Salon85%

Fauci is an easy scapegoat for pandemic revisionists 45%

By Troy Farah83%

8/6/2026, 4:38:27 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Politically Left Leaning Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 20.5% saturation with 111 hits. Analysis detected 590 faulty-reasoning hits from 542 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 40.4% and a BS Rank of 45% (16,088 of 28,846 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 55.80% of the article peer group.

Dr. 
Anthony Fauci is under congressional scrutiny following an appearance before a Senate committee last week, in which the former National Institutes of Health immunologist was grilled by elected officials over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic . 
On Thursday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress over his repeated invocation of the Fifth Amendment. 
The committee’s chair, Sen. 
Rand Paul, R-Ky., has not been shy about his scorn toward Fauci, who led the pandemic response in the first Trump and Biden administrations. 
Paul floated conspiracy theories that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID, was leaked from a Chinese lab and that Fauci covered up this info. 
There is no conclusive evidence that the virus leaked from anywhere but nature , but that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from promoting such theories. 
Ebola and hantavirus reveal US as a major threat to global health 
Seemingly at the advice of his lawyers, Fauci declined to entertain this political side show. 
Nonetheless, he serves as a convenient scapegoat for the ongoing public health failures under President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. 
Kennedy Jr. 
As unfortunate as this sounds, COVID did not go away . 
The virus that sparked a global pandemic still regularly infects, disables and kills hundreds of people per week. 
Although it’s not anything like previous waves, right now cases are rising slightly across the country, especially in Alaska and Missouri, but also in California, Nevada, Hawaii, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. 
Waning immunity, viral mutations and a refusal for some people to stay up on vaccines are part of the reason why COVID is returning. 
Start your day with essential news from Salon. 
Sign up for our free morning newsletter , Crash Course. 
This isn’t a pandemic anymore, according to experts , but that’s because the virus is now endemic  it’s a part of our daily lives like flu, HIV and other infectious diseases. 
Even once-eradicated diseases like measles are now all too common. 
COVID is also now a preventable disease. 
Vaccines, masking, improved indoor air quality and acquired immunity have all kept the virus at bay so that morgue trucks no longer fill the streets. 
Still, even a “mild” infection these days can be devastating and lead to long-term health problems . 
But a big part of the reason COVID is endemic in the first place is because it wasn’t controlled early, like MERS and SARS-1 were, related viruses that never became pandemics. 
The first Trump admin completely botched its response to containing COVID , but now they can deflect from their past and current failures  including letting things like the cyclospora outbreak slip or allowing Ebola to balloon into the second biggest outbreak in history  by attacking Fauci and plugging baseless conjecture about COVID’s origins. 
Unfortunately, for some people, this strategy seems to be convincing. 
about public health under Trump 
“My job is to find out the truth”: Dana Bash grills RFK Jr. over vaccines 
The rising price of Trump’s anti-science agenda 
Trump admin withholds Medicaid funds in latest example of weaponizing real and imagined fraud 
The post Fauci is an easy scapegoat for pandemic revisionists appeared first on Salon.com . 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 14.8%Troy Farah: 5.3%Salon: 4.9%Confirmation Bias14.8%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.3%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 4.0%Salon: 3.1%Availability Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.7%Salon: 1.0%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 5.7%Troy Farah: 2.1%Salon: 0.8%Hindsight Bias5.7%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.1%Salon: 1.6%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 5.5%Troy Farah: 2.6%Salon: 6.4%Framing Effect5.5%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.2%Salon: 0.3%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.1%Salon: 0.3%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.4%Salon: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 4.6%Troy Farah: 1.5%Salon: 1.3%Optimism Bias4.6%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.9%Salon: 1.9%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 20.5%Troy Farah: 13.0%Salon: 10.0%Negativity Bias20.5%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.2%Salon: 0.7%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 2.1%Salon: 1.9%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.1%Salon: 0.2%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 1.8%Troy Farah: 1.0%Salon: 1.7%In-Group Bias1.8%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.7%Salon: 1.2%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 2.0%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 4.4%Troy Farah: 0.1%Salon: 0.6%Horn Effect4.4%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 2.4%Salon: 1.1%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.2%Salon: 0.4%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 14.6%Troy Farah: 2.9%Salon: 3.2%Ad Hominem14.6%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.4%Salon: 1.1%Straw Man0.0%This article: 5.9%Troy Farah: 3.9%Salon: 2.7%Appeal to Authority5.9%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.3%Salon: 2.0%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.3%Salon: 1.3%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 14.8%Troy Farah: 11.3%Salon: 9.2%Hasty Generalization14.8%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.5%Salon: 0.5%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 7.8%Salon: 5.3%Appeal to Emotion0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.9%Salon: 1.2%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 3.8%Salon: 2.0%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.4%Salon: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.3%Salon: 0.5%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.4%Salon: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.6%Salon: 0.5%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.0%Salon: 2.6%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.2%Salon: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.1%Salon: 1.2%Ambiguity (Equivocation)0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.3%Salon: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.1%Salon: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.2%Salon: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.0%Salon: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 3.0%Salon: 1.7%Unattributed Quote0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 3.0%Salon: 1.3%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 1.5%Troy Farah: 14.2%Salon: 13.1%Biased Writer Voice1.5%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 3.7%Salon: 2.1%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 14.8%Troy Farah: 8.3%Salon: 5.9%Politically Left Leaning Bias14.8%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 0.2%Salon: 0.2%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Troy Farah: 1.3%Salon: 1.5%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

542 words analyzed.

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