On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service

by Anthony Fauci

he named a special assistant to the president. Scott Atlas had been a Stanford University Medical Center neuroradiologist who often appeared on Fox News commenting about the pandemic. He believed that our public health measures regarding COVID were overkill.

Among his convictions were these: schools should be fully reopened because COVID was not a serious threat to children and they did not transmit the virus efficiently even if they got infected; COVID would run its course no matter what actions we took; only the symptomatic should be tested; and it was the vulnerable in nursing homes and other high-risk places who needed protection. He also thought masks were overrated and that most people should be allowed to go about their lives normally because public health restrictions were upending the economy and exacting an exorbitant social cost. Exactly what the president wanted to hear.

This was commonly in the form of fatigue, but there were also reports of long-term cardiovascular and brain effects even in younger people and in patients who were never sick enough to go to the hospital.

I explained that the monoclonal antibody therapy was still in clinical trials. He said the most important clinical trial had been done—that is, on him, the president—which was all we needed to know. He wanted me to get back to him, and get the treatment out to millions of sick people.

the former Trump adviser and right-wing extremist Steve Bannon announced on his podcast that I should be beheaded along with the FBI director and our heads put on pikes outside the White House.

During November and December 2020 and January 2021, in the waning days of the Trump administration, I was straddling what seemed like not just two different administrations but two parallel universes. Trump was focused on trying to hold on to the presidency while the country suffered from some of its worst days yet in terms of the pandemic.

At our meeting, Kennedy had gone on for more than an hour about the dangers of vaccines including the relationship between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism, making points that were clearly inaccurate. It was a painful discussion in which he distorted the literature and denied evidence widely accepted by the scientific community.

All these weaknesses in our public health response to COVID were profoundly compounded by one of the true enemies of public health: the spread of egregious misinformation and disinformation enabled by the internet and social media that unfortunately remains with us today.