“You want to make sure that, in your desire to get back to normal, that we don’t leapfrog over some of the benchmarks we need to reach in order to get to the next stage.” Dr. Anthony Fauci.




“You want to make sure that, in your desire to get back to normal, that we don’t leapfrog over some of the benchmarks we need to reach in order to get to the next stage.” Dr. Anthony Fauci. Getty Images


Since 1984, he’s been at the table and helping lead the fight to keep Americans healthy and virus-free.

“You want to make sure that, in your desire to get back to normal, that we don’t leapfrog over some of the benchmarks we need to reach in order to get to the next stage.” Dr. Anthony Fauci. Getty Images
All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 outbreak.

Since 1984, he’s been at the table and helping lead the fight to keep Americans healthy and virus-free.


Now in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony FauciTrusted Source has become the voice and symbol of both promise and resolve in the battle against the new coronavirus.

Dr. Fauci sat down with Healthline for an exclusive interview on Friday to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic, working with six presidential administrations, and what he does to deal with pandemic stress.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who served as a member of President Trump’s task force on COVID-19.

You’ve been in this arena since 1984 and through six administrations. Can you recall a time even remotely similar to this challenge?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: It’s interesting we are speaking today. On June 4, 1981, the first report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention morbidity and mortality weekly report showed that five gay men, all from Los Angeles, had presented with a strange new syndrome.

In 1984, when I became director of [the NIAID], it was the very beginning of an outbreak that we didn’t fully understand the full implications of. We thought incorrectly that it was restricted to the gay community and to injecting drug users.

“You want to make sure that, in your desire to get back to normal, that we don’t leapfrog over some of the benchmarks we need to reach in order to get to the next stage.” Dr. Anthony Fauci. Getty Images
All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 outbreak.

Since 1984, he’s been at the table and helping lead the fight to keep Americans healthy and virus-free.


Now in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony FauciTrusted Source has become the voice and symbol of both promise and resolve in the battle against the new coronavirus.

Dr. Fauci sat down with Healthline for an exclusive interview on Friday to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic, working with six presidential administrations, and what he does to deal with pandemic stress.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who served as a member of President Trump’s task force on COVID-19.

You’ve been in this arena since 1984 and through six administrations. Can you recall a time even remotely similar to this challenge?
Dr. Anthony Fauci: It’s interesting we are speaking today. On June 4, 1981, the first report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention morbidity and mortality weekly report showed that five gay men, all from Los Angeles, had presented with a strange new syndrome.

In 1984, when I became director of [the NIAID], it was the very beginning of an outbreak that we didn’t fully understand the full implications of. We thought incorrectly that it was restricted to the gay community and to injecting drug users.


We didn’t realize that throughout the world and in Africa it was bubbling up as a mostly heterosexual disease, which right now, today, fast-forward, more than 80 million people have been infected, more than 37 million people have died, and there are 37 million people living with HIV. That was my first interaction with the presidency, with the administration of Ronald Reagan.  

So it wasn’t the explosive, immediate nature of COVID-19, which essentially impacts, directly or indirectly, everybody in the world because everyone feels they are at risk. That’s different than with HIV, when it was clear it was defined by a risk behavior and not something that was completely out of your control, like respiratory illness.