Medical expert now saying he 'never had' coronavirus after NBC documented his recovery

In 2014, Fair was profiled in the Washington Post, under the headline "A virus hunter faces the big one: Ebola." It began: "Joseph Fair hunts viruses. That's his thing. The 37-year-old American loves chasing dangerous pathogens, studying them in secure labs or searching for them in jungles where the microbes lurk." The whole story details Dr. Fair's work with Ebola - no mention of the supposed near-death experience from 2006, however.

And now we know Dr. Fair never had coronavirus, despite nearly a dozen appearances on NBC and MSNBC where he talked about having it or recovering from it. In the end, NBC's viewers were left with two very alarming - and false - impressions. First, that an expert virologist can take every precaution but can still catch COVID-19 through his eyes. False. Second, that tests can be so untrustworthy that you can have multiple negative tests and still have coronavirus. Craig Melvin described them as "false negative tests" in that initial report on May 14. Hoda Kotb said, "every time it came back negative, but clearly you have it." False. Anti-science. And truly damaging.

In articles and TV segments, millions of NBC readers and viewers are today left with the impression that Dr. Joseph Fair, a 42-year-old "virus hunter" (with the handle @CureFinder on Twitter) came down with a case of COVID-19 through his eyes that was so severe he was hospitalized in ICU for several days and that at least five "false negative" tests couldn't trace it. This pandemic is scary enough without this false storyline introduced into the news picture.

So what really happened? We don't know. I asked several medical experts, and it's unclear what the story really is. In one later MSNBC appearance, Fair discussed having a "panic attack" right before going to the hospital. But we don't know. Fair did not respond to repeated requests for comment. NBC has declined to comment on the record throughout the past month.

Fair has been regularly appearing on NBC and MSNBC, but has not been on the air since his tweet revealing the antibody test results on Tuesday. Shortly after I began making inquiries related to this story, Fair appeared on the Today show June 17 and was described as having recovered from a "possible covid-19 related illness." In that appearance, he said he would "absolutely" keep viewers posted on the results of the antibody test.

So far, there have been no on-air corrections. Or online -this NBC News story is still uncorrected, for example. The Today show website wrote a brief story, where they now describe what he had as a "severe illness."