter to tell users, "Hope you’re having a great day 1 2023! One thing’s for sure, it won’t be boring.
One Twitter user replied to Musk’s tweet, saying she was,"Waiting… … for #FauciFiles,"
Robert Kennedy Jr: 'Anthony Fauci blocked early treatment to create a $98 Billion vaccine industry' pic.twitter.com/SS9TwQ70jT
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 31, 2022
"Later this week," Musk replied.
In what is now called the "Twitter Files," journalists tapped by Musk address various controversies including internal discussions at Twitter regarding the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2022 presidential election and the social media company's decision to ban former President Trump from tweeting after his role in the Capitol invasion on Jan. 6, 2021.
The most recent Twitter File release focused on how both the Trump and Biden administrations leaned on Twitter to moderate content during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hope you’re having a great day 1 2023!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 1, 2023
One thing’s for sure, it won’t be boring.
Recent tweets from Musk also appear to be growing in numbers as he attacks Fauci.
On Dec. 29, Musk asserted that Twitter employees had an internal "Fauci Fan Club," before tweeting that Twitter’s new policy was "to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science."
Evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad appeared to joke about the dogmatic way scientific experts were treated amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The science is anything that His Eminence Lord Fauci says it is," Saad said. "His Excellency is science."
What Drs. Fauci and Collins did to @DrJBhattacharya and colleagues should send shivers down the spines of scientists everywhere…if they have them. Watch the full conversation “Follow Science, Not Scientists!” 👇 https://t.co/3nhvGEyJFO pic.twitter.com/aL7yTUaHSk
— Prof. Brian Keating (@DrBrianKeating) January 2, 2023
Musk responded by observing, "Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist."
The Twitter CEO also mocked Fauci on Friday, calling him "creepy" after the New York Times reported that his home office was decorated with fan portraits of himself