The month of July 2020 has seen the emergence of a new campaign of misinformation, apparently backed by the White House, that is aimed at discrediting Dr Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Accordingly, in an op-ed that appeared in USA Today on 13 July, Peter Navarro, Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, stated that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on”. Fauci has been in trouble with the right-wing media, politicians and activists well before this present onslaught, and has been regularly vilified on social media platforms. Most recently, he has even been accused, via implausible conspiracy theories, of actually creating, and then knowingly spreading, Covid-19 throughout America . Increasing death threats against Fauci, which he confirmed in an “Axe Files” podcast on 23 July, have even led the Department of Justice to provide him with a personal security detail for his own, as well as his family’s, safety.
At the same time, Dr Fauci, seen by many as the public face of the nation’s official response to the Covid-19 pandemic, has been hailed as a hero by the majority of Americans. Seen as the trusted voice of reason, he has come to acquire a cult following, based upon his calm and reasoned approach to the pandemic. In particular, he has gently but effectively contradicted President Trump in public on many occasions, on issues such as the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine treatment, the correct time frame for the release of a Covid-19 vaccine, and even the actual benefits of lockdown. As his popularity surges, Fauci T-shirts, face masks, socks, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise are gaining in sales, capitalising on his newly-found celebrity status and in the best traditions of American business enterprise.
The question then is, why has such an unassuming, seemingly inoffensive, grey-haired and bespectacled seventy-nine-year old man managed to provoke so much hatred among such large swathes of the American public. There seem to be many reasons for an intense dislike of Fauci in certain quarters. President Trump’s backers feel that Fauci has actively and publicly undermined the president on many occasions, at a time when he should actually be supporting Trump. Conservative economists and politicians blame Fauci for an “ultra-cautious” approach towards limiting the community transmission of Covid-19 that has directly caused an unprecedented collapse of the American economy. Some opponents of the doctor even point out that during the early stage of the pandemic, Fauci underplayed the seriousness of Covid-19, spoke out against the public wearing of masks, and advised against any restrictions on international travel. None of this has been denied by Fauci. In his defence, he has said that he was acting on the best information available at the time, which has had to be modified as we better understand Covid-19, especially since it is now known that the virus can be transmitted through the air by Covid-19 victims without any symptoms.
It’s now time to take a closer look at the doctor himself. Anthony Stephen Fauci was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn in 1940, to first-generation immigrant parents with ancestral roots in southern Italy. Growing up above his parents’ pharmacy, he excelled in sport while being educated by Jesuits in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and then in Worcester, Massachusetts. Fauci graduated in 1966 with an MD from Cornell University Medical College, coming top of his class. Apart from short periods as a resident (1966-68) and chief resident (1970-71) at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, he has spent his entire working career at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland. His initial work at the NIAID, in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation, led to successful new drug treatments for previously fatal immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, such as polyarteritis nodosa.
Since becoming Director of the NIAID in 1984, Fauci has worked with six successive American Presidents, advising them on the nation’s responses to a wide range of viral outbreaks, including HIV/AIDS, bird flu, swine flu, West Nile virus, Zika, Ebola, and SARS (another coronavirus). When it comes to working with viral epidemics, Fauci has been the subject of criticism before, although much less personal and vindictive than it is now. During the 1980s AIDS epidemic, activists vociferously, and somewhat unfairly, criticised him for the slow progress of anti-retroviral drug trials. In the end, he won most of them over, by both speeding up drug trials and by allowing AIDS victims to be treated with experimental drugs while clinical trials were still ongoing.
Dr Fauci comes across as a likeable person. A reputed workaholic, who keeps fit by “power walking”, he has gained international recognition for his contributions to the fields of of immunology and infectious diseases. His many honours include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the US. Despite all of this, his opponents have repeatedly questioned his scientific credentials and even declared him to be an enemy of the people. As Fauci has himself noted recently, it is a sad reflection of the times that he should feel personally threatened in the US, a supposed bastion of liberty, because of his well-intentioned views on how to keep the nation safe during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ashis Banerjee