Thread by @Telegraph

🚨 America’s foremost infectious disease expert talks about the "mother of all outbreaks," the AIDS crisis and facing off with Trump

telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/dr-…

The evergreen director of @NIAIDNews has been a medical adviser to seven consecutive US presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan, steering them and his country through outbreaks of Ebola, Sars, Zika, avian flu, swine flu and the threat of biological weapons after 9/11

Dr Fauci was one of the first scientists to spot the lethal new syndrome that was Aids in the early 1980s

Donald Trump was initially sceptical of the threat from Covid-19. But Fauci managed to persuade him to back state-by-state lockdowns, and approve social-distancing measures. He also restricted Chinese visitors to the country

By the spring, however, Fauci’s relations with the president had soured as Trump began listening to outsiders with no scientific knowledge and fretting about the damage to the economy and – by extension – his re-election hopes

Fauci’s challenge was to correct the president’s dangerous falsehoods as diplomatically as possible.

He says:

"I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things – or allowed things to happen – that were terrible"

"[Trump]allowed the communications department of the White House to send out a list to all of the media, all of the networks, all of the cables, all of the print press, about all of the mistakes I’ve made, which was absolute nonsense because there were no mistakes" - Dr Fauci

The former president also began to denigrate Fauci in tweets and press conferences, setting him up as a target for the extreme Right’s hatred.

"To this day I have to have armed federal agents guarding me all the time," Fauci says

By the time Biden took office, the pandemic was raging out of control.

When president 46 entered the White House, America was suffering 300,000 to 400,000 positive Covid-19 cases and 4,000 deaths per day

Fauci says the US is home to 4% of the world’s population, but has now suffered 20% of global deaths from Covid-19 – 475,000 in total, plus nearly 30 million recorded cases

Asked why he wanted to specialise in infectious diseases, Fauci told @jclinicalinvest, "I wanted something that could make you very sick and kill you unless I intervened"

In 1984 Fauci was NIAID’s director, which coincided with the eruption of AIDS.

He had spotted its emergence three years earlier, and had conducted groundbreaking research into its causes. But, by virtue of his position, he became a lightning rod for the fury of the gay community

In 1990 the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power staged a mass demonstration outside NIAID’s Bethesda offices. They chanted "F— you, Fauci," burnt his effigy and carried a mock-up of his bloodied head on a stake – in a foretaste of the hatred he would encounter again in 2020

Ultimately, Fauci accepted the LGBTQ+ community's arguments and embraced their cause. Crucially, he managed to streamline the interminable approval process for new drugs, making experimental treatments available to AIDS patients before their efficacy had been proved

"I think one of the best things I have ever done in my long career was appreciate that behind the drama, the theatrics, the iconoclastic behaviour, [the LGBTQ+ community] needed to get our attention because what they had to say was important and relevant" - Dr Fauci

📌 Reagan and AIDS

"He just didn’t want to be utilising the bully pulpit...to get out there and use the office of the presidency to call attention to this extraordinary, insidiously emerging outbreak that was not being fully recognised because it was predominantly among gay men"

📌 Trump and Covid

"[Trump] was almost a counter-influence to what I was trying to do...That caused unnecessary and uncomfortable conflict where I had to essentially correct what he was saying, and put me at great odds with his people"

At different times Trump called Covid-19 a "Democratic hoax," claimed the virus would magically disappear, and recommended bleach and hydroxychloroquine as cures

Fauci became, in his own words, "the skunk at the picnic."

Behind the scenes, White House officials pressed him to stop contradicting the president, and by the summer he had largely been barred from official briefings

Trump begun openly to denigrate him.

🔷 "People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots"

🔷 "He’s been here 500 years"

🔷 "Fauci is a disaster. If I listened to him we would have 500,000 deaths"

But Fauci remained a hero to millions of Americans. Brad Pitt played him on @nbcsnl. Bumper stickers proclaimed "In Fauci we trust" and Washington, DC’s mayor designated last Christmas Eve to be ‘Dr Anthony S Fauci Day’ in honour of his 80th birthday

Fauci is much happier today. The pandemic still rages, but he is back in the fold. He talks frequently to Biden and the new White House Covid-19 task force. He addresses press conferences again and is delighted with Biden’s strategy for defeating the virus

He fears Covid-19 will continue to be a global problem, but "it ends as an all-consuming crisis for the US, the UK and the EU when we get the overwhelming majority of our population vaccinated and the level of community spread goes to a very low level"

His last great ambition? To find a vaccine for Aids. It would be a brilliant end to a remarkable career