Dr. Peter Daszak, just to take one example—the head of the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance—has been routinely hounded by right-wing media as part of their fixation on the (still unresolved) Wuhan Lab Leak hypothesis. GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher has outrageously gone so far as to suggest Daszak may have conspired to block a fair probe of what happened. Scripps Research Institute virologist Kristian Andersen has had to deactivate his Twitter account due to similar aggression. I’m also personally threatened by emails, phone calls, and on social media for my views on vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccinations. They mostly have far-right and even white nationalist leanings, telling me about impending attacks from “patriots,” some imbued with Nazi imagery. As one colleague eloquently said to me recently in a text: “It’s like a slow moving train coming right for us. We have more lethally armed extremists in the U.S. than anywhere, and GOP members of Congress are whipping them up right now.” I agree with Dr. Fauci when he says that these personal attacks represent an assault on American science. But this targeting has even greater implications.