New Fauci Texts Have KSTP Anchor Discussing Pregnancy Decision

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — KSTP-TV evening anchor Lindsey Brown shared a personal account on her public Facebook page this week about the fear she felt getting a COVID-19 vaccine while pregnant with her son Oliver.

Brown wrote that she received her first dose during her first trimester after suffering two earlier miscarriages. She said Minnesota's COVID restrictions at the time made her feel enormous pressure to get vaccinated so she could see her parents, who were in their 70s.

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She said she ultimately declined the second dose while pregnant, trusting her instincts. Oliver was born healthy, she wrote.

Brown's post comes days after Republican senators released text messages from Dr. Anthony Fauci's government phone as part of an ongoing congressional investigation.

In a January 2021 exchange, Fauci told then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy that the fever and immune response common after a second vaccine dose could, in theory, be linked to first-trimester miscarriage.

It was a hypothesis Fauci raised based on a known side effect, not a finding drawn from any miscarriage data, and Walensky called it a good point worth flagging.

Large studies conducted since the vaccines rolled out, including CDC v-safe pregnancy registry data and multiple peer-reviewed cohort studies covering hundreds of thousands of pregnancies, have not found an increased risk of miscarriage among people vaccinated against COVID-19 compared with those who were not.

Major medical groups, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, continue to recommend the vaccine be available to pregnant women.

The texts are the first of a larger release expected as part of the senators' investigation, which has also included a contempt vote against Fauci and scrutiny of his government journal.

In her post, Brown argued the issue should not be political, and said people can believe the vaccines saved lives while still wanting more transparency about what officials knew and when.