Dr. Anthony Fauci On Threats, Frustration And Power Walking

BETHESDA, MD — "I'm looking at the door, down the hall, and my security guy is standing down there," Dr. Anthony Fauci said. He's in his office at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, where he has been the director since 1984.

"It really makes me wonder what the hell is going on here," Fauci said.

Fauci spoke by phone Friday to Patch about how the battle against the coronavirus pandemic has created personal, as well as professional, challenges.

Fauci, who has helped lead the U.S. efforts against the coronavirus, has seen his life and work politicized in ways that it never has before. Throughout the early years of the AIDS crisis, a battle that is still being fought, Fauci was often targeted by activists such as the late Larry Kramer.

Things would settle down when people recognized Fauci's dedication. Even Kramer grew to like him, once saying that he respected the doctor and his efforts, even calling him "a mensch," (a person of integrity and honor).

And as bad as things got, Fauci never received death threats, never needed security. Until now. The death threats led the U.S. Marshals Service to deputize officers from the Department of Health and Human Services to act as his around-the-clock bodyguard detail.

"The things I'm talking about are absolutely apple pie and motherhood," he said. "I'm talking about public health. It's not political. It's not complicated. And that it gets people so riled up, so filled with vitriol that they are making threats against my wife and me, they are harassing my three daughters.

"Society should not be this divided, this polarized," he said. "It's crazy. Why would you want to harass my wife and my daughters?"

Fauci said people tracked down his daughters and posted their personal information on the web, harassing them at home and work.

"They know when they work, they know where they live," he says. "It's just frightening. They tell them, 'We know where you live.'"

Fauci says his daughters haven't been threatened but are often harassed with calls and texts that are sometimes obscene, telling them to tell their father to do things.

"And that's why they gave me security protection."

Fauci doesn't see himself as political. He's been in his position under six presidents — four Republicans and two Democrats. While he's found himself the focus of the ire of activists, this is the first time that he's been publicly criticized by a president and members of an administration.

The anger follows his repeated warnings that taking two simple steps — wearing a mask and practicing social distancing — could make a huge difference in slowing the spread of the virus. Getting the message out can seem like yelling into the wind, he says.

"I've learned through experience that when you're trying to get a message across, you're never going to do it with one shot," he said. "You often got to do it with more than one shot. When you're in the situation with the degree of divisiveness and political complications that we have, trying to get a message across right now out of necessity, you've got to just keep repeating it over and over and over again.

"It does get exhausting," he said. "I mean, I don't think a day goes by that I don't give the speech 10-15 times."

Fauci said fighting disinformation has been difficult.

"My colleagues in science and me, we try to give a consistent message," he says. "But, you know, there's a lot of garbled messages out there because you have a lot of people with conspiracy theories and things like that.

"I kind of empathize and feel badly for the mom at home trying to make decisions that's right for her family, looking for information that helps her do that, and ends up having to sort through a bunch of noise. That really makes it difficult."

Fauci also points to the frustration of dealing with younger people who may never actually get sick, never show any symptoms.

"They enjoy life, go to the bars, have fun, go to parties," Fauci said. "But they don't realize that even if they don't get symptomatic, that they will almost certainly infect someone else, who can infect someone else, who would then infect someone who is vulnerable.

"That person could be someone's wife who's on chemotherapy for cancer or a child who is immunodeficient," he said. "So you really can't think you're in a vacuum when you're dealing with a global pandemic, because everybody is involved in a global pandemic. Everybody, everybody's in it together."

He's also had to deal with people who might not understand how science works: as more is learned, sometimes information and advice to the public changes. That has sometimes led to Fauci and others having to shift on the messaging.

Early in the pandemic, for example, Fauci said that masks likely would do little to prevent the spread of the virus. Later, and now, he is an energetic advocate for mask mandates.

"When you are dealing with something new, you are going to find things change," he said. "It's not that we were trying to deceive people or were not being truthful. It means that sometimes, you learn something new and it changes your understanding.

"It's a process," he said.

Another part of the equation of complications is the issue of vaccine development. On one hand, the United States is home to a very strong anti-vaccine movement. Then there's the people who cast doubt on the process because of its speed – no vaccine has ever been developed in fewer than three years; in this case, they are aiming for months. Add to that people on all sides trying to make it political.

"All this muddles the issue," he says. "Part of it is just a lack of understanding of the fact that the technology keeps getting better and we can move faster than we have. But there's certainly disinformation coming from all over.

"That's the reason why I got to try as best as I can, why we are all trying the best that we can, to put out the truth as often as we can can on these things. We keep trying to be transparent, explaining what we're doing and why we're doing it."

Fauci says that despite the pressure and criticism, he has no intention of walking away.

"The reason is that the problems that I'm dealing with are so important, I can't imagine walking away from them," he said. "I mean, you know we still have HIV/AIDS, there's a way to go on that. Certainly not now, when we're in the middle of a historic pandemic, the likes of which we've not seen for 102 years.

"So it's inconceivable to me to think about walking away from it."

He said he also feels a strong obligation to help make things better, to try to stop more people from getting sick.

"One thing that we've had to fight against is this feeling that things are getting better, that there's a been lull and we're on the lookout for a second wave," he said. "We have a significant first wave that's already going on, still going on. Why even think of a second wave when we're still seeing 40,000 new infections and 1,000 deaths every day?

"Flu season is coming. The vaccine's not here. Even if it gets here soon, it's not going to change things overnight. It's not going to be like flicking a light switch."

Fauci says that once it's developed, once it's proven effective, it will still have to be manufactured in mass quantities. It will have to be deployed."

"It will take time and people need to understand that. They need to be prepared for a slow transition."

He says that while it won't be overnight, while there are deep divisions in the county, he firmly believes in the ability of people to overcome.

"I believe in the fundamental goodness of people," he says. "There's a lot of crap that goes on out there, but fundamentally, we rise to the occasion. We made it through the Depression, through two world wars. We've been through some tough times and made it through. That gives me hope."

With all that is going on, Fauci doesn't have a lot of time to relax. And when he's able to, he finds his options limited by two things — the pandemic and security.

"You can't go anywhere without them," he says of his security detail. "My wife and I, we used to run, but now we do power walking. But, you know, you go power walking at night. It looks kind of funny when you have a black car with tinted windows following 25 feet behind you."