Dr. Anthony Fauci on his newfound fame: ‘It’s surrealistic and… nice & amusing’

Dr. Anthony Fauci is one of People Magazine’s People of the Year. They gave him a cover and everything. If you had told me, one year ago, that one of the POTYs for 2020 would be an unassuming 79-year-old immunologist with a regional New York accent, I would not have believed you. But here we are. Dr. Fauci is legitimately one of the few people who made 2020 better. His calm, matter-of-fact demeanor was a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s raging insanity. Fauci spent most of the year blanketing the media, trying to get people to take mask-wearing and social distancing seriously. Some highlights from his interview:

The challenges of 2020: For the past 11 months, Dr. Anthony Fauci has found himself at the center of what he describes as one of “the most difficult and devastating infectious disease and respiratory outbreaks that we’ve experienced in the last 102 years… You have a devastating public health challenge in the midst of a very divisive society, in a very hotly-contested political year. You put all of those ingredients together and it’s been quite challenging.”

His fame has grown so much that he has the top-selling bobblehead. “It’s surrealistic and, in some respects, nice and amusing. But you can’t take that stuff seriously and start to think you’re a celebrity. When you start to think that, then you get into trouble. I’m a physician. I’m a scientist. And I’m a public health official.”

Watching Brad Pitt play him on SNL: “I’m definitely not as good-looking as he is. But I think he did a great job. At the time, I had a vocal cord polyp and my voice sounded like Vito Corleone in The Godfather. He did a great job imitating me with that and pretty good job with the Brooklyn accent, too.”

What he sees as his job: Much of Fauci’s job for the past year, he explains, has involved using the media to try and help Americans not only understand the importance of adhering to public health measures (like mask wearing and social distancing), but to give them hope, he says, that “we can turn this around.”

He has enjoyed his celebrity interactions: “The thing that you do learn is that they’re really fine people. They’re real people. They’re good people. They’re people who you might initially think that they’d consider themselves big deals because they’re celebrities. But when you get to sit down and talk to them, you feel that if you really got to know them in the real world — instead of in this extraordinary world that we’re living in right now — they actually could wind up being your friends.”

[From People]

It occurred to me as I read this that people were really hungry for a competent, grey-haired older man to come in and be calm and tell them reasonable things they can do to stay safe. Perhaps Fauci’s popularity was the best indicator for Joe Biden winning the presidency! Anyway, I like that Dr. Fauci is a real one and he’s not trying to be a “celebrity,” but is instead using his many platforms to simply inform and educate.

In a separate interview, Fauci spoke about the vaccination schedule and how we could possibly have a majority of the American public vaccinated by May-June, and if that’s the case, sports could really return by the middle of next year. Meaning, people could actually go to ball games or tennis matches, and maybe even concerts could start happening.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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