Fact Check: Did Dr Fauci once say masks caused most Spanish flu deaths?

WASHINGTON, DC: Amid the controversies and debates following the tense Senate hearing of Dr Anthony Fauci, a rumor began circulating on social media platforms claiming that Fauci once co-authored a paper that found most deaths during the Spanish flu epidemic were caused by wearing masks. The claim has sparked criticism and calls for a fact-check.

The claim centers on a 2008 scientific paper co-authored by Fauci that examined the role of bacterial pneumonia in deaths during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. However, social media users have claimed that the paper linked those deaths to the wearing of masks.

Claim: Anthony Fauci linked Spanish flu deaths to masks

According to the viral claim, Dr Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, once co-authored a scientific paper that claimed that most Spanish flu deaths during the 1918 pandemic were caused by the wearing of masks.

The claim was sparked by a Facebook post that shared an image claiming that the scientific paper published in 2008 stated that most of the victims of the deadly flu did not die from the illness but instead died from bacterial pneumonia caused by the wearing of masks.

The claim has triggered criticism and questions about why the physician who helped lead the US government's COVID-19 response recommended masks despite allegedly knowing this, indicating that many believe the claim to be true.

Meanwhile, a few others remained skeptical and questioned the authenticity of the claim, prompting a fact-check.

Fact Check: Anthony Fauci's paper makes no mention of masks

Although Dr Fauci co-authored a paper examining the role of bacterial pneumonia in deaths during the Spanish flu pandemic, it did not conclude that masks were the reason for the infections, and there is also no mention of masks in the paper.

The paper, titled ‘Predominant Role of Bacterial Pneumonia as a Cause of Death in Pandemic Influenza: Implications for Pandemic Influenza Preparedness’, was published in 2008 in ‘The Journal of Infectious Diseases.’

A search on Google for the claim yielded no relevant results from prominent news media outlets that supported the claim, but the search did reveal that the Associated Press asked him about the rumor in 2023, to which he rejected the claim. Hence, the claim is rated as false.

Anthony Fauci's tense Senate hearing

The claim resurfaced after a tense Senate hearing on July 29, led by Republican Senator Rand Paul, who questioned Dr Fauci about allegations that he misled Congress about the origins of COVID-19, government-funded research, pandemic policies, and federal recordkeeping, to which he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment.

During the hearing, Fauci maintained that the scientific evidence available at the time supported the theory that the virus originated naturally, while remaining open to further investigation.