Dr Anthony Fauci examines an early AIDS patient at NIH, 1987
Photo: NIAID
Dr. Anthony Fauci has served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, and is now the president’s chief medical adviser. He has been at the forefront of the US medical response since the height of the HIV / Aids epidemic and continued when another deadly viral pandemic took hold.
He had previously talked about the comparisons and contrasts between AIDS and COVID-19, but now he has revealed that at the height of the HIV / Aids epidemic he had to visit gay bars and bathhouses to see how it reduces the LGBTQ community .
Related: Trump called dr. Fauci ‘for months’ blocked Rachel Maddow’s show. Biden has already allowed him.
In a sit-down NPR‘s Terry Gross for the Fresh Air podcast, dr. Fauci talks in depth about his handling of HIV and the coronavirus during his tenure from the 1980s to today. He felt that he could help the saunas and clubs with his own eyes to become a better immunologist.
“It was the very, very early years of the outbreak,” he began. ‘We have seen this large number of gay men who used to be otherwise good and who have been devastated by this terrible, mysterious disease. And it was so concentrated in the gay community that I really wanted a sense of what was going on there that would lead to this explosion of a sexually transmitted disease. ”
“So I did. I’m going to the Castro district [of San Francisco]. I went down to Greenwich Village and went into the bathhouses to essentially see what was going on. ”
There, dr. Fauci said he has found the “insight” he needs to properly combat the epidemic.
‘I went into the bathhouses to see essentially what was going on, and the epidemiologist inside me said,’ Oh well, this is a perfect setup for an explosion of a sexually transmitted disease. ‘And the same goes to the gay bars and see what’s going on, and it gave me a good insight into the explosiveness of the outbreak of the sexually transmitted disease. ”
Gross asks dr. Fauci or the then president, Republican Ronald Reagan, made his job more difficult. “Reagan was supported by the religious right which had a very anti-gay agenda,” Gross remarked, “and it was very central to their political agenda. Do you think it interferes with the kind of funding you need for AIDS research? ‘
“You know, I think it did to some degree,” said Dr. Fauci replied, although he said: “I think the president himself did not feel that way.”
Dr Fauci added: ‘I believe, because a large part of his constituency was on the way, what he did not do was that he did not use the bullying pulpit of the presidency to get support and attention for what does not happen right before. of everyone’s eyes. ”
Gross then told Dr. Fauci started asking about the target of foreign HIV / Aids activists, and this was also the case when the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020.
‘I think you were slightly burned … and there was an image of your head on a peak. Were these threats that you had to take seriously as you now have to take them seriously? ‘Ask Gross.
“No, absolutely not,” said Dr. Fauci immediately replied.
He once recounts that he went to “the center of Greenwich Village to meet with what you should have been, anywhere from 50 to 100 activists in this meeting room”, essentially in itself, adds dr. Fauci then, “not for a moment I feel physically threatened to go there, not even close. I mean, that’s not the kind of thing the protest was. One of the things about it was that they were not just on a violent way threatened, but ultimately was on the right side of history. ‘
He specifically mentioned Larry Kramer, the famous opener, who called him “a killer” because he did not pay attention to the LGBTQ community at the time.
‘I will never forget it. He wanted to get my attention. And he definitely caught my attention, ‘said Dr. Fauci remembers the late legendary activist.
Dr. Fauci said he learned two important things from dealing with the AIDS epidemic: ‘One of them is the importance of getting the community involved and dealing with the community and their special needs … if you look at the prevalence of infection and the occurrence of serious diseases, including hospitalization and deaths, brown and black people suffer disproportionately more than whites.
“We also learned how important fundamental basic science is to find solutions,” he explained. ‘In the early days, HIV infection was a de facto death sentence for the overwhelming majority … it was the fundamental basic science of the purposeful drug development that enabled us to develop drug combinations … which ultimately led to the lives of people with HIV. ”