[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 9, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S599-S602]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Tribute to Anthony Fauci
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, our history books are filled with the
names of great men and women who devoted their lives to others. One who
may not be as recognizable as others is Norman Borlaug. He was an
American biologist. He successfully developed a strain of wheat that
grew more quickly and was disease-resistant. His work to feed the
hungry has been credited with saving a billion lives worldwide.
Madame Marie Curie was a Polish chemist who is remembered for her
discovery of radium and polonium and her huge contribution toward
finding a treatment for cancer.
Of course, there are all the scientists throughout history who
developed lifesaving vaccines: Edward Jenner, smallpox vaccine; Louis
Pasteur, rabies; Albert Calmette, TB; Leila Denmark, whooping cough;
Jonas Salk, polio. I might add Albert Sabin, too, because I was a kid
and remember he came up with the oral version, which meant we didn't
have to get a shot. Kids remember that.
These men and women will be remembered for improving and saving lives
with their breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and science.
I want to nominate another person to be remembered in that same
light. His name is Anthony Fauci. Born in 1940, Tony Fauci, the
grandson of Italian immigrants, grew up a Yankees fan in Brooklyn. He
was the captain of his high school basketball team. He worked
construction jobs over breaks in the summer from school.
He ultimately decided he wanted to pursue a career in medicine. Thank
goodness he did. In 1972, Anthony Fauci accepted a senior researcher
position at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
at the National Institutes of Health, and for the past 38 years, Dr.
Fauci has been the leader of that Institute. He has advised seven
Presidents of both political parties. He has guided our Nation and the
world through countless public health crises--SARS, avian influenza,
swine flu, Zika, Ebola.
Aside from his work against COVID-19, he is best known for his work
on HIV/AIDS. Anthony Fauci's tireless efforts on HIV/AIDS, both
domestically and worldwide, through the creation of PEPFAR, the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the main reason why HIV/
AIDS is no longer a death sentence.
Some of us can remember when HIV/AIDS was first discovered. I can
recall coming to vote in the House and somebody stopping me on the
sidewalk and saying: Did you hear Magic Johnson has AIDS? I can
remember hearings in the House Budget Committee as a young Congressman
when we thought it was a death sentence that we were all going to face
eventually. There was ultimate panic in the air, but thank goodness
there were talented people like Tony Fauci with the nerves of steel
needed to confront that.
Harold Varmus, a former NIH Director, once said:
PEPFAR has turned around declining life expectancies in
many countries and likely saved some countries--even an
entire continent--from economic ruin.
Larry Kramer, a prominent and well-known AIDS activist who recently
passed away, called Dr. Fauci ``the only true and great hero'' among
government officials of the AIDS crisis.
For his work on HIV/AIDS, Dr. Fauci was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2008--our Nation's highest civilian honor--from
then-President George W. Bush, who called Dr. Fauci ``my hero.''
Dr. Fauci has devoted his career and his life to improving public
health. He has saved countless lives here and around the world. These
days, he is working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, shuttling from the
NIH to the White House and back home.
He is a classic example of American excellence, a brilliant
scientific mind. Yet, despite all this, despite all that I have told
you about this man, some Members of today's Republican Party have
chosen to make him a political target. They think attacking Dr. Fauci
will cause us to forget the real history of COVID-19.
You see, the Republican Party has consistently failed the American
people when it has come to COVID--from President Trump's refusing to
take it seriously, to the discouragement of mask-wearing and vaccines,
to promoting horse tranquilizers and bleach and bizarre theories as a
cure. They have too little courage to face their communities and to do
the hard work of governing during this public health crisis, so they
have invented a political target, a convenient target, on which to
focus their blame.
Instead of addressing this public health crisis head on, they are
trying to deflect and distract from it in attacking Dr. Tony Fauci.
They are, without evidence, suggesting the false narrative that Dr.
Fauci secretly and purposely funded illicit research that caused this
virus. They are even criticizing his government salary, for goodness'
sakes.
He accrued that salary, I might remind them, over four decades of
public service, as though he wouldn't make twice or three times that
amount in the private sector today. They are questioning his financials
and ties to the drug industry, even though he has made every requested
document available, and no malfeasance or conflicts have been found.
So why do they do this? Why are they determined to run this man down?
Why would they attack this public servant who is working around the
clock to keep us safe?
[[Page S600]]
It is because it is much easier to malign a person than it is to do
the hard work of enacting policies to tackle this virus and keep
America healthy. Their distractions have sunk so low that they are
using these attacks to raise money for their political campaigns.
We have Republican candidates, from Ohio to Florida, who are running
ads entitled, ``Fire Fauci,'' who are promising to subpoena him and
reduce his salary to zero if it is within their power, who are selling
``Freedom over Fauci Flip-Flops,'' which comes from none other than the
Governor of Florida. A few of my Senate Republican colleagues have
loaded up their websites with anti-Fauci fervor, conveniently located
next to a ``donate here'' option.
We have FOX News' anchors and podcast comedians giving air time to
anti-vaxxers who are hoping to get their 15 minutes of fame by leveling
baseless claims against Dr. Fauci, baseless claims that have resulted
in death threats and harassment against Dr. Fauci, his wife, and his
children.
Let me ask you this: What have Dr. Fauci's most vocal critics done to
advance the cause of public health?
Nothing. They have done nothing. Worse than that, their lies about
Dr. Fauci and about COVID are creating a toxic political environment
that is literally killing people, as 900,000 Americans have now died
from COVID. Some of these deaths could have been prevented with
vaccinations.
Americans who are unvaccinated--listen to this; the Presiding Officer
knows it--are 97 times more likely to die from COVID than their
vaccinated and boosted counterparts--97 times more likely to die. Yet,
instead of spending their time encouraging vaccinations and promoting
other proven, legitimate public health measures that would end this
pandemic, many in the Republican Party want to get their 5 or 10
minutes of Sun on FOX TV, and they spend their time attacking Dr.
Fauci.
These attacks are a shameful fraud, and for what--to fundraise? to
win another guest appearance on FOX?
Working in politics, you get used to a lot of things--grandstanding,
demagoguery, hypocrisy--but what some of my Republican colleagues are
doing to Dr. Fauci is the lowest form of political life. They are lying
about someone who has devoted his life to saving people--saving AIDS
patients, containing and eradicating Ebola, preventing the spread of
Zika and the avian flu. He is someone who has worked harder than anyone
to end this COVID pandemic.
David Relman, a microbiologist who has advised the U.S. Government
for years on biological threats, said this of Dr. Fauci:
Nobody is a more tireless champion of the truth and the
facts . . . I am not entirely sure what we would do without
him.
Dr. Fauci's name is--and deserves to be--listed alongside our world's
greatest scientific minds. History will reserve another place for those
who lied about him for their own gain--inciting hatred, prolonging this
pandemic, and contributing to needless pain and suffering.
America is blessed to have the talent, dedication, and compassion of
Anthony Fauci in the midst of this deadly pandemic.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from
The Washington Post, entitled, ``Anthony Fauci is up against more than
a virus,'' after these remarks.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[Jan. 27, 2022]
Anthony Fauci Is Up Against More Than a Virus
(By Dan Zak and Roxanne Roberts)
Two years into the pandemic, the threats and vitriol have
not stopped. And the many Americans who still trust him are
exhausted.
The doctor opens the front door. Never mind introductions.
``I know who you are. Do you think these guys would let you
get this close to me, if we didn't know who you are?'' Across
the street is a security agent in Nikes, a badge on his belt.
He's not the only one watching.
``I mean, isn't it amazing?'' the doctor says. ``Here I am,
with cameras around my house.''
The house is modest for Washington: stucco and brick, cozy
and cramped. No obvious tokens of celebrity or esteem.
Icicles on the dormant hot tub out back. Bottles of red wine
and olive oil on the kitchen counter.
``It's messy because, as you know, in covid times, nobody
comes over. So nobody cares.''
People are coming by outside, though. They are snapping
photos. Two years into the pandemic Anthony Fauci remains the
face of America's covid response, and on this cold Saturday
in January thousands of marchers are descending on the
capital to rally against vaccine mandates. Are some of them
staking out his home?
The security agents ``usually leave at a certain time,''
the doctor says. ``But tonight they're going to sleep in our
guest room.''
Year 3 of covid times. Nearly 900,000 Americans are dead.
An average of 2,000 (mostly unvaccinated) Americans are dying
every day now, even though there is a simple measure to limit
such suffering--made possible in large part by the Vaccine
Research Center founded under Fauci. And yet many Americans
would rather take their chances with a virus than a vaccine,
because there's more than just a virus going around. There's
something else in the air. Symptoms include rage, delusion,
opportunism and extreme behavior--like comparing Fauci to
Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (as Lara Logan did on Fox News in
November), or setting out for Washington with an AR-15 and a
kill list of ``evil'' targets that included Fauci (as a
California man did last month).
``Surrealistic,'' the doctor says.
He has not had a day off since the beginning. ``I would say
I'm in a state of chronic exhaustion.'' He quickly adds:
``But it's not exhaustion that's interfering with my
function.'' He is a precise man whose tour in the information
war has made him extra-vigilant about his words. ``I can just
see, you know, Laura Ingraham: `He's exhausted! Get rid of
him!' ''
Fauci has been a doctor and public servant for more than 50
years. He's been the country's top expert on infectious
diseases under seven U.S. presidents. George H.W. Bush once
called him his personal hero. Under George W. Bush, Fauci
became an architect of an AIDS-relief program that has,
according to the U.S. government, saved 21 million lives
around the world.
He knows how a virus works. He knows how Washington works.
He thought he knew how people worked, too--even ones who
called him a murderer, as AIDS activists did decades ago
because they felt left for dead by a neglectful government.
Back then the angry people were motivated by truth and
science. Fauci had something to learn from them, and they had
something to learn from him. The shared mission was pursuing
facts and saving lives. Fear and uncertainty could be eased
by data and collaboration. Combatants, however scared or
passionate, shared a reality.
Now?
``There is no truth,'' Fauci says, for effect. ``There is
no fact.'' People believe hydroxychloroquine works because an
Internet charlatan claims it does. People believe the 2020
election was stolen because a former president says so.
People believe that Fauci killed millions of people for the
good of his stock portfolio because it's implied by TV
pundits, Internet trolls and even elected leaders. Fauci is
unnerved by ``the almost incomprehensible culture of lies''
that has spread among the populace, infected major organs of
the government, manifested as ghastly threats against him and
his family. His office staff, normally focused on
communicating science to the public, has been conscripted
into skirmishes over conspiracy theories and misinformation.
``It is very, very upending to live through this,'' Fauci
says, seated at his kitchen table in the midwinter light. He
pauses. ``I'm trying to get the right word for it.'' He is
examining himself now, at 81, in the shadow of the past two
years. ``It has shaken me a bit.''
The way he can comprehend the situation is in the context
of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. There it was, on
live TV, an experiment as clear as day: The abandonment of
truth has seismic consequences.
Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is
not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat
an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can't
slide a whole country into an MRI machine.
``There's no diagnosis for this,'' Fauci says. ``I don't
know what is going on.''
A virus is a terrifying force that hijacks civilization. A
bureaucracy, intricate yet imperfect, is what we have to take
back control. For better and worse, Fauci became the
personification of both. He has been sainted and satanized
over the past two years, since he first fact-checked
President Donald Trump. His inbox is a cascade of hosannas
and go-to-hells. His days often start at 5 a.m. His nights
are fitful. What more could he have done today? What fresh
horror awaits tomorrow? He is fighting for a best-case
scenario, urging preparation for the worst, and fretting that
nothing will ever be good enough.
``I do worry about him,'' says Francis Collins, until
recently the director of the National Institutes of Health.
``He's incredibly frustrated'' by the attacks ``because it's
a distraction. But there is no part of Tony Fauci that's
ready to give up on a problem just because it's hard.''
``Being two years into this, and being at the tip of the
spear--it takes a certain person to be able to persevere
through that,'' says Michael T. Osterholm, director of the
Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the
University of Minnesota. ``It's almost like asking someone to
run a marathon every day of their life.''
``He's always had complete bipartisan support, up until
covid,'' says AIDS activist
[[Page S601]]
Peter Staley, who once picketed NIH and is now a dear friend
of Fauci's. ``It's flat-Earth time. Nothing makes sense. This
is a guy who tries to let science dictate what he says and
does. Now they're turning what is a pristine record into
something evil. They lie, and repeat the lie 100 times until
people think it's true.''
Staley calls Fauci multiple times a week to check in, ask
him how he's doing, discuss the covid response and the
resistance to it.
``What do I tell him?'' Staley says. ``What kind of advice
do I give him to win that war? It's very frustrating. It's
almost unwinnable.''
Look at Fauci's Jan. 11 appearance before the Senate Health
Committee. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) chided Fauci and other
officials for spreading ``skepticism and mass confusion''
with mixed messaging on covid guidelines. A harsh but fair
criticism. Then two senators--who each happen to have medical
degrees--got personal.
``You are the lead architect for the response from the
government, and now 800,000 people have died,'' said Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Fauci scolded Paul that such an ``irresponsible'' statement
``kindles the crazies.'' ``I have threats upon my life,
harassments of my family,'' Fauci said, suggesting that the
California man targeted him because he ``thinks that maybe
I'm killing people.''
For years, Fauci had joked that his personal philosophy
comes from ``The Godfather'': ``It's not personal; it's
strictly business.'' The business is science. Science helped
him cure vasculitis. Science helped him and others transform
HIV from a death sentence to a condition managed by a pill.
What he was facing now felt like it had nothing to do with
science.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.)
displayed a giant prop paycheck depicting Fauci's $400,000-
plus salary. Marshall accused Fauci and ``Big Tech'' of
hiding his financial investments, which created an
``appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on.''
Fauci, bewildered and incensed, replied that his assets,
which he had disclosed for decades, were available to the
public. (While this statement was technically true, his
disclosures were not just a Google search away; after the
hearing, Marshall's office requested and received the
documents from NIH, then declared that Fauci ``lied'' about
the ease of their availability.)
When Marshall finished his questioning, Fauci let his
frustration get the better of him. ``What a moron,'' he
muttered to himself, not intending it for the microphone.
What was going on here? Senators were ``trying to troll
Fauci, and they're trying to bring him down to their level,''
says Matthew Sheffield, a former conservative activist who
now runs a political commentary website called
Flux.community. ``They know if they can get him to call
people a moron, or engage in pettiness the way that they
engage in pettiness constantly--if he does it even once, then
it's a victory for them.''
Paul disputes this characterization and claims that Fauci
deserves ``some culpability'' for the pandemic because a
grant from his agency funded research in a lab in Wuhan, the
Chinese city where the novel coronavirus was first detected.
(The exact origins of the virus remain unknown. Scientific
consensus points to an animal-to-human transfer, but the
debate is ongoing.)
Marshall's office did not have comment on Sheffield's
theory. After the hearing, the senator's campaign website did
start selling $29 T-shirts, featuring the doctor's likeness,
to commemorate the moment: ``Send Fauci a message by getting
your own `MORON' t-shirt!''
The way in which the United States funds and manages
science provides a solid foundation for skepticism and
conspiracy, says University of Pennsylvania professor
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies science communication and
misinformation.
Yes, scientific recommendations change based on available
data, a truth that can be exploited to make responsible
leaders appear inconsistent or incompetent.
Yes, Fauci has a high salary by government standards, has
been in the same unelected position for 38 years and oversees
a budget of $6 billion that flows into grants; those are
truths on which a distrusting person could build a theory
about corruption, unaccountable elites and a nefarious flow
of money from this or that institution to this or that lab.
Yes, the virus seems unaccountable to our best efforts and
fueled by our worst instincts. Yes, the ways it has ended and
upended people's lives have been undeserved, tragic, crazy-
making. These are scary truths that you can neutralize with a
fantasy about how a single human villain is to blame.
The attacks and misinformation seem to be having an effect.
Confidence in Fauci is softening, according to polling
conducted since April by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
After holding steady last summer and autumn, the percentage
of Americans who are confident that Fauci provides
trustworthy information about COVID-19 is down six points
since April, from 71 to 65 percent.
``For the first time in my lifetime--and I am an elderly
woman--the voice that speaks on behalf of the best available
knowledge in science has weathered sustained attack,'' says
Jamieson, director of the policy center. ``Confidence [in
Fauci] remains high despite that attack, but the erosion is
worrisome.''
With Trump long gone from the White House and public
exhaustion with precautions surging alongside the omicron
variant, Fauci may now be more useful to the pundits who need
a villain than those who need a hero. ``Fauci must go,'' the
editors of the conservative National Review demanded this
month. ``I'm over COVID,'' talk-show host Bill Maher told
Deadline before his show last week. His guest, author Bari
Weiss, echoed the frustration of millions: We were told ``you
get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven't
gotten back to normal.''
``The stalwart Fauci was the wise Oracle of Delphi to then-
President Donald Trump's babbling brook about household
bleach as an injectable, anti-viral agent,'' Washington Post
columnist Kathleen Parker wrote this week.
``Maybe it's my imagination,'' she continued, ``but Fauci
appears less confident of late, perhaps weary of his own
voice and exhausted by two years of on-camera appearances.''
Sen. Marshall exaggerated this erosion during the Jan. 11
hearing. ``You've lost your reputation,'' he told Fauci,
adding: ``The American people don't trust the words coming
out of your mouth.''
``That's a real distortion of the reality,'' Fauci
answered.
Marshall replied with a truth from the world outside of
medical science: ``Perception is reality.''
Fauci is not naive. He gets that a third of the country
won't hear him. He still understands Washington enough to see
how it is deteriorating in new and disturbing ways, as fringe
thinking spreads to the central organs. As Peter Staley puts
it: ``Because one party has turned so anti-science, Tony's
power is no longer stable.''
Yet Fauci still thinks he is an effective messenger. And he
still hasn't totally given up on the people who are making
his life miserable. After the exchange with Marshall, and a
news cycle dominated by ``moron'' instead of ``omicron,''
Fauci told his own incredulous staff: Maybe the senator has a
point. Maybe my financial investments, though disclosed and
available, should be much easier to see.
As for the citizens who wish him harm, he can't help but
search for some signal, some symptom, that could help him
understand.
``I'm always looking for the good in people, that kernel of
something that's positive,'' Fauci says. ``And it's tough to
imagine that that many people are bad people. And, I mean,
it's just--has something been smoldering in their lives?
Something that's sociologically evasive to me?''
He wonders: Does their resentment indicate an underlying
issue that needs--for lack of a better term--healing?
``Maybe it's pain that they're feeling, that's driving
it?'' he says, as if bedside with a patient. ``And we're
focusing on the aberrancy of their actions, but we really are
not fully appreciating that maybe they're suffering. And
they're rebelling against a failing of society, maybe, to
address some of their needs. Maybe we need, as a nation, to
address the fundamental issues that are getting, you know,
tens of millions of people to feel a certain way.''
On Sunday, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands of
people rallied against vaccine mandates. Fauci's name was
scrawled on many signs. The rhetoric was familiar. ``Dr.
Fauci is the new Jeff Mengele from World War II,'' said a
Long Island construction worker named Gio Nicolson, who
described Fauci as both ``puppet'' and ``dictator.'' A 57-
year-old woman named Robin Field drove three hours from
Yorktown, Va., to hold up a homemade sign that depicted
Fauci's decapitated head in a noose, under the words ``HANG
EM HIGH.''
Fauci is guilty of treason, according to Field. She's done
her own research, she says, and it's clear that his
recommendations have both ``killed people'' and made him
money.
The violence of her sign, though--where is that coming
from? At a primal level, it seems to convey pain or fear.
``Of co--'' Field starts, then stops. ``Well . . .''
How would she put it?
``I feel so bad that so many people have lost their lives.
That hurts, because we all have loved ones that have touched
our hearts and passed away.''
Almost no one alive has experienced this kind of sudden
mass death, this level of widespread illness, this freezing
and fracturing of all life. It hurts. For much of the 1980s,
every single one of Fauci's AIDS patients died. Ugly deaths
that he was powerless to prevent. He had to suppress the pain
and bury the emotion to get through each day. When he recalls
that era, his eyes water and his throat constricts. His self-
diagnosis is a quick aside (``post-traumatic stress'') as he
bridges the past and the present. In the middle of a
cataclysm, it's hard to see the end. But it does end.
``As a society, when we get out of this, you know, we're
going to look up and say, `Oh, my goodness, what we've been
through,' '' he says. ``We've had an outbreak where we've
lost close to 900,000 people in the last two years. That's
going to have a long-lasting effect.''
In the early '70s, when he was chief resident in a
Manhattan hospital, Fauci remembers glancing out over the
East River in the middle of the night, ``Saying, you know,
I'm tired, but I can't stop until at least this patient is
stabilized.'' When he was the main attending physician at NIH
during the AIDS crisis, he wouldn't leave the ward until he
addressed every patient need. Now he views
[[Page S602]]
the entire country as his patient--a patient afflicted by
both a virus and an undiagnosed condition that hampers its
ability to fight it.
He could spare himself further pain and exhaustion and
allow America to see another doctor. He could tag out.
``That's not my character,'' he says. ``I don't do that.''
The patient, you see, is not stabilized yet.
Fauci stares out the kitchen window into his small
backyard. Right now he sees a crossroads for America. The
best-case scenario: increased vaccination, more immunity,
antiviral drugs, a virus under control. If we work together.
The worst: a new variant, as transmissible as omicron but
more deadly, exacerbated by that comorbidity--the
deterioration of our minds and politics.
``It's like it's 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm looking
out the window at the East River,'' Fauci says, ``and I got a
patient who's bleeding, and another patient has a myocardial
infarction, and another patient who has septicemia--''
The sense memory prompts a sort of pep talk for the
present.
``There's no time to be exhausted, folks. You got a job to
do.''
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.