A caption of a widely shared Facebook post, which shows a maskless Nancy Pelosi in a group of people, reads: “Ladies and Gentlemen here’s your speaker of the house enjoying a party after she tells you you can’t have social gatherings.”

The insinuation that Pelosi ignored social-distancing and mask guidelines in the midst of the pandemic is false. 

The viral image is from January 7 2020, which is before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the United States, and well before pandemic guidelines and recommendations were set into place. 

The photo in question was taken by Anna Spiegal, food editor at the Washingtonian, who posted the image to Twitter:

Anna Spiegel @AnnaSpiegs

Nancy Pelosi at Danny Meyer’s Maialino Mare opening in Navy Yard.

January 8th 2020

1,039 Retweets1,190 Likes

According to the CDC, the first confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 in the United States came on January 20, 2020: “The etiologic agent of an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, was identified as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in January 2020. A patient in the United States was given a diagnosis of infection with this virus by the state of Washington and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on January 20, 2020.”

Furthermore, the CDC issued guidelines to avoid gatherings of 50 people or more to stop the spread of the coronavirus on March 15, over a month after the photo was taken.

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