In a widely circulated tweet on Sunday, Elon Musk took shots at Anthony Fauci, America’s departing top infectious disease officer and a crucial advisor for the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The billionaire Twitter CEO declared, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” referring to both the custom of placing gender pronouns after one’s name and the right-wing attempt to accuse Fauci of crimes because of his involvement in US Covid regulations.
The tweet came only a few hours after Fauci’s op-ed in the New York Times, in which he imparts wisdom to the next generation of scientists before he steps down later this month as the director of the National Institutes of Health and President Biden’s top medical advisor.
In an apparent criticism of the Covid mitigation strategy, Musk also uploaded a meme showing Fauci addressing US President Joe Biden, “Just one more lockdown, my king.”
Musk’s tweet gained a lot of attention, garnering over 800,000 likes in just over 11 hours, but it also drew harsh criticism.
Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and author, urged Musk to remove the tweet, claiming that “200,000 Americans lost their lives from Covid unnecessarily due to this kind of antiscience rhetoric and disinformation.”
Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar praised how Fauci “calmly guided our country through the crisis” and addressed Musk, saying: “Could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?”
Musk, meanwhile, won praise from some conservative groups. “I affirm your pronouns, Elon,” tweeted Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose account was restored after being suspended by Twitter due to Covid disinformation.
Republicans have promised to grill Fauci when they gain control of the House in January, after regularly clashing with the top immunologist over Covid vaccines, mask mandates, and other pandemic-related subjects.
Fauci, 81, is set to leave his positions as Biden’s senior medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, which he has led since 1984.
In November, during his last appearance at the White House, Fauci condemned the distribution of misleading health information online and claimed that while leading America’s fight against Covid, the country’s polarisation along political lines was the hardest thing he had to deal with.