Loved or hated, Fauci’s parting advice: Stick to the science

WASHINGTON (AP):

Long before the bobbleheads and the ‘Fauci ouchie’, Dr Anthony Fauci was a straight-shooter about scary diseases – and “stick with the science” remains his mantra.

Fauci steps down from a five-decade career in public service at the end of the month, one shaped by the HIV pandemic early on and the COVID-19 pandemic at the end.

In an interview with AP, Fauci said he leaves excited by the prospect of advances such as next-generation coronavirus vaccines – but worried that misinformation and outright lies mark a “profoundly dangerous” time for public health and science.

“Untruths abound and we almost normalise untruths,” Fauci said. “I worry about my own field of health, but I also worry about the country.”

Fauci, who turns 82 on Christmas Eve, has been a physician-scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 54 years, and its director for 38 of them.

Because he candidly puts complex science into plain English, Fauci has advised seven presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, about a long list of outbreaks – HIV, Ebola, Zika, bird flu, pandemic flu, even the 2001 anthrax attacks.

“Stick with the science and never be afraid to tell somebody something that is the truth – but it’s an inconvenient truth in which there might be the possibility of the messenger getting shot,” Fauci said. “You don’t worry about that. You just keep telling the truth.”

He added, with characteristic understatement: “That’s served me really quite well with one exception that, you know, the truth generated a lot of hostility towards me in one administration.”

For all his prior influence on national and even global responses to infectious diseases, it wasn’t until COVID-19 paralysed the world in early 2020 that Fauci became a household name – giving the latest updates at daily White House press conferences and in frequent media interviews.

But eventually, Fauci found himself having 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 that required a security detail for his protection.

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

Under his watch, researchers at the National Institutes of Health laid the scientific groundwork for the speedy development of powerful coronavirus vaccines. An analysis released by the Commonwealth Fund last week found the shots saved 3.2 million lives in the US alone and prevented 18.5 million hospitalisations.

With another winter uptick underway, Fauci’s disappointed that just 14 per cent of people eligible for the updated COVID-19 boosters – shots that add protection against omicron strains – have gotten one.

“That doesn’t make any sense at all, when you have a vaccine that you know is life-saving,” he said. But he’s also looking forward to next-generation vaccines that do a better job of preventing infection, citing promising leads like nasal vaccines.