Covid in the USA: expert Anthony Fauci greets with advice

Long before dolls and the ‘Fauci ouchie’, Dr. Anthony Fauci was an outspoken advocate of scary diseases and his mantra remains “Follow the science”.

At the end of the month, Fauci leaves a 50-year career in public service, marked by the HIV pandemic at its beginning and the Covid-19 pandemic at its end.

In an interview granted to Associated pressFauci said he was leaving excited at the prospect of breakthroughs like next-generation coronavirus vaccines, but worried about misinformation and outright lies marking a “deeply dangerous” time for public health and science.

“The untruths abound and we’ve almost normalized them,” Fauci said. “I’m worried about my health field, but I’m also worried about the country,” he observed.

Fauci, who will turn 82 on Christmas Eve, was a physician-scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 54 yearsand for 38 years he was its director.

jaws advised seven presidentsfrom Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, on a long list of diseases: HIV, Ebola, Zika, bird flu, pandemic flu, and even the anthrax attacks of 2001.

inconvenient truths

“You have to stick to the science and never be afraid to tell someone something that’s true, but it’s an inconvenient truth where there’s a chance the messenger could be hit,” Fauci said. “There’s no need to worry about that. Keep telling the truth,” he observed.

And he added, with his characteristic understatement: “This has served me well enough, with one exception: the truth has generated much hostility towards me in an administration”.

For all his previous influence on national and even global responses to infectious diseases, it wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt in early 2020 that Fauci became a household name, providing the latest updates in the daily Home Bianca press conferences and in frequent interviews with the media.

But over time, the expert was forced to contradict then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to downplay the severity of the viral threat and promote unproven treatments. Trump and his allies began attacking Fauci, who even received death threats demanding a security detail to protect him.

As the world enters another year of Covid-19, Fauci remains a frequent target of the far right, but it also remains a trusted voice for millions of Americans.