Once an avid runner, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now 79, power walks. Since receiving death threats, he is now accompanied by a security detail. https://t.co/lbtcL5htQS pic.twitter.com/Q3KG0kV0rV
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 18, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, power walks under security detail because he has received death threats over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That’s sad,” he told 60 Minutes in a Sunday report. “The fact that a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity to me that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety.” He said his wife and his children have faced harassment.
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been publicly divisive. Public health recommendations like mask-wearing and social distancing have faced resistance, as have closures of businesses and public spaces to reduces crowds. Even worse, several men were recently charged for allegedly plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) so they could try her for “treason.”
Amid all this has been the mixed response from President Donald Trump, who recently had a bout with COVID-19. Fauci said he was not surprised POTUS got the disease. He said he was worried Trump was going to get sick from attending the Rose Garden ceremony for the nomination of United States Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
Dr. Fauci says he was “absolutely not” surprised that President Trump got sick with coronavirus after seeing POTUS at what “turned out to be a super-spreader event” at the White House. https://t.co/Iq75GoCErk pic.twitter.com/iDWEaoX582
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 18, 2020
Fauci described the event as a “completely, precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask.” He said that nothing good could come out of that. “And then sure enough it turned out to be a superspreader event.”
[Screengrab via 60 Minutes]
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