What we learned from Fauci’s emails

Buzzfeed posted on June 1 more than 3,200 pages of emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, which allows the public to access documents or other data possessed by government agencies or public authorities. The Washington Post obtained more than 800 pages and published a story highlighting what reporters found.

The emails span from January to June 2020 and give a glimpse into the mind of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. According to the emails, he communicated with a variety of health officials, reporters and billionaires.      

Fauci coordinated with Facebook to promote COVID-19 guidance

During the last year, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter made it a priority to censor or debunk fake news on their sites. This year, Facebook announced that it would increase efforts to remove false information regarding vaccines and vaccine hesitancy. Shortly after, the company retracted its previous censorship of claims that COVID-19 was man-made after the Biden administration announced it was investigating the origins of the virus. 

Dr. Fauci’s emails revealed coordination between himself and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. On March 15, Zuckerberg invited Dr. Fauci to join a Facebook live stream or produce a video for the newly developed Coronavirus Information Hub. 

The CEO planned to feature health experts who represent authoritative information rather than listen to other agencies and political leaders.

“This isn’t public yet, but we’re building a Coronavirus Information Hub that we’re going to put at the top of Facebook for everyone (200+ million Americans, 2.5 billion people worldwide) with two goals: (1) make sure people can get authoritative information from reliable sources and (2) encourage people to practice social distance and give people ideas for doing this using internet tools,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This will be live within the next 48 hours.”

In his response, Dr. Fauci accepted the offer. 

“Your idea and proposal sound terrific. I would be happy to do a video for your hub,” Fauci wrote. “We need to reach as many people as possible and convince them to take mitigation strategies seriously or things will get much, much worse. Also, your idea about [REDACTED] is very exciting.”

Fauci was warned the virus looked engineered
Kristian G. Andersen who runs a viral genomics lab at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif. attached an article titled “Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins,” citing it for its research on the origins and potential mutations of the virus from bats.

On the contrary, Dr. Fauci noted the virus’s abnormal features suggested that there is more involved than bats. 

“On a phylogenetic tree the virus looks totally normal and the close clustering with bats suggests that bats serve as the reservoir,” he wrote. “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”

Andersen continued by writing that all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory but added that further analyses needs to be done, so those opinions could change.

Furthermore, Dr. Fauci’s emails revealed he attached several documents titled “SARS Gain of Function” suggesting he had some knowledge of such research. In multiple testimonies to Congress, the NIAID director has denied gain of function research was funded by his agency at the Wuhan Lab of Virology. 

Fauci disregarded an email highlighting a CCP cover-up

In a long email sent to Dr. Fauci by Erik Nilsen, co-founder and chief executive officer at Bio-Signal Technologies in Texas, dove into his theories behind the Chinese government coverup of the COVID-19 outbreak. He pointed to his accredited experience of working with many connections to China through business, friendship and virology institutions.

Nilsen said China stopped its COVID-19 death count on Jan. 7, 2020, and pointed to its motive to fabricate and skew the daily data to “save face.” Chinese Communist Party officials wanted to mislead the world and their people that they were flattening the curve when that was not the case. Instead, the government locked down the city of Wuhan and allowed other citizens to travel nationwide or around the world.

Additionally, Nilsen believed that COVID-19 had already spread to the United States in late November or early December. Fauci replied that the email was too long to read.

Fauci was aware of therapeutics early in the pandemic

In the same email, Nilsen brought up some conflicting ideas to Dr. Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization by writing he advised his family to acquire Alvesco (ciclesonide) for emergency use only. 

“I’ve been told by colleagues on the front-line in Japan, China and Korea, and found several pre-print papers, that it is an effective treatment for late-stage COVID-19 patients,” he wrote. “Some patients on ventilators who were approaching death have fully recovered after treatment with ciclesonide; ciclesonide has much smaller particles than other corticosteroids so it reaches deeper into lungs and alveolis).”

Furthermore, Nilsen advised his family and friends to obtain hydroxychloroquine, a drug authorized by the FDA to treat malaria, Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Fauci, the media and Facebook all denounced the usage of hydroxychloroquine as a safe and effective drug to fight COVID-19.

Former President Donald Trump was a major proponent using the drug as a preventative. Doctors worldwide prescribed the controversial drug throughout 2020 when those who went public with their knowledge about the drug’s effectiveness were censored on most social media platforms. 

Two independent studies published by Henry Ford Health System and medRxiv found hydroxychloroquine to be safe and effective in treating COVID-19. The first study analyzed 2,541 hospitalized covid patients and found that 13% of hospitalized patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died of COVID-19, compared to 26.4% who died who were not treated with the drug. The results in the second study analyzed 255 covid patients on ventilators and took hydroxychloroquine with zinc saw a 200% increase in survival rate.

Dr. Fauci advised against masks for healthy people

More contradicting guidance came from emails surrounding Dr. Fauci’s beliefs on masks and their effectiveness to slow the spread of COVID-19. In a reply to former Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Dr. Fauci advised not to wear a mask when traveling on Feb. 5, 2020.

“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Dr. Fauci wrote. “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through the material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keeping out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”

Since then, Dr. Fauci has advocated for mass masking.