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Facing intense criticism on social media, USA Today has admitted errors in an opinion piece written by a White House official that attacked Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious-disease expert, saying in a post-publication note attached to the piece that it “did not meet USA TODAY’s fact-checking standards.” ... On Wednesday evening, editorial page editor Bill Sternberg added a note that explained the piece’s origins as well as its mistakes. (Barr, 7/16)

In a note published Wednesday evening, a day after the article was posted online, Bill Sternberg, the editorial page editor of USA Today, wrote that several of Mr. Navarro’s attacks on Dr. Fauci “were misleading or lacked context.” He concluded that the op-ed, which appeared in the paper’s Wednesday print edition, “did not meet USA Today’s fact-checking standards.” Mr. Sternberg did not elaborate on the fact-checking process that might have occurred before publication, nor did he say how the paper’s editorial review had broken down. (Grynbaum, 7/16)

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on Thursday that Anthony Fauci was wrong to liken the coronavirus to the 1918 flu pandemic, calling his remarks “false” and “irresponsible.” Meadows made the comments on Fox News after rebuking White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s decision to pen an op-ed criticizing Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, which the chief of staff said was “not appropriate.” Meadows went on to argue that not everything that Fauci says is correct. (Chalfant, 7/16)

Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, defended the beleaguered disease researcher Anthony Fauci in an interview this week, calling the prospect of firing or demoting him “unimaginable.” Fauci, who has led the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, has recently come under fire from President Trump, an array of White House aides, and other Trump allies. But Collins, who is nominally Fauci’s boss, implied he would not follow orders to dismiss Fauci, should they come. (Facher, 7/16)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: The Trump Administration’s War On Fauci 

Not only does the Trump administration lack a comprehensive plan for addressing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it spent much of the past week working to undercut one of the nation’s most trusted scientists, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Reporters were given “opposition research” noting times when Fauci was allegedly wrong about the course of the pandemic, and Peter Navarro, a trade adviser to President Donald Trump, published an op-ed in USA Today attacking Fauci personally. (7/16)

The leading U.S. expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Thursday implored younger people to continue social distancing and other measures to curtail spread of the novel coronavirus, which has surged in some parts of the country. “Please assume the societal responsibility of being part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he said in a live interview with Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. (Beasley, 7/16)