Dr. Anthony Fauci Book Scrubbed From Amazon After Email Dump
Dr. Anthony Fauci's new book about his "life philosophy" has been removed from the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites after thousands of his emails from the early days of the COVID pandemic were released on Tuesday.
The book, Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward, was set for publication on November 2 and was open for pre-orders earlier this week.
But now the 80-page book, announced on May 17, has disappeared from the websites of major booksellers without any explanation amid criticism of some of his emails in the first half of 2020.
The original Amazon listing for Expect the Unexpected said the book would offer "an intimate view of one of the world's greatest medical minds" and "universal advice to live by." It also promised to offer a "unique perspective" on leadership and expecting the unexpected in difficult times.
National Geographic was listed as the publisher of the book. It hasn't explained why the book has disappeared from sellers' websites.
The original listings for Expect the Unexpected on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble both lead to error messages. But there are still Google web cache versions of the listings, and the book hasn't yet been removed from Amazon.co.uk.
Newsweek contacted the publisher of Dr. Fauci's book and Amazon for comment.
Dr. Fauci faced a backlash on Tuesday over his plans to publish the book as some conservatives accused him of trying to profit from the pandemic, and writing about the crisis before it had come to an end.
"Profiting from the pandemic with a book deal is truly a new low," Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted on Tuesday. The Daily Caller's Greg Price said the NIAID director was about to make money from a book "while you lost your business and had your kids out of school for a year."
BuzzFeed News on Tuesday published thousands of pages of emails sent to and from Dr. Fauci in the first few months of the COVID pandemic, revealing that he believed store-bought masks were "not really effective."
In an email on February 5, 2020, the health official said: "Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection."
"The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material," he added. "It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people wear face masks in public spaces to stop the spread of COVID, unless they have been fully vaccinated.
