The target is no longer HIV/AIDS, which, thanks to efforts by Fauci and his colleagues, is now a manageable condition. The new adversary is COVID-19, a disease that has sickened nearly 200,000 people around the world.
WASHINGTON — He knew at once that something was amiss. “Five young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at three different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died,” read the opening of the now infamous Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for June 5, 1981.
Now 79 years old, Fauci still has not wilted. And, as he told Yahoo News in a recent interview, he is working up to 19 hours a day. The target is no longer HIV/AIDS, which, thanks to efforts by him and his colleagues, is now a manageable condition. The new adversary is COVID-19, a disease that has sickened nearly 200,000 people around the world.
And though there have been some instances of xenophobia toward people of Chinese descent, there has been nothing like the sustained prejudice experienced by members of the LGBT community during the AIDS crisis. “When I see crowded bars and crowded restaurants, it is a little bit unnerving,” Fauci said."It’s clear that those are the situations that put people very much at risk.”
There is also, in Fauci’s approach, a reminder of what the Roman orator Cicero said and, later, the Jesuits adopted as their own unofficial motto: “Non nobis solum nati sumus,” which translates to “We are not born for ourselves alone.” It is something like that imperative that has kept Fauci in public service, even as many others of his stature have cashed out with plum positions with pharmaceutical companies and health networks.
And he listened to activists, neither dismissing them nor treating them with derision. When they pushed him to approve a drug called AL721, he refused to do so, because he did not believe it would save lives, calling it “useless.” After one protest at NIH headquarters in which demonstrators burned him in effigy, Fauci described their tactic as “interesting” but “not helpful.”
Fauci’s role in fighting the AIDS virus was downgraded in 1994 after the creation of the Office of AIDS Research and the appointment of Dr. William Paul to head the effort. By that time, however, treatments to mitigate the ravages of HIV/AIDS were becoming more effective and more widely available, and the crisis was soon to subside, at least in the United States. When it had been at its worst, it had been Fauci’s war.
Trump and Fauci could not be more different. One is from one of the great ethnic enclaves of Brooklyn, a pharmacist’s studious son. The other was reared by his wealthy real estate developer father in a suburban swath of Queens.
Brasil Últimas Notícias, Brasil Manchetes
Similar News:Você também pode ler notícias semelhantes a esta que coletamos de outras fontes de notícias.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, 79, Has An Insane 19-Hour-A-Day Schedule Right Now“I’m not worried about myself,” he told The New York Times. “I’m worried about the job I have to do.”
Consulte Mais informação »
Fauci: Americans Are “Going to Have to Hunker Down Significantly More” in Coronavirus FightThe country’s top infectious disease expert did not rule out support for a temporary national lockdown of restaurants and bars.
Consulte Mais informação »
U.S. Senate's McConnell says 'not leaving town' until coronavirus aid bill is passedU.S Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday 'we're not ...
Consulte Mais informação »
Here are the industries that could get coronavirus aid from the U.S. governmentEntire industries are hurting and hoping for help from the U.S. government, as Americans cancel travel plans and avoid stores and restaurants because of the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consulte Mais informação »