Studies have shown no connection between COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy and increased risk of miscarriage. Despite this, Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Johnson resurrected a long-debunked claim of an astronomical rate of miscarriage after vaccination while also accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of deceiving the public about the safety of the shots during pregnancy.
On Aug. 10, the lawmakers released texts from the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s government-issued cell phone from January 2021.
“Privately over text, Fauci admitted concerns about COVID vaccine side effects ‘associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester,’ yet told the public there was nothing to worry about,” Paul, of Kentucky, said in an Aug. 11 post on X. “Once again, we expose Fauci’s dishonesty.”
“The safety signals, the red flags, were screaming at these people, and you got Anthony Fauci there lying bold-faced to the American public,” Johnson, a senator from Wisconsin, said in an Aug. 12 Fox News appearance.
“We will never know how many babies were miscarried because of Fauci’s lies,” Johnson said in an X post the following day.
In a video accompanying Paul’s post and in an Aug. 10 press release, the senators juxtaposed a single text from Fauci about a theoretical concern about vaccination and miscarriage — which was not subsequently borne out by data — with a series of public comments from Fauci between Feb. 3, 2021 and Aug. 30, 2021.
The senators’...
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