Comment Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s preeminent infectious disease expert who achieved unprecedented fame by enduring withering political attacks as the face of the coronavirus pandemic response under two presidents, plans to step down in December after more than half a century of public service. he announced on Monday. Fauci, 81, has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. He joined the parent agency, the National Institutes of Health, in 1968 as a 27-year-old doctor fresh out of medical residency and was quickly recognized as a rising star. More recently, Fauci has also served as President Biden’s chief medical advisor since the beginning of his administration. Fauci’s tenure as director of the infectious disease institute made him an adviser to seven presidents and put him at the forefront of every modern scourge, including AIDS, the 2001 anthrax scare, Ebola, Zika and the coronavirus pandemic. During the nearly four decades Fauci led the agency, it grew from a little-known institute with an annual budget of $350 million to a globally recognized force with a budget exceeding $6 billion. “Because of Dr. Fauci’s many contributions to public health, lives have been saved here in the United States and around the world,” said Biden, who as vice president worked with Fauci on the nation’s response to Ebola and Zika during the Obama administration. “Whether you have met him personally or not, he has touched the lives of all Americans through his work. While Fauci is one of the most cited researchers of all time and has been widely known in scientific circles for decades, it was the coronavirus pandemic that catapulted him to global fame — and sparked criticism from some Republican politicians and threats from the public. Anthony Fauci is dealing with more than just a virus Fauci, who spoke of his impending retirement in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post, has been a lightning rod in the past, most notably in the early days of the AIDS crisis, when activists clamored for a faster government response as they watched friends die. But the coronavirus pandemic has arrived at a strikingly different time, with social media fueling criticism and baseless conspiracy theories leveled at Fauci and others presiding over the federal government’s response. Veteran scientist owns up to mistakes: In the early weeks of the pandemic, Fauci and other government scientists said Americans didn’t need to wear masks, which President Donald Trump seized on toward the end of his presidency to criticize Fauci and question his experience. And, like many other disease detectives, Fauci did not recognize early on that asymptomatic people were the main spreaders of the virus. On his 80th birthday, Anthony S. Fauci went live on Instagram with Post reporter Geoff Edgers to discuss our readers’ most pressing questions on Dec. 24, 2020. (Video: The Washington Post) Fauci admitted that he and other government scientists were wrong about the masks to begin with. He said they were concerned about having enough face coverings for overworked health care workers and did not yet see evidence that masks were effective in preventing infection outside hospitals, which later became clear, particularly as scientists realized the virus was airborne. . Those factors “led the United States surgeon general, the CDC and myself to say, right now, you really don’t need to wear a mask, and all of a sudden, it became Tony Fauci is the mask guy,” Fauci said. . “Since I’m the primary target of the far right, when the far right says you got it wrong, it’s not that everybody got it wrong — it’s that Tony Fauci got it wrong.” The past 2½ years have marked some of the most rewarding and challenging times of his career, Fauci said. His public contradictions of Trump over unproven treatments for Covid-19 and the threat posed by the pandemic and his defense of mitigation measures have made Fauci a villain of the political right. “It’s been one of the most important challenges we’ve had to face, and I think my team and I — and let history judge — have made a significant contribution,” Fauci said. “We didn’t do it alone, but we played an important role in the development of vaccines that have now saved millions of lives.” But Fauci said the pandemic, which has claimed more than 1 million lives in the United States, has proved “extremely stressful.” He attributed this to the combination of dealing with a new virus that has shown a remarkable propensity to infect people and is mutating at an astonishing rate, and the politically charged environment in which the government had to react. That, combined with his reputation and the attention paid to his public statements, made it much harder to make mistakes and communicate changing scientific guidance to the public, he said. In the interview, Fauci said he wanted to step down from his government position while he was still healthy, energetic and passionate about his field and excited about the next stage of his career. He also reflected on the anti-scientific sentiments that have proliferated, the mistakes he and other scientists have made during the pandemic, the deep national divisions infecting policies that have endangered democracy, and the lessons learned from the government and national backlash. to the coronavirus. Fauci emphasized that he is not leaving the public square. He said he hopes to teach, lecture, write — perhaps a book, along with essays and other writing — and use his experience to inspire and teach a younger generation of scientists. “I love everything about this place. … But even with that, I said I’m going to have to go away for a while,” Fauci said. “I don’t want to be here so long that I lose a step.” White House chief of staff Ron Klein said the first phone call he made after Biden was named president-elect — at Biden’s behest — was to ask Fauci to serve as chief medical adviser. When he served as Ebola czar in 2014 in the Obama administration, Klein worked with Fauci. “This is someone who gave his life to save lives and serve this country,” Klein said. Fauci, who earns $480,654 a year, considered retiring at the end of Trump’s term, he said. But when Biden called during the presidential campaign and asked if he would serve in a potential Biden administration, Fauci reconsidered. He thought he would stay at least a year to help the country overcome the pandemic, just as vaccines became available. In the end, the virus proved much scarier to control than expected, and Fauci will have served nearly two years with Biden. But, Fauci said, with an arsenal of vaccines and treatments and increasing immunity through shots and exposure to the virus, the nation is approaching a moment of balance in which it can live with the virus. An interim successor is expected to be named before Fauci leaves, and the NIH will conduct a national search for Fauci’s replacement. Fauci took over leadership of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as HIV infected thousands of gay men, nearly all of whom died because there were no cures. A few years earlier, Fauci had developed curative treatments for inflammatory diseases and saw many of his patients who were supposed to be dying do amazingly well. But in the 1980s, Fauci changed the direction of his lab to focus on the emerging disease that primarily affects gay men. Suddenly, almost all of his patients were dying and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “Having every single one of my patients die was really, honestly, traumatic,” Fauci said. “It was extremely frustrating when you’re trained to be a healer and you’re doing nothing but putting Band-Aids on bleeds, metaphorically speaking, when you’re treating HIV.” The Reagan administration for years paid little attention to the crisis, angering gay activists who felt the government was doing nothing to stop them from getting sick and dying. Fauci and his lab had been studying AIDS for about three years when he became director of the institute, but had made little progress on a cure. In the late 1980s, gay activists had organized to bring global attention to the AIDS crisis. The NIH and the Food and Drug Administration were targets of their protests, demanding that government agencies speed up research and approval and access to new drugs. AIDS activists wanted a voice in the design of clinical trials and for patients to have access to experimental drugs. For years, scientists and government officials — including Fauci — have refused to change the research process to allow patients access to drugs for fear it would compromise scientific integrity. Activists staged “die-ins” in front of Fauci’s office, chanting “Fire Fauci!” Fauci said he finally realized the activists were right — the process needed to change. And he befriended the activists, some becoming close friends and advisers. Fauci advocated the “parallel pathway approach” that allows patients to access experimental medication while a randomized controlled trial is being conducted separately to determine a drug’s effectiveness. Years later, under President George W. Bush, Fauci was one of the architects of PEPFAR, the multibillion-dollar global HIV/AIDS program that has saved millions of lives. Bush awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. Fauci could usually find common ground with his opponents and a way to work with them. That changed with the coronavirus pandemic. Although they sometimes used aggressive tactics, AIDS activists were right that the clinical trial process for the drugs was too rigid and needed to change, Fauci said. But he said his opponents during the coronavirus pandemic have largely engaged in arguments without science. “The situation with politics…
