Dr. Anthony Fauci has taken the role as the nation’s top health expert amid the coronavirus pandemic, and it has not come without threats.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, revealed during an interview on “The Axe Files” podcast Thursday that he has received “serious threats.”
“I’ve seen a side of society that I guess is understandable but it’s a little bit disturbing,” Fauci said, adding that it is worse than when he worked during the HIV/AIDS crisis.
He continued, “Back in the day of HIV when I was being criticized with some hate mail, it was more, you know, people calling me a gay-lover and ‘what the hell are you wasting a lot of time on that.’ I mean things that you would just push aside as stupid people saying stupid things.”
Fauci shared that it is “really a magnitude different” amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He shared:
“Because the amount of anger. As much as people inappropriately, I think, make me somewhat of a hero, which I’m not a hero, I’m just doing my job. There are people who get really angry at thinking I’m interfering with their life because I’m pushing a public health agenda.”
The NIAID director revealed he has received “hate mail” and “serious threats against me, against my family, my daughters, my wife.”
“I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?” he asked.
Asked if he has had to take on security measure, Fauci said he does have security.
Listen to Fauci’s interview below:
During the interview, Fauci also shared that, “as bad as [the coronavirus pandemic] is and the fact that it isn’t even over,” he hopes it “will trigger us to realize that there will be a next time.”
“So we’ve gotta use lessons learned now to be even better prepared than we were this time,” he added. “Because we were reasonably well-prepared, we were just overcome by the magnitude of this and how it exploded on us.”
Fauci also revealed that “over the decades,” he has been asked what his worst fear and nightmare is.
He then said, “I would always say, consistently, it would be a virus that would jump species … it would be a respiratory virus, and it would have two major characteristics — it would spread in a very, very efficient manner, and two, it would have a substantial degree of morbidity and mortality,” noting that COVID-19 is “the worst nightmare.”