{"id":2918,"date":"2023-03-21T20:13:36","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T01:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=2918"},"modified":"2023-03-22T05:52:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T10:52:43","slug":"dr-anthony-fauci-would-like-to-set-the-record-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/03\/21\/dr-anthony-fauci-would-like-to-set-the-record-straight\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Anthony Fauci Would Like to Set the Record Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rolling Stone Magazine<\/a> Famed immunologist who led the nation\u2019s COVID response talks new PBS doc, Trump and Fox News, gain-of-function research, the lab-leak theory, and more<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EVERYONE SEEMS TO have an opinion about Dr. Anthony Fauci<\/a>. For those on the left, the famed physician and immunologist who led America\u2019s Covid<\/a>-19 response under presidents Trump and Biden is a beacon that steadily guided the country through the pandemic<\/a> darkness. For those on the right, as the face of the federal government\u2019s Covid response, he is to blame for any and all pandemic-mitigation measures<\/a> inflicted upon the American public \u2014 plus<\/em> may be guilty of a \u201ccover-up\u201d (Tucker Carlson\u2019s words) regarding the origins of Covid, since his National Institutes of Health funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology<\/a> where some believe the virus originated<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic put Fauci in what he calls an \u201cuncomfortable position\u201d as a deeply partisan figure, even though he\u2019d served as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe people who know anything<\/em> about me \u2014 not the people who tweet nonsense about me, but the people who really know me \u2014 know that I\u2019m a completely apolitical person,\u201d Fauci tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m not a Republican; I\u2019m not a Democrat. I don\u2019t get involved in all that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who wish to learn more about Fauci can tune in to American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci<\/a><\/em>, a new documentary<\/a> airing the night of March 21 on PBS<\/a>. The filmmakers followed Fauci for a 23-month period, starting with Biden\u2019s inauguration in Jan. 2021 and ending in the early months of his retirement. There are fascinating fly-on-the-wall moments, such as Trump son-in-law\/advisor Jared Kushner<\/a> phoning Fauci during the Biden inauguration and singing his praises (\u201cIt\u2019s been an honor working with you and thank you for your help during this challenging period,\u201d he tells him) and Fauci complaining about \u201casshole\u201d Republican Rep. Jim Jordan<\/a> after a particularly boorish bout of congressional grandstanding. American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci<\/em> also explores the 82-year-old\u2019s 50-plus-year medical career, from his humble beginnings in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to his time at the NIH (1968-2022) and his tenure as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1984-2022), where he was at the forefront of the response to combatting HIV\/AIDS<\/a>, swine flu, SARS, MERS, Ebola, and Covid-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone<\/em>, Fauci discussed everything from the lessons he learned from his father to the lab-leak theory<\/a> and possible origins of the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\u2019s retirement going for you? What are you liking about it and what are you not <\/em>liking about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, it\u2019s interesting because it\u2019s not \u201cretirement\u201d in the sense of not doing things. I was at the NIH for 54 years, and I was the director of the Institute for 38 years, so I stepped down from those official government roles \u2014 and also being the chief medical advisor to President Biden \u2014 but the things I\u2019m doing right now are the continuation of commitments I made when I was the director. I say \u201cretirement\u201d tongue-in-cheek, because when I decided to step down at the end of 2022, it was not with the intention of essentially going to play golf, going to a beach, or getting a boat and sailing around the world, which I couldn\u2019t do even if I wanted to since I don\u2019t like sailing. [Laughs<\/em>] What I\u2019ve done is I\u2019ve been giving a number of lectures, writing a number of prospectives and commentaries, and I very likely will associate myself with a university medical center. I will stay in Washington, D.C. I\u2019ve been here 54 years and don\u2019t see myself physically leaving. It isn\u2019t really <\/em>retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mention in the documentary how, during your time under Trump, you would regularly receive late-night calls from a blocked number that was always Trump, who would then proceed to berate you for clarifying the disinformation he spread about Covid. What was the wackiest late-night call you got from Trump?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I wouldn\u2019t say \u201cwacky.\u201d It just was one of those things where the tension between me and the president \u2014 less so the president than the people around him, but he felt strongly about [Covid] \u2014 put me in this uncomfortable position. We\u2019d be up there on the podium of the press room in the White House, and the president would get up and say something like, \u201cHydroxychloroquine is going to be a cure,\u201d or \u201cthe virus is going to disappear like magic next month,\u201d and then, since I would be standing there with him, the press would say, \u201cWhat do you think, Dr. Fauci?\u201d And, in order to preserve my own personal and professional integrity, but more importantly to fulfill my obligation to the American public as a public health official, I had to do something very uncomfortable, which was say, \u201cNo I\u2019m sorry, I disagree. Hydroxychloroquine does not work. And it won\u2019t disappear like magic.\u201d Then, the press would call me up and ask me to amplify on that, and I would go through the data on why it\u2019s clear that this isn\u2019t going to disappear, and why there\u2019s no evidence whatsoever that hydroxychloroquine, or bleach, or anything else works. [Trump] would read that in the paper and call me and go, \u201cWhy can\u2019t you be more positive <\/em>about it?\u201d and my response would be, \u201cGulp<\/em>, I\u2019m sorry I can\u2019t be, because I need to be responsible<\/em>about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You looked like your soul was leaving your body during those press conferences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yup. Yup<\/em>\u2026 It\u2019s uncomfortable because the far-right have interpreted that as I was nefariously trying to harm Trump, which absolutely was the furthest thing from the truth. I\u2019m fundamentally about science<\/a>. So, they didn\u2019t understand that I didn\u2019t like the fact that I had to get up and contradict the President of the United States. It\u2019s not like I did it, went home to my wife, and said, \u201cHey, look what I did today!\u201d That\u2019s not how it happened. It was a very uncomfortable situation to be in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think if hydroxychloroquine actually worked Jair Bolsonaro<\/a> would be in much better health than he\u2019s in right now.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a recent study<\/a> in The Lancet<\/em> that claimed that the natural immunity from an existing Covid infection provides protection on a par with two doses of the mRNA vaccine<\/a>. The anti-vax crowd has cited this as justification for not getting vaccinated.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole idea of what natural infection-induced immunity is has been misconstrued by the people who are anti-vax in misrepresenting public health officials as saying that infection-induced immunity is no good and doesn\u2019t work. That\u2019s never been the case. I keep repeating over and over and over again that infection-induced immunity is good, and it can protect you from reinfection. What the CDC are saying, and I agree with them, is that even with infection-induced immunity you dramatically increase it if you also get vaccinated. It doesn\u2019t say that \u201cnatural immunity,\u201d another word for \u201cinfection-induced immunity,\u201d doesn\u2019t work. It says that a hybrid immunity is better. Another thing is that infection-induced immunity is much more difficult to monitor because some people think they got infected and they didn\u2019t get infected; they may have gotten infected and had just a few symptoms, which doesn\u2019t give them a lot of immunity; or they may have gotten very sick, which gives them a lot of immunity. So, it is variable. But the misconstruing that public health officials say that natural immunity doesn\u2019t work is not true. It absolutely works. But that plus<\/em> vaccine brings it to a higher level of protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel like we\u2019re taking Covid seriously enough right now in America? Most of the country just seemed to reach the point of \u201cenough is enough,\u201d and the Biden administration even declared the pandemic \u201cover.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I think we have to put it in the context that we\u2019re in an unprecedented situation. In 1918, the historic pandemic influenza was even worse than this. It killed 50-100 million people worldwide. But we\u2019ve never had a situation as serious as this that\u2019s lasted now going into its fourth year. We are in year four. It started in January of 2020. Having said that, we are tired of Covid. Everybody wants to put Covid in the rearview mirror and say, \u201cWe\u2019re done with it,\u201d so it\u2019s a natural, understandable, though not necessarily correct viewpoint that we\u2019re out of the woods. One thing is true: We\u2019re much better off now than we were a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago, we were getting 800,000-900,000 infections and 3,000-4,000 deaths. Today, we\u2019re having 300-400 deaths a day. Even though that\u2019s much better than where we were, it\u2019s not where the endgame should be. Because that means you\u2019re talking about up to 3,000 deaths per week, which is really a high level. So, to your point: Are we underestimating Covid now? Yes, because we\u2019re so used to it that we\u2019re accepting a level of infection and death that under any other circumstance would be alarming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there are the lingering effects, or long Covid.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s also true. The percentage of people that have lingering symptoms varies from five to 25 percent, depending upon what study you look at. Persistence of symptoms, or the appearance of new symptoms, can be troublesome \u2014 but ultimately, they can also disappear. What we don\u2019t know today is what percentage of people years from now are going to have a higher incidence of heart disease, stroke, or myocardial infarction. We don\u2019t know that. The data are starting to point to people with Covid, compared to those that didn\u2019t, having a higher incidence of all kinds of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. If that\u2019s true, given the enormous amount of people who have been infected and gotten Covid, this could be a serious public health problem for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those opposed to masking have pointed to a recent Cochrane Library review<\/a>that found wearing a mask made \u201clittle to no difference\u201d in how many people caught Covid.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cochrane study, and the interpretation of the Cochrane study, is deeply<\/em> flawed \u2014 to the point that the writers of the Cochrane study came out with a statement<\/a> saying, \u201cOur study is being misinterpreted. We did not say masks<\/a> don\u2019t work.\u201d And in fact, if you look at and unpack that study, the only study that showed only Covid and masks were two studies, and both of them showed that masking was beneficial. So, in reality, it actually shows that masks work. Forget all these people that were quoting the Cochran study and saying, \u201cA-ha! I told you that masks don\u2019t work!\u201d Even the organizers<\/em> of the Cochran study are saying that\u2019s not so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a candid moment in the documentary where you apologize for your messaging on masking early on in the pandemic. On March 8, 2020, you said, \u201cRight now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.\u201d Wouldn\u2019t common sense lead you to believe that masking was good, since it was so effective in battling SARS-CoV-1?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point I was trying to make was that my statements in January, February, and early March were based on data as we knew it. We did not know aerosol transmission occurred. We did not know that 50 to 60 percent of the transmission were from those asymptomatic. We were told there was a shortage of masks. There were no studies to show that masks actually work. So, when I said, \u201cI don\u2019t think people should be wearing masks,\u201d I based that on the data that we had. However, as the months went by and it became clear, a) that there\u2019s no shortage of masks, b) aerosol transmission is important, c) many studies show that masks work, and d) 50 to 60 percent of the transmissions occur from someone with no symptoms, I changed my mind and said masks should be worn. You can say that\u2019s flip-flopping \u2014 I guess<\/em> you could \u2014 but it really is following the data. Now, the reason that I sort of apologized in the documentary is about something you said: Common sense should have told us early on that you\u2019re not sure masking works, but why not wear \u2018em? That\u2019s probably what I should have said back then. Common sense should have told us early on that it can\u2019t hurt and likely can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One scene in the documentary that\u2019s quite powerful sees you listening to angry voicemails you\u2019ve received \u2014 including a number of death threats. You have a very emotional response to it. You also say in the documentary that \u201cdisinformation and misinformation kills.\u201d With all that in mind, how do you feel about the role that Fox News and Tucker Carlson \u2014 who hosts the most popular news program in the country \u2014 have played throughout the pandemic in spreading disinformation regarding Covid and its effects?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want to go tit for tat with Fox News. They come after me every night for things that I haven\u2019t said and haven\u2019t done. Turn on Fox News, and somebody\u2019s going to be saying something about me. All of that is a sea of disinformation, misinformation, and untruths. And the reason they attack me is that I represent something that\u2019s very inconvenient for them: The truth. I think that the misinformation and disinformation, whether it\u2019s on Fox News or any other place, if it gets someone who otherwise would have been vaccinated who did not get vaccinated, or who otherwise would have worn a mask who didn\u2019t wear a mask, it is without a doubt that that will lead to unnecessary suffering and even death. There\u2019s no doubt that misinformation and disinformation does kill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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