An enthusiastic and appreciative audience greeted Dr. Anthony Fauci as he spoke about the successes and challenges of the nation’s public health system in his Distinguished Carlson Lecture on April 8.
Fauci, who recently retired after serving 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS, the swine flu, Ebola, and COVID-19.
He became a de facto public health spokesperson during the pandemic, a role that brought him vocal criticism as well as praise.
Fauci was met with a lengthy standing ovation as he took the stage at Northrop on the University of Minnesota campus for his appearance, which was rescheduled from October.
Humphrey School Dean Nisha Botchwey said Dr. Fauci exemplifies the School’s mission to foster public dialogue, engage with diverse perspectives, and bring thoughtful discourse to the forefront of public policy.
“Since this lecture was originally scheduled last fall, we’ve seen shifts in the political and federal landscape that underscore how vital it is to have space for civil, evidence-based discourse,” said Botchwey. “Dr. Fauci’s presence tonight is a powerful reminder of the importance of public engagement, even when the environment becomes more complex.”
The Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series is presented by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs with support from Carlson and the Carlson Family Foundation.
In his remarks and subsequent conversation with moderator Arshad Mohammed, a longtime reporter for Reuters, Fauci spoke about his lengthy career in infectious disease research and treatment as well as the challenges presented by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are some key points from his lecture and the Q/A, edited for length and clarity.
His career path
Fauci grew up in Brooklyn, and his father was a pharmacist who ran a mom-and-pop drug store. In addition to dispensing prescription drugs, his dad also helped their neighbors by giving advice and counsel, and lending a sympathetic ear to those who needed one. Fauci said his father had a profound sense of empathy and caring for the community.
“Service to others and empathy for those who are suffering was part of my DNA,” he said, and that, more than anything else, led him into the field of medicine.
During his medical training, Fauci spent time as a research fellow in infectious diseases and immunology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and that experience changed his career path. Instead of becoming a family practice physician, Fauci turned to clinical research with the hope that his work could lead to treatments that would benefit countless patients around the country and the world.
HIV/AIDS era
“In the summer of 1981, my entire world changed,” Fauci said, as the first cases of young, gay men contracting unusual types of pneumonia, cancer, and other diseases were reported.
“Although we did not realize it at the time, the era of HIV/AIDS had begun. I knew this was a brand new disease and it had to be infectious,” he said.”This was the medical challenge that I felt I had been trained for as an infectious diseases and immunology specialist. I made a career-changing decision at that point … to devote myself full time to the study of this new and mysterious disease.”
Fauci began caring for patients with AIDS, and researching its causes. “But these were the dark years of my professional career, since almost all my patients died no matter what I did to help them. I was trained to be a healer, and with AIDS, we were healing no one.”
During this time, Fauci was appointed director of NIAID. As a result, “my horizons expanded from pure basic and clinical research to global health,” he said. “Over the next several years we greatly expanded the resources for research on AIDS, and in collaboration with the pharmaceutical companies, we were able to develop highly effective therapies for HIV, such that patients who would have likely died were now able to lead relatively healthy and normal lives.”
The COVID-19 pandemic
In December 2019, the world changed again with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the outbreak began more than five years ago, more than 1.2 million people in the U.S. have died from the disease.
Fauci said the scientific response to COVID was “spectacular,” because of the speedy development of the vaccine that has likely saved millions of lives around the world.
However, the public health response of the nation was “not optimal … apart from the extraordinary courage and commitment of health care providers, taking care of desperately ill people and putting themselves at risk. We could and should have done much better.”
Lessons learned
Fauci acknowledged that scientific and public health leaders could have done a better job communicating to the public, in great measure to counter the disinformation that was being disseminated.
“We were dealing with a moving target. What we did not communicate clearly enough … is that information was evolving over time, about [an illness] we’d never experienced before. Science is a process that gathers information, data, and evidence to allow you to, at a given point, make a recommendation or a guideline. If the information changes, the process of science is self correcting. In the arena of disinformation, that got interpreted by many people as, ‘The scientists are flip-flopping, therefore we’re not going to listen to anything they say.’”
Fauci said it was “painful” for him to publicly contradict statements from President Trump in 2020, when Trump falsely said the virus would “disappear like magic,” or when he promoted the use of drugs like hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID.
“I took no pleasure in this, despite what some people might think, since I have a great deal of respect for the presidency. But I had to speak out to preserve my own integrity and to fulfill my responsibility to those whom I am responsible to, the American public.”
On why people mistrust public health officials
Fauci lays much of the blame on people who use social media to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories – for example, that the COVID vaccines cause more deaths than the disease itself, or that the measles vaccine causes autism – when the data show both of those claims are false.
“And yet if you say it through social media enough, a substantial proportion of the people will believe it. Those who spread disinformation on social media are much more energetic and much more aggressive about it than the medical experts, who can’t spend all their time countering that. We need to be more proactive in spreading science-based, evidence-based, data-based information.”
“If we are to successfully respond to the inevitable future pandemics, we must all abide by scientifically sound public health principles. It’s very difficult to do this as a divided nation, in which anti-science, including anti-vax proponents, have established a strong foothold. As we look to the future, we can and must do better.”
See more photos from the event
About the Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series
For more than four decades, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, with support from Carlson and the Carlson Family Foundation, has presented the Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series, bringing to Minnesota world-renowned speakers to participate in a forum dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the most important policy issues of the day. The series began in 1980 with a gift from Curtis L. Carlson to honor his late friend, Hubert H. Humphrey, and to “contribute to the intellectual life of the greater Twin Cities community by sponsoring lively forums of broad interest.”
Previous lecturers include Malala Yousafzai, Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, as well as Liz Cheney, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Gloria Steinem, Jon Meacham, and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. See the complete list here.
