It was the clearest statement yet about his future from Fauci, who last month told reporters he planned to “retire before I die.” Fauci, 81, has been a US government employee for 55 years and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. As a result, he has served in various Democratic and Republican administrations. He became the face of the US government’s efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, serving on the White House’s coronavirus task force led by Dr. Deborah Birx under former President Donald Trump and now in the administration of Joe Biden. WATCH Fauci talks to CBC News about the differences between the Canadian and US responses:
Fauci on whether vaccine mandates could include boosters
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the US pandemic response, talks to Rosemary Barton about the pandemic, coronavirus variants and containment measures. Trump praised Fauci in the early weeks of the pandemic, even tweeting about the health official’s approval rating in June 2020. But in the late summer and fall, the Trump administration stopped holding regular updates on the COVID- 19 and Trump often downplayed the coronavirus and publicly criticized Fauci’s first safety message.
Recipient of the Medal of Freedom
Birx recently described the struggles of communicating public health advisories about a novel coronavirus during those months in her book, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late . “Tony and I had become the avatars of science,” Birx wrote. “Both for the White House and for those in the public who disagreed [shutdowns]. Science became the enemy, evidence-based debates dissolved into threats and expressions of hate.” Fauci, in an interview with CBC News in December 2021, lamented that the pandemic had become an issue that could not transcend partisan politics, as Democratic-led jurisdictions and states have typically higher vaccination rates than Republicans. “A lot of the people who are reluctant to get vaccinated are really doing it for ideological reasons,” he said, “which as a public health person, makes absolutely no sense to me.” Called to testify several times before Congress during the pandemic, Fauci has often been targeted by Republican lawmakers for perceived failures in the US public health response. He has also been questioned about past collaborations between American and Chinese scientists. Fauci became head of NIAID in 1984, when the nation was in the throes of the AIDS crisis. He recalled the frustration of caring for dying patients with no treatment options available at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hospital during those early years of the crisis. In 1990, when AIDS activists swarmed the NIH to protest government indifference, Fauci brought them to the table. These efforts helped lead to an unlikely friendship with author and activist Larry Kramer, who had been a vocal critic of the response to the epidemic by the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations. In 2008, Fauci was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President George W. Bush. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, NIAID had laid the groundwork for mRNA vaccine development in a public-private partnership with Moderna Inc., which generated lessons from the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and respiratory in the Middle East. syndrome (MERS).
