July 24, 2020 | 6:18am
Dr. Anthony Fauci said he and his family have faced “serious threats” since he joined 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, The Hill reported.
“I’ve seen a side of society that I guess is understandable but it’s a little bit disturbing,” 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 different” 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 because I’m pushing a public-health agenda.”
This has led to both hate mail and “serious threats against me, against my family … my daughters, my wife — I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?”
He said he also 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 doctor later said he prefers to think of himself as “a realist.”
