There are many truths on which to rely. The sun will rise to the west and set in east. The media and other outlets will become a complex, convoluted mess, self-righteous, and self-righteous over any perceived insult against The Narrative. This process involves tens of thousands of sword-wielding angels rising up to attack everyone and everything who speaks against the anointed conduit for unchallenged truth. A case in point is how Reuters, USA Today, and Snopes have all come to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s defense in the matter of his not saying, in a 2008 study he co-authored, that mask-wearing during the 1918 influenza pandemic contributed to its death toll. There is no evidence to support that Fauci said this.
Because reading is apparently more challenging than Barbie math, let us begin our investigation of the silliness that took place last year and is now being accepted by TwitterTaking a look at the Reuters article, you will see that it is written so precisely, and contains this statement at its top.
Correction 28 October 2020: The article linked previously to an 2008 similar study (here), that Fauci had not co-authored. Fauci has corrected the link at paragraph 3.
There is some Pulitzer quality prose there. But I digress.
This story claims that Dr. Fauci co-authored a study that claimed people die from bacterial pneumonia due to masks. However, this is not true. This is because the Twitter thread that this report was drawn from never made this claim.
Colleen Huber was the one who wrote that tweet. last October. According to Ms. Huber’s bio on Twitter, she is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor. It was as follows:
Dr. Fauci’s research team found bacterial pneumonia in every specimen studied of every “Spanish Flu” cadaver in above paper. We argue in our paper (which ResearchGate suppressed but is now available below) that this finding was most likely due.
#Masks
These tweets link to the study.
The Reuters study contains an acknowledgement from Ms. Huber acknowledging that she never said in any paper Dr. Fauci coauthored, that bacterial pneumonia attributed to wearing masks was caused by them. It is worth noting that the mask-building process has been improved significantly over the past 103 year. Regardless, the story thunders on, including tweets from unknowns challenging Ms. Huber’s conclusions and credentials.
Next up is USA Today, which drinks deeply from the outrage well filled with ink drawn from a Facebook user’s digital pen. Said user refers to another Facebook user’s assertion regarding a link between masks and bacterial pneumonia. But fear not, intrepid readers, USA Today assures us it has reached out to the two scalawags for “further comment,” this doubtless transpiring right after running fact checks on all guests in last Tuesday’s Coast to Coast AM show.
Finally, we have Snopes, which riffs off the USA Today report although to its credit it omits the Facebook users’ names. ‘Nuff said.
This whole fake conundrum is a reminder that it’s almost impossible to trust media. In its eagerness to preach The Gospel According to St. Fauci, and please ignore how he can’t say the same thing twice, it resorts to dragging out and dragging anyone who dares say he said something he didn’t say. The first mentioned person clearly said that he didn’t say what she claims he said. Is that confusing? Yes. But, since when did logic mean anything more than truth-telling doesn’t … er, does to the media?