Fact-checking a Facebook conspiracy about Bill Gat
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Recent surveys show that Dr. Anthony Fauci is one of the federal officials most trusted by Americans to handle the country’s coronavirus response. But not on Facebook.
One post published April 6 lays out a more than 2,000-word conspiracy theory about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his connection to the COVID-19 pandemic. The post mixes facts and falsehoods about Fauci, Bill Gates and the source of the coronavirus to spin a conspiracy about the economy and a potential vaccine
"I wonder why Fauci was so quick to want to shutdown the booming Trump economy all across the nation, why He wants to keep it down for months and months, why He is resisting the drugs that doctors say are proving effective treatment already, why He made funny faces behind Trumps back when the President mentioned ‘Deep State,’ and why the liberal media freaked out when they didn’t see Fauci on stage," the post starts off saying. "I wonder...."
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) One version has been shared more than 18,000 times.
Since joining the White House coronavirus task force in January, Fauci has become a target for online disinformation that seeks to undermine his credibility. And PolitiFact has fact-checked several false or misleading statements about Fauci and Gates’ connection to the coronavirus, so we took a closer look at this Facebook post — line by line, to be exact.
In the graphic below, we edited claims made in the post using green, yellow and red marks. Green is for accurate claims, yellow is for mixed statements and red is for inaccurate claims. We added the facts alongside each section.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/apr/1...ill-gates/
While the Facebook post gets a few things right, it paints an inaccurate picture of Gates and Fauci’s connections to the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. There is no evidence that the two men orchestrated a pandemic to profit from a future vaccine.