Less than three weeks into the new Biden administration, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who has headed up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, is encouraged by the new president’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was very clear what President Biden wanted … and that is that science was going to rule,” Fauci says. “That we were going to base whatever we do, our recommendations or guidelines … on sound scientific evidence and sound scientific data.”
But there was something else that Biden promised, which Fauci found equally reassuring: “He said, ‘We’re going to make some mistakes along the way. We’re going to stumble a bit. And when that happens, we’re not going to blame anybody. We’re just going to fix it.’ “
“Boy, was that refreshing,” Fauci says.
Fauci has worked with seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden. Much of his career has been devoted to researching viruses and the immune system. During the AIDS epidemic, he made major contributions to the understanding of how HIV affects the immune system and was instrumental in developing drugs that could prolong the lives of people with HIV.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci became something of a medical celebrity as a member of the former administration’s coronavirus task force who publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump about COVID-19 treatment, the value of masks and about the timeline for reopening. In return, Trump called Fauci an “idiot” and tweeted about firing him.
“What I think happened is that the [Trump] White House, in general — the president — was looking for people who were saying things that were compatible with what his feeling was about, where he wanted to go,” Fauci says.
Trump Accuses Dr. Fauci Of Wanting To ‘Play All Sides’ On Reopening
Looking ahead, Fauci says the pandemic is far from over — especially as the virus mutates and new strains emerge. He says controlling the spread of the virus will help tamp down mutations. The key is to vaccinate “as many people as quickly and as efficiently as you possibly can” and “to double down on the public health measures of uniform wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate settings — particularly indoors.”
Fauci notes that any vaccination efforts should address the needs of the larger global population.
“You’ve got to be able to get — with the help of the developed world — the entire world vaccinated,” he says. “As we allow this infection to exist to any degree in any part of the world, it will always be a threat. So we’ve got to approach this the way we approach smallpox, the way we approach polio, and the way we approach measles and other devastating global outbreaks.”
In fact, one particular situation, I think, was very telling. At a time when there was a lot of pushback against the government and not listening to the valid concerns of the activists, I was invited to go down — and I went with just one of my staff at the time — to go down essentially alone to the gay and lesbian community center in the middle of Greenwich Village to meet with what must have been anywhere from 50 to 100 activists in this meeting room. Just me and one of my staff. And they were angry with the federal government because they felt the federal government was not listening to them, and they were right — I think they had a really good point.
Not for a second, did I feel physically threatened to go down there, not even close. I mean, that’s not the nature of what the protest was. And I think one of the things about it was that not only were they not threatening at all in a violent way, but ultimately they were [also] on the right side of history.
On his early research into the AIDS epidemic, visiting gay bathhouses to gain a better understanding of the then-mysterious outbreak that was killing gay men
This was the very, very early years of the outbreak. In fact, it may even have been before we even discovered that HIV was the cause. And we were seeing these large numbers of mostly gay men who were formerly otherwise well, who were being devastated by this terrible, mysterious disease. And it was so concentrated in the gay community that I really wanted to get a feel for what was going on there that would lead to this explosion of a sexually transmitted disease. So I did. I went to the Castro District [of San Francisco]. I went down to Greenwich Village and I went into the bathhouses to essentially see what was going on.
And the epidemiologist in me went, “Oh, my goodness, this is a perfect setup for an explosion of a sexually transmitted disease!” And the same thing going to the gay bars and seeing what was going on. And it gave me a great insight into the explosiveness of the outbreak of a sexually transmitted disease. So I think it was important, because it gave me a really on-the-ground feel for what was actually dynamically going on.
On whether COVID-19 will be with us forever like influenza
I don’t think we need to make that assumption. That certainly is a possibility — that you would have enough virus floating around and changing from year to year, that you would have to treat it in some respects, the way we treat seasonal influenza, where you have to upgrade the vaccine almost every year.
There is a way, if done properly, to avoid that, and that is, for example, if we successfully vaccinate 70 to 85% of the people in the United States and dramatically diminish the level of infection — if we were living in a vacuum in only the United States, then I don’t think we’d have to worry about seasonal turnover and having to match. But we live in a global community and unless we get the rest of the world adequately vaccinated and unless we don’t have the opportunity of this virus to mutate in a place that doesn’t have access to vaccines, we will always be threatened.
