New Delhi: Anthony Fauci had a nearly five-decade long career in the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and many terms with different presidential administrations, before he ran into Donald Trump.
Over the last month, as the US stumbled into its greatest crisis in at least a decade, the country’s top infectious-disease expert has made it apparent that he isn’t on the same page as Trump about the North American giant’s strategy to deal with the massive Covid-19 outbreak.
With over 600,000 cases already, and a death toll of more than 26,000 – both highest across the globe – the US is struggling with a monumental public health crisis.
Amid this, Fauci has publicly expressed his disagreements with the US president many times.
The latest move came Tuesday, when the Associated Press quoted Fauci as saying that US is not ready to reopen the economy by 1 May, cautioning Trump against such a step. The president is actively looking to restart the US economy as quickly as possible.
This was merely two days after Trump shared a post on microblogging site Twitter that called for the ouster of Fauci.
Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020
While the White House spokesperson denied any action under consideration against Fauci – who has become one of the most credible faces of the US fight against the coronavirus pandemic – the row only highlighted the growing tension between the two.
This, however, has brought Fauci under the limelight. As the expert meets his greatest challenge yet, ThePrint takes a look at the highlights of his long career, and how he has reluctantly challenged Trump in the last few weeks.
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Who is Anthony Fauci?
As a physician, Anthony Fauci, 79, has worked for the NIH for over 50 years now, serving in various capacities. His scientific work is focussed on the human immune system and related diseases.
In 2003, a study indicated that in the two-decade period between 1983 and 2002, Fauci was the 13th most-cited scientist among the 2.5 to 3 million authors who published articles across all disciplines in scientific journals throughout the world.
The immunologist was the world’s 10th most-cited HIV/AIDS researcher in the 1996-2006 period.
Since 1984, Fauci has been serving as the Director of US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), where he oversees an extensive portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria and illness from potential agents of bioterrorism.
He has served six different US presidential administrations.
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Fauci and Trump during pandemic
Earlier this year, the Donald Trump Administration appointed US NIAID director Anthony Fauci as one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force to address the Covid-19 outbreak in the US.
Fauci had strongly advised the administration to put social distancing measures in place in the US in the early days of the emerging crisis, when the president was still downplaying its seriousness.
Reports suggest top public health experts in the US had agreed in the third week of February to bring in strong social distancing measures. In a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force on 21 February, a mock-up exercise of the pandemic predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths.
However, the guidelines for social distancing were not implemented for over the next three weeks. In an interview to CNN Sunday, Fauci admitted that had these measures been implemented earlier, the US may have saved more lives.
However, Fauci later said in a press briefing that while discussions for implementing social distancing measures were going on, the first time he and his colleagues formally advised the US president to implement strict social distancing measures, it was done without delay.
Asked whether he was making this clarification at Trump’s behest, he added, “Everything I do is voluntary. Don’t even imply that.”
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The credibility of Fauci
As the Covid-19 crisis has worsened severely in the US, Anthony Fauci has come to be seen as one of the few reliable people in the Donald Trump administration after he publicly disagreed with, or corrected, the US president’s statements.
Fauci first contradicted Trump publicly when the US president compared the novel coronavirus to seasonal flu. Fauci rejected these comparisons.
One of major issues where Trump and Fauci appear to be on separate tangents is the much talked about drug combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
Despite the lack of scientific evidence to support the use of this combination to treat Covid-19, Trump called the treatment as a potential “game-changer”, only on the basis of positive results during a French trial. Fauci immediately advised caution in interpreting anecdotal evidence and pointed out that the study was not a controlled clinical trial.
Despite Fauci advocating caution, the US has imported a consignment of 35.82 lakh tablets of hydroxychloroquine along with nine metric tonnes of active pharmaceutical ingredient, or API required in the manufacturing of the drug, from India.
During a press briefing on 24 March, Fauci’s reactions to a comment made by the US president – where the latter likened the State Department to “the Deep State Department” – became a trending moment on social media. The expert was caught on camera making facial gestures, first appearing to be stifling a laugh, and then rubbing his forehead before covering his face.
Besides becoming a butt of jokes and an inspiration for memes, the reaction triggered rumours of underlying disagreements between Fauci and Trump. Fauci, however, called such reports unfortunate, adding that “fundamentally there are no differences”.
In an interview with Science Magazine, Fauci said Trump listens to him, “even though we disagree on some things”. He also said that while Trump makes some incorrect statements during daily media briefings, there was a limit to what he could do.
“I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down,” Fauci said. “OK, he said it. Let’s try and get it corrected for the next time.”
Nevertheless, Trump supporters have attacked Fauci online. An analysis by The New York Times found over 70 accounts on Twitter that have promoted the hashtag #FauciFraud.
But in Fauci’s words, the US faces a “much bigger problem here than trying to point out differences”.
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Making no decision is a decision in itself. It is a bad decision in my opinion for a leader
President has to make a decision and must take all the expert advise at that point in time.
No decision is prefect on the hind side lot of faults will be thrown up to run down the decision maker.
The entire world is mourning and emotionally people are very upset throughout the world due to this demon virus. Hello world leaders, my humble request would be that this is not the time to conflicts each others in this deep global crisis situation, really really frustrating but please stay calm and work collaboratively and globally till get rid of this pandamic from the world. Any major issues should be discussed with solid action once after this pandamic get over to protect precious human life in the earth against any culprits who might have involved in modifying this virus to extreme to kill many innocent human life in this world by killing the powerful immune cells that are supposed to kill the virus, any organization supported for this massacre crime by misleading and misguiding the data and guidelines and allow to spread this demon virus exponentially to the world.
How many medical patents Fauci have? I think he is more of a loudmouth than a serious scientist who published more than he researched and spoke more than he searched.
Let Sekhar Gupta cover the White House related covid19 matters. He is through and follows these briefings closely. It is height of stretching the facts to conclude that Trump and Fauci àre not on the same page, based on a couple of minor disagreements. As Trump said, stop the American economy when there was only one case of infection? And he did stop all flights from China quite early, against the opinion of WHO and the Democrats.
At 80, Dr Fauci has earned his place in the history books, as Donal Trump has, being the third President to be impeached. He needs neither fame nor money. He is devoting himself to the fight against this pandemic in the noblest traditions of both medicine and public service. He understands that he needs to be inside the tent, not outside of it, to help save American lives. For all his bluff and bluster, Trump understands the value of this great man. Not only will he not fire him, he will have no option but to defer to his professional judgment on when and how much to open up the economy.
With due respect to Dr Fauci, the President of the US can’t fold his hand and sit back, while a controlled trial of two medicines is under progress, and let people die. The President has to grab at available straws to save his country. So, condemning Trump for what he is doing is not fair.