“Look, this is not this one individual,” said Dr Hotez. “Laura Ingraham has gone after me on several nights, and what follows is a series of e-mails that call on patriots inciting them to violence against me and my family.”

“This is a systematic attempt by the leadership of Fox News to target not only the science, not only to discredit vaccines, but to put a target on the back of scientists — prominent U.S. scientists,” he continued…

Fox defended Mr Watters from those calls, and claimed that Dr Fauci and others were taking Mr Watters’ remarks out of context.

“Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it’s more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context,” the network’s spokesperson said.