Fauci’s Christmas Eve: Turning 80 and fighting the pandemic

December 24, 2020 6:40 AM

“There is no option to get tired. There is no option to sit down and say ‘I’m sorry, I’ve had enough.” Anthony S. Fauci celebrates a big birthday on Christmas Eve. He’ll be 80. He says he has worked every day since January, often late into the night, laser-focused on fighting the coronavirus pandemic. He enters his ninth decade with remarkable vigor, and attributes his youthful appearance to genetics. His father lived to 97 and never looked his age.

Wear a mask. Keep your distance. Wash your hands. Avoid crowds. Outside is better than inside. Fauci delivers that mantra every time he gives an interview, which is many times a day. He repeatedly cites scientific evidence or the lack of it. He is not hesitant to say that there are things we still don’t understand about this virus. And he has issued warning after warning: Take this thing seriously. It’s dangerous. We have to stay vigilant. And he says it again and again.

Paradoxically, this grim talk can be soothing, in part because of the way he delivers it: He doesn’t emanate fear. Disinformation, bunk and ideologically driven magical thinking have so thoroughly contaminated our information streams that people are desperate to find a safe harbor where two plus two is still four. That makes Fauci a national resource: His currency is trustworthiness.

~~~~~

Dr. Fauci is a national treasure. I tend to love docs and I damn sure love Fauci, as good as a doctor can possibly be yet not taken by his gifts, damn sure not taken by his celebrity that I can see, as grounded as a person can be.

Happy Birthday Dr. Fauci!

posted by dancestoblue (30 comments total)

Of course Anthony Fauci is a Capricorn. Of course he is. Happy Birthday to him. This makes my heart swell as someone who was also born in the shadow of Christmas.

I hope he does take time to rest and a day off at some point, he really deserves it.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:06 AM on December 24, 2020 [13 favorites]

I had no idea he was that old. I thought he was, maybe, mid-late 60's.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:17 AM on December 24, 2020 [29 favorites]

Yeah Fauci has boyish charm, it's so hard to believe he is 80. Good on him. He really is a national treasure, recognized as one across the aisle until the current administration took the reins. I feel for him, I worry that if he pauses long enough to take self-stock he'll like, collapse. Definitely a role model/hero.
posted by erattacorrige at 7:39 AM on December 24, 2020 [3 favorites]

He's my hero.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:45 AM on December 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

Dr. Fauci is a national treasure.

I concur.
posted by y2karl at 7:49 AM on December 24, 2020 [4 favorites]

God bless him. Imagine being 80 and putting up with that shit.
posted by gauche at 7:52 AM on December 24, 2020 [22 favorites]

I’m having a hard time with the mental whiplash of going from “ideologically driven magical thinking have so thoroughly contaminated our information streams that people are desperate to find a safe harbor where two plus two is still four” to “of course Anthony Fauci is a Capricorn” in the first comment, which I sincerely hope is some sort of next-level meta-irony.
posted by mhoye at 7:53 AM on December 24, 2020 [51 favorites]

If we start trying to “um, actually…” every questionable belief posted to MeFi, we’re going to be here all day. Every day.

It’s Christmas Eve, surely there are better things to do than astrology-shame people.
posted by sideshow at 7:58 AM on December 24, 2020 [28 favorites]

I am still surprised TIME Magazine didn't select him as Person of the Year.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:09 AM on December 24, 2020 [9 favorites]

If there’s a better way to celebrate Fauci’s birthday than just believing what you want regardless of evidence I can’t think of one.
posted by Wood at 8:13 AM on December 24, 2020 [8 favorites]

He's eighty? I knew he was one of the few heroes of the AIDS crisis, so I ought to have been able to deduce his age, but still, good heavens. May we all age so well, with so much energy and kindness. (I am unspeakably charmed every time he releases a statement to the effect of 'Santa Claus doesn't have the corona virus' to reassure children who presumably desperately need any kind of normalcy.)

I also hope he gets to rest soon.
posted by kalimac at 8:15 AM on December 24, 2020 [5 favorites]

he is a hero, I def have a covid crush on him. I had no idea he was 80, a full head of hair at that age is definitely deceptive. I very much hope he has some rest, some peace for the holidays. he has gone far beyond earning it.

I recently read Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague (yeah I'm sort of a masochist in some ways...) which came out in the 90s. Dr. Fauci is featured a few times, which was fun. I had never heard of him before this year, but he's been around a long time, doing his important work.
posted by supermedusa at 8:48 AM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

It’s alluded to in the article, but it is worth remembering that early in his career, as he was taking a leading role in AIDS/HIV research he was harshly criticized by ACT-UP and others, primarily for supporting strict criteria for inclusion in drug studies. But instead of getting defensive he engaged with them and used some of their ideas for getting more people into the studies. In doing so he went from enemy to ally, setting an example that many of the rest of us would do well to emulate.
posted by TedW at 8:53 AM on December 24, 2020 [55 favorites]

Of course Santa doesn't have Covid! Dr. Fauci went to the North Pole and vaccinated him personally.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 8:54 AM on December 24, 2020 [15 favorites]

(Also oh good grief, of course I meant one of the few heroes of the AIDS crisis in the government, there were countless heroes outside of it!)
posted by kalimac at 9:19 AM on December 24, 2020 [5 favorites]

One of the (many) reasons I felt it was worthy to post this is how unreal it is that Dr. Fauci is so youthful, especially when under the huge load he carries. Spectacular genetics but I think also hewing to his ideals as he does has to help; he's not having the inner fight that many of us have as we walk through our day to day.

And I love that Fauci is smart not only as a doc but also has huge people smarts. To my mind, one of his biggest feats was maintaining his calm -- and his integrity -- when caught in the circus of the Trump White House, people left and right getting fired if they didn't kiss Trumps ass yet here is Dr. Fauci not only not playing along but in fact calling Trump out as the scrotum he is while giving us the unvanished truth about this illness, and that shooting lysol up or whatever other lunacy was being trotted out day by day was pure hokum. It drove Trump nuts but Fauci was just way too good a dancer to get caught out by that freak. I love it.

Trump wasn't the only one who didn't like that piece. One of my sisters loves Trump and loathed (likely loathes; today is her birthday also and for fun I'm going to make sure I tell her when I call her to wish her Happy Birthday that "Oh boy, isn't it neat-o that it's Dr. Fauci's birthday too?!?") she loathed Fauci yet never could get him square in her sights, and any time I'd cheerily bring him up she'd get to sounding all gaseous and frowny and squirmy, which made me feel awfully bad, of course.
posted by dancestoblue at 9:54 AM on December 24, 2020 [18 favorites]

> If there’s a better way to celebrate Fauci’s birthday than just believing what you want regardless of evidence I can’t think of one.

Am I having a hard time with English. or is it just that sarcasm doesn't come across in text?
posted by anadem at 11:32 AM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

A bunch of folks serenaded Fauci as he left work.
posted by PhineasGage at 12:23 PM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

Fauci's age gives him immense perspective.

He knows he's not likely to see another world-halting pandemic. He's one of the top medical professionals in a medical emergency that the United States hasn't experienced in 100 years. He's spent a considerable amount of his life preparing for this exact moment.

He's not going to repeat the nonsense that the Trump administration is saying - politics are irrelevant to a man his age, even before the elections. There's no meaningful job that he can be rewarded with, especially with so many lives at stake.

He's not going to resign "in protest". He's seen six administrations - he knows that this one, like the others, is not going to have a change of heart because of one resignation. Resigning would only mean that someone less competent would take his place.

And his previous career-defining pandemic, HIV, has only killed about twice as many people as COVID. That's over almost forty years. We're not even at the year milestone for the United States in this one.
posted by meowzilla at 12:51 PM on December 24, 2020 [17 favorites]

Dr. Fauci is Santa’s gift to the United States.
posted by mundo at 12:51 PM on December 24, 2020 [3 favorites]

I totally thought the Capricorn thing too. Regardless of whether or not you believe in astrology, or think that people fit the stereotypes of their sign or not (my theory is that people seem to fit about 80% of them?), my impression is that most Capricorns I know are workaholics, unless they have a job where overtime isn't an option. One of mine in particular, I can't even keep track of how many jobs and projects she has going on at once. If anyone knows of any Capricorns who slack off all the time, please let me know because I'm curious as to how that came about!

Anyway, I'm grateful for Dr. Fauci's workaholic-ness this year, lemme tell ya.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:12 PM on December 24, 2020 [4 favorites]

Dr. Fauci is like an epidemiological Mr. Rogers in some strange and wonderful way. Major respect.
posted by vers at 1:44 PM on December 24, 2020 [15 favorites]

Listened to this Radiolab episode today: The Ashes on the Lawn (it also includes a transcript). A good chunk of the episode is an interview with Fauci about how ACT UP activism at his literal doorstep changed his mind (because 2020 Fauci is pretty good people, but he didn't get there on his own -- lots of gay men and other AIDS activists put their bodies on the line to change things, and that's something that the WaPo piece kind of glosses over). But unlike a lot of people he was surrounded by, Fauci was willing to listen, and he also saw the way in which activists were targeting NIH, NIAID, and himself personally was going to ultimately force more hands than he could on his own.

He's not going to resign "in protest". He's seen six administrations - he knows that this one, like the others, is not going to have a change of heart because of one resignation. Resigning would only mean that someone less competent would take his place.

That's the thing, eh? Based on the number of U.S. government agencies that have been variously gutted, subjected to heinous regulatory capture, or allowed to wither through personnel attrition under the current administration, we can kind of assume that what Fauci's continued presence at the helm of NIAID did was shield it from the worst of that. It's not some creature of perfection to be sure, but it seems that Fauci saw a longer game here than simply coming to blows with the White House over the rivers of bullshit it was flooding the country with day in and day out. That story has yet to be written, AFAIK, and if the walls of the NIAID could talk about 2020...
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:54 PM on December 24, 2020 [8 favorites]

surely there are better things to do than astrology-shame people.

Name one. The time is always right. The stars told me so.

This is guy who has (afaict) dedicated his life to helping people with good, data-driven science.
But the real reason, of course, for his success was the fucking constellations visible on the day of his birth. That's something that cannot be changed. Not even with the most sparkly of crystals.
posted by Acari at 3:51 PM on December 24, 2020 [11 favorites]

Regardless of whether or not you believe in astrology, or think that people fit the stereotypes of their sign or not (my theory is that people seem to fit about 80% of them?)

I invite you to go test that theory. It’s been falsified many times before.
posted by mr_roboto at 4:19 PM on December 24, 2020 [4 favorites]

This is guy who has (afaict) dedicated his life to helping people with good, data-driven science.

I'd bet he knows he's a Capricorn, though. And he probably puts about as much stock in that as I do, which is none at all. But I do also (and perhaps he does, as do many) go "oh, wow, we share the same birth sign" which ends up being just a little sprinkling of texture in life as one moves forward.

I do note that the comment in question doesn't talk about any personality trait or facet about being a Capricorn other than being "born in the shadow of Christmas", which is a pretty factually correct thing to say about that particular birth sign, and has nothing to do with where the planets were in the sky during the crowning of one's head during birth.
posted by hippybear at 4:20 PM on December 24, 2020 [4 favorites]

Mod note: Hey folks, now seems like a good time to end the astrology derail. Let's not pursue it any further.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 6:24 PM on December 24, 2020 [12 favorites]

Completely agree that Dr. Fauci has shown great leadership throughout the pandemic. The world’s battle against COVID feels very much like a war and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call Dr. Fauci the United State’s scientific commander-in-chief. Here’s one poll about the level of trust the public holds for Dr. Fauci:

A Quinnipiac University poll released July 15 showed 67 percent of respondents do not trust the information Trump provides about the virus, compared with 65 percent who said they do trust the information Fauci delivers.

Fauci hails from Brooklyn, the same place Steve Rogers (AKA Captain America) grew up. Rogers is also known for his calm, steady leadership in addition to his trusty shield. Fauci is no comic book hero (although maybe he should be, he still runs at 80 years old.) His strong mask advocacy has encouraged millions to shield ourselves and to slow the spread of COVID.
posted by mundo at 7:37 PM on December 24, 2020 [4 favorites]

Because I'm a Cornell alumni ambassador and he's a Cornellian, I'm constantly getting sent little snippets of stuff about Fauci and being asked about him. But today, I surfed his Wikipedia page and figured out why I always think he's younger. He got married in 1985; he was already 45, and his daughters are just in their 20s and early 30s! Here's a fun piece on him from early in the pandemic.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 8:32 PM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

I also looked at his English Wikipedia page the other day and learned:

* he has turned down the job of running NIH. Multiple times.
* he was raised a Catholic but now identifies as a humanist
* from this piece in his college's magazine: he worked construction one summer, building the med school library where he would later study
* from that same magazine: in the 1988 Presidential debates, when asked to name a personal hero, George H.W. Bush named Fauci
posted by brainwane at 5:44 AM on December 27, 2020 [1 favorite]