Dr. Anthony Fauci said he and his family have faced “serious threats” since he 🅘jo൲ined the White House coronavirus task force as the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, according to a report.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s David Axelrod on his “The Axe Files” podcast Thursday that the level of anger was on a different level than when he took on the HIV/AIDS crisis decades ago, .
“I’ve seen a side of society that I guess is understandable but it’s a little bit dis꧒turbing,” he said.
“Back in the days of HIV when I was being criticized with some hate mail, it was, you know, people calling me a gay-lover and ‘what the hell are you wasting a lot of time on that’ … things that you would just push aside as stupid people saying stupid things,” Fauci said.
But “it’s really a magnitude differe𒀰nt” now, he said, because “as much as people inappropriately, I think, make me somewhat of a hero … there are people who get really angry at thinking I’m interfering with their life beca🌠use I’m pushing a public-health agenda.”
This has led🔯 to both hate mail and “serio⛄us threats against me, against my family … my daughters, my wife — I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?”
He said he als♒o has been assigned a security detail as a result of the threats, the outlet reported.
President Trump recently said in a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace that Fauci is a “little bit of an alarmist.” The docto𝄹r later said he prefers to think of himself as “a realist.”