Did Fauci lie to Congress about coronavirus research? Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government's top expert on infectious diseases, for months has been accused of lying to Congress by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other Republicans. At a hearing in May, Fauci was asked whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had funded "gain-of-function" experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, near where the novel coronavirus was first detected in late 2019. Paul said "super viruses" had been created; Fauci shot back that the senator was "entirely and completely incorrect." The issue carries weight because of speculation that the coronavirus might have emerged from a laboratory. At the time, we awarded Two Pinocchios to Paul, but the issue has returned to the fore. Readers wanted an update after a top NIH official sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 20 saying that the nongovernmental organization EcoHealth Alliance — which received NIH funding to do the research on the potential for bat-specific pathogens in nature to jump to humans — did not report a key experimental finding, as the grant required. Republican senators including Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.) claimed this letter proved Fauci had lied to Congress. But the NIH letter does not say what they claim. We gave them Two Pinocchios. But this is such a complex issue, we found that the NIH letter appears to have its own inaccuracies. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Two fact checks from Va. governor's race It's the final week of the Virginia gubernatorial race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin, and both sides are playing funny with the facts. When speaking about the coronavirus threat, McAuliffe often touts incorrect numbers about the impact on children. At first, we queried the McAuliffe campaign and were told it was a slip of the tongue. But then his tongue kept slipping. "We in Virginia today, 1,142 children are in ICU beds," McAuliffe said Oct. 7. (For the week ended Oct. 2, the number of children in hospitals, not necessarily in intensive care, was just 35.) "Here in Virginia, you should understand, 1,142 of our children have been in hospitals because they got covid," he said Oct. 23. (This phrasing suggests that McAuliffe is talking about not a daily figure, as he frequently indicated — but a total since the beginning of the pandemic. But it's still inflated. From March 15, 2020, to Oct. 16 of this year, Virginia reported a total of 952 hospitalizations and 10 deaths of children 0 to 17 years of age.) For his part, Youngkin released an ad that quickly went viral, earning more than 1 million views in the day after it was released. It features a mother recounting her concerns about a reading assignment her "child" was given by his teacher. But this was no ordinary mom, no ordinary book and the child in question was a senior in high school. The reading assignment was the best-selling novel "Beloved," by Toni Morrison, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. When Morrison, who is Black, won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993, the citation described her novels as "characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." The "mother" in the ad is from a politically connected family active on behalf of Republicans. Her husband, Daniel R. Murphy, is corporate counsel at the powerhouse lobbying firm BGR Group and an active backer of Republican politicians including Youngkin. The "child" went on to intern in Donald Trump's White House and now works for the National Republican Congressional Committee. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @AdriUsero) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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